What is Causing the Zug Island Hum?

blogs.windsorstar.com is the correct site. Sorry. Thanks for the correction.

I think it could be coming from the coke process at a steel mill over there.

http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/gui_coke_WB/$FILE/coke_PPAH.pdf

Ambient Noise

Noise abatement measures should achieve either

the levels given below or a maximum increase in

background levels of 3 decibels (measured on the

A scale) [dB(A)]. Measurements are to be taken

at noise receptors located outside the project

property boundary.

Maximum allowable log

equivalent (hourly

measurements), in dB(A)

Day Night

Receptor (07:00-22:00) (22:00-07:00)

Residential,

institutional,

educational 55 45

Industrial,

commercial 70 70

Sounds like a blast furnace has found sympathetic resonance...at least from the landscape...

Screener, blower fan and motor, and conveyor system are listed as the sources of pollution by a Tata Steel study I found. I would think that the conveyor system would be the first suspect. Just a guess.

I guess it could be an induction furnace, or maybe a group of induction furnaces setting up a harmonic wave being amplified by the surrounding water perhaps sympathetic to the geological landscape...

32 HZ on a C weighting was recorded in Windsor using a Radio Shack device. Youtube has several interesting videos about this phenomenon. This measurement was entitled Windsor Hum Chappus Street. He comments on being questioned by security guards.

The weighting curve applied will make no difference to the frequency recorded.

The weighting curves - A, B and C - are all applied to the amplitude - loudness - of the sound. the reason for them is that the human ear is not a linear device. We do not respond equally to the same acoustic power at different frequencies.

This means that if I play you a sound at 32 Hz at a given power level, then a sound a 1000 Hz at the same power level and a third at 2000 Hz at the same power level, you will tell me that the second one is by far the loudest, the third next in line and the first the quietest.

The curves are used to convert the linear response of microphones to the non-linear response of the human ear. The A-Curve is the closest to human hearing. The B- and C-curves have difference uses which I admit to having forgotten!

Your tone is the C (35.7 Hz) about 3.5 octaves below Concert A (440 Hz) and will be felt as well as heard. I really should find out what frequency the Offenclyde pipes emit...that lovely chest vibrating note at the end of Widor Toccata in D. I should say, the full effect is only felt in a building whose natural frequency couples with the note; it is totally thrilling.

I'm not sure as to the source of the noise at the steel plant (others have posted reasonable suggestions). My suspicion is that the most effective cure would be to mount the offending item on a fully suspended concrete foundation, with suitable rubber mounts. I remember as an apprentice seeing a horizontal milling / drilling machine capable of taking 30 ft pieces that was built in this way. It boggled my inexperienced mind! Stepping on an off the "raft" whilst the machine was running was proof that it worked.

The Phantom of the Opera has taken up new headquarters on Zug Island, blasting out a 32-Hz organ note. If the volume exceeds the local noise regulations, the citizens of Windsor should demand an abatement. The international paperwork might be a hassle, though.

My guess would be that someone has discovered that low frequency sound makes for a better, stronger batch of steel by 'consistant liquifaction' of the molten steel as it is poured into molds.

Maybe some employees are jammin out with some heavy bass vibes...

check out the pressure being generated by this stereo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARXbdaDBvtM&feature=related

It's most probably an arc furnace. It has a very load base level sound that is more felt then heard.

An arc furnace is a possibility, but I believe it is an induction furnace. They operate with very high voltage and a magnetic low-pitch hum.

If it is "big", that is definitely what you are hearing. It SHOULD stop occasionally as they dump a charge and recharge- maybe 10 to 15 minutes- then restart for another 4-six hours or more.

They probably switched to that to minimize overall pollutant releases.

Energygod is, I will bet, dead on. That was my first thought. I went to Brooklyn Tech and before they dumped it all for all this "virtual" they had, as part of a pre-engineering high school curriculum, they had courses in Industrial Processes and as well to back that up actual industrial machinery with a full foundry and three furnaces a cupola, an arc furnace, and an induction furnace. We made patterns in a wood shop, made molds of green sand using our patterns, and then made castings with molten iron from one of the furnaces.

A large induction furnace running high voltage 60 cycle experiencing in the process some sort of partial rectification would be just the thing to produce that hum. The magnetic field from that furnace would also be vibrating every ferrous thing around it and if the energy is high enough perhaps generating a ground wave although at that frequency that would take an awful lot of energy.

Interesting. If I could afford it interesting enough to pick up some instruments, drive there (From Atlanta) get in a boat and get as close as permitted, and see what we could pick up.

But Energygod is right. An induction furnace is, as opposed to a blast furnace or today's basic oxygen furnace upgrade which is continuous process even while being tapped, monitoring for the batch phase would be a give away.

Very simply somebody ought to go around with a simple auto mechanics stethescope and see how many things are being vibrated by induction from the furnace.

But why would there be so much security at a simple steel mill?

j.

If it's a hummin...must be someone working.

What a nice sound!

It hums because it doesn't know the words?

I'm surprised there hasn't really been more people commenting on this phenomenon. It has been being reported all over the place for some time now. It may have nothing to do with the steel plant.

We don't want to upset the sub-surface orcs.

Some linked articles are giving fits, here. Can't get to the video....

However: google-earthing 'Zug Island' brings things into clear focus. Heck-of-a "chimmney-stack" there, which makes me wonder whether *those* puppies have ever been known to huff-and-puff a "rumble" (or two).

I should think that any resonance coming from an induction furnace or other piece of mill equipment would be discernable by the workers there ... giving rise to complaints of their own. (??)

Hmmmmm. Mystery would be solved.... Again, haven't actually heard any recording of the "hum", but...

...next thing I'd wonder would be: At what rate are the stirring-arms in those 24 aeration / holding tanks turning? ...and, is there any possibility of some sort of "geologic-scale" resonance being set-up by same...?

*I* certainly don't know...(!) But , stranger things have happened.

Can't wait to get home and (hopefully) be able to see/hear the video.

Youtube.com has some recordings/videos of the hum, complaints etc. Strangely, The Detroit Free Press is no longer covering the story. The last story was last Fall. The Canadian Government claims to have pinpointed the source on Zug Island. I find it hard to understand how the real answer is still a mystery. I suspect collusion of big government and big industry, in keeping it quiet. What a surprise. There may be several steel plants on Zug Island.

If it does originate in the steel plant on Zug Island, I would expect that Detroit residents that are much closer to Zug Island would also hear it. If it is originating from Zug Island then I suspect more that they don't know what's wrong with the plant more than they're doing something nefarious. I would investigate the geology and terrain features to try and explain why Windsor but not Detroit hears this hum.

According to Wikipedia Zug Island is a man made island built up on a swamp. I would expect sub-sonic transmissions to bed rock to be less likely through backfilled swamp land. Maybe this backfill is settling and activity at the steel plant is not a factor at all.

Possibly currents from the River Rouge that border the island and which almost perpendicularly intersect the Detroit river are vibrating the bedrock.

Maybe their developing the first di-lithium controller for an impulse drive.

I'd still like to see an explanation for the 1000 kazoos that US Steel had delivered to Zug Island.

My comment was base on history- I used to be the Plant Engineer of a malleable iron foundry. Our furnaces were relatively small- 10 tons each at three of them.

Nearby, there is so much background noise- cranes, grinding, mold shake-out, etc. that the sound of the furnaces was just background. These are likely a lot bigger- 50 to 100 tons or more and the background would also be proportionately higher, so workers (wearing sound protection anyway) would not really notice much.

The vibration- into the foundation- would transfer relatively easily to nearby homes, so it COULD rattle some plates on a wall.

With the picture you have painted, now, it seems probable that you are on the right track.

I finally saw a few of the videos. Peculiar that none of them have the noise actually recorded. However:

one fellow's response to one of the videos made me re-visit 'Google-Earth'. HE claims that the rumbling/humming is NOT coming from Zug Island, but from the Windsor Salt Mine down BELOW them...!

He claims that it is 'commical' (sic) that nobody else has figured this out yet.

Thus ... (again) ... I wouldn't rule anything out as yet.

Ah! Now that's got me thinking. Back in the 80s, a very forward thinking Bristol City Council decided to drill massive storm water tunnels all under the city to remove the ground water that backed up when we had heavy rain and a high tide (the river is tidal into the city). Over the course of a couple of years, borers (similar to those used in the Channel Tunnel) were set loose under the city. You could tell when they were under your house, as you could just kinda hear something and feel a low level vibration. Some people reported plates rattling and so on.

Is the salt mine undergoing a Windsor-direction expansion?

"Good Prompt!" Rose ~ Not 'expansion', per se ... however, Wiki gives not one, but TWO locations for the Windsor Salt Mines:

1st (picture in my post above is at:
42° 15′ 20.12″ N, 83° 6′ 13.9″ W
and the 2nd site is at:
42° 17′ 12.23″ N, 83° 5′ 29.62″ W

[ Plug these into Google Earth and you can zoom-in-to Great Detail...]

"Duh!" Site 2 IS about as close under them as one can get! THAT must have been the site the fellow was referring-to, in response to the video...

Hmmmmmmm......

_{Where lies the "General Consensus" now, I wonder...?}

Yes, ER and ndt a good catch. When one also considers the convenient industrial zone on the other side of an international border then local papers and politicians point their fingers at the neighbors.

I suspect that the hum is the salt removing equipment sending vibrations through the salt bearing subterranean strata. This makes much better sense than vibrations getting transferred through the backfill that is Zug Island.

Sounds like a good guess. The Canadian government claims to have pinpointed the noise to one sq. kilometer on Zug Island though. Could someone find out what kind of sound or vibration profile that salt mining borers have? Have other complaints occurred around salt mines? Do coal mines use the same kind of equipment? Do they have vibration complaints? I wonder if the US EPA is involved. Seems like they should be. What about the Freedom of Information Act. It seems like someone would have made a FOIA request already.

Ok, the Canadian government concludes that the source of the noise is beyond there jurisdictional boundary so they have a politically expedient excuse for doing nothing. May I ask then the compound question, why and how did the Canadian government narrow the noise source to an area just less than half of the area of Zug Island?

Besides this question I'd like to remind everyone that the best anyone can hope for here at CR4 is just a few explanation scenarios here. First, a plausible alternative explanation to this mysterious noise that has not been presented. (The salt mine revelation fits this category.) Second, a clever insight from personal experience that agrees with the presented explanation. (The induction furnace fits this category. However, I question the measured 32 Hz frequency measurement instead of 60 Hz.) Third, a difficult to find "mea culpa" report of somebody producing this noise. (I've looked but did not find one.) To prove either of the first two scenarios, somebody will have to do some on site investigation.

May I ask the rationale for you questioning the 32 Hz frequency?

I am giving you a good answer, even though I am not sure you are right about the source. You certainly know about harmonics. I hope someone does some more testing on both sides of the river. This doesn't seem like something that would be hard to figure out. I tend to be on the paranoid side and sense a cover up at high levels. I once was involved in a petroleum exploration area. The reverberations of the sonar equipment were very high. One neighbor pursued the case, and the oil company bought the house he was trying to sell. No further investigation ensued.

The cause of the hum is pretty simple but a big secret. The steel plant is just a test load for the secret power supply. The US and Canada are jointly operating an experimental warp drive motor with a huge bank of flux capacitors. Once you exceed a jillion joules of energy storage in the flux capacitors there is a significant distortion generated in the space-time continuum. This distortion is expressed as gravity waves. Since we are not very good at sensing gravity waves we only sense the sounds created by the gravity waves pulling on the air, water and bedrock. Due to interaction of the orientation of the primary axis of the warp drive engine and the bedrock the audio energy generated by the gravity waves is higher in Windsor than it is in Detroit. Pretty simple actually.

Have workers of the plant been interviewed as to the sound? With so many people working there, someone would eventually "blow the whistle". I doubt that anyone is being sworn to secrecy like in area 51.

the very cause of the zug island hum are Zug Island is located in the City of River Rouge, Michigan. The Mayor of River Rouge is Micheal Bowdler and he is a real stand up gentleman. When I called Mayor Bowdler last week for a meeting, he agreed right away. Not only did he meet with me, he also drove me around River Rouge and took me to Zug Island.

Wow! It took 45 posts to finally get to the bottom of it. Thanks.

Great! You got a guided tour of the facilities at Zug Island. What makes the hum?

I've lived over coal mines in Southern Indiana and they didn't hum. When they were working everything on the shelves in the house would shake and rattle like a train was running through a tunnel just beneath the house but no sound or hum.

At least none we could hear with the unaided ear. I think we can hear down to 21...

If you truly are and this is the correct answer...thank you.

The latest story from the Wall Street Journal and 140 plus comments:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303990604577370182557339816.html

Some really weird posts on Zug or related complaints: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message579401/pg16

Infrasound technology to be used to find source: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/windsor-hum-search-could-celestial-solution-211103337.html

I work in a steel plant in the midwest and have heard the same sound from our blast furnaces. Seems to happen when they push them too much or they start getting too hot.

"What kind of equipment change, in a steel mill, could cause such a strong resonance?"

Possibly a thermal induction furnace, but it would need to be ginormous and suck electricity like a Saturn V rocket burns fuel (7½ tons s^-1) with those five mighty F-1 engines running at full throttle and literally shaking the entire continental USA (I'm told they picked it up the first launch with seismographs in Washington State).

Getting back to the original question of the loud humming sound, have they run new high voltage transmission lines into the plant recently and is it worse at night?

If there running some kind of super-secret induction furnace then late at night is the best time to test it as you can purchase off peak electricity in large quantities at night for a fraction of the day price.