52-hertz whale

[nchelluri]

Somehow this reminded me of the old `sound()` help file from Borland C++ 3.1. I think it was in dos.h.

http://everything2.com/title/7+hertz+-+the+resonant+frequenc...

  /* Emits a 7-Hz tone for 10 seconds.

        True story: 7 Hz is the resonant
        frequency of a chicken's skull cavity.
        This was determined empirically in
        Australia, where a new factory
        generating 7-Hz tones was located too
        close to a chicken ranch: When the
        factory started up, all the chickens
        died.

        Your PC may not be able to emit a 7-Hz tone. */

[nness]

Great little anecdote, although I guess you'd call it a hoax? The volume would have to be so loud that any human in the area would be in a great deal of discomfort before it killed nearby chickens.

[VLM]

Must be a big chicken, per

http://www.wavelengthcalculator.com/

the wavelength in water (brain matter) of a 7 Hz tone is somewhat over 200 meters. So probably not the skull cavity unless its some kind of chicken themed Godzilla movie.

The problem is likely not the skull but the neck and tendons and stuff oscillating like a bridge.

[pantalaimon]

Why would there be a factory for 7Hz tones?

[kps]

Since I was curious, I took the recording from Wikipedia, which is sped up 10×, and slowed it down 10×: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0dMCeANPrbX (No affiliation, just the first no-reg audio host I found.)

Edit: you may need to turn up your volume. Much of it (including the first ten seconds) is pretty quiet.

Edit²: I confirm hearing nothing at all using a laptop's built-in speakers; you'll need headphones or external audio.

[ktRolster]

Wow, that is so cool! I've been listening to whale recordings wrong this whole time.

Is this chart right that the whale calls are up to 180db? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_vocalization#Sound_level... That's enough to blow human ears up.

[s0rce]

Interesting, except on my macbook I can't hear anything. I wonder what the low frequency cutoff is.

[rdtsc]

Yeah that is strange and kind of disturbing too. Thanks for sharing!

Definetily need headphones for this one.

[GigabyteCoin]

I don't hear a single sound.

[Matthias247]

Sounds (and even feels!) pretty impressive on my active speakers.

[tdsamardzhiev]

The door in my room started trembling. Cool!

[brokencog]

But, why presume it's lonely? Maybe it can also "chat" on the normal "whale channel" and it's conducting a SETI experiment on it's own via 52hz?

so much ethno- ego- centric decision making around animals ...

[ackalker]

Maybe it time-traveled back from the future to save us from deadly attack by an alien probe, to give us a chance to get things right this time.

[raverbashing]

Or maybe it has had a wound or a disease that caused a frequency shift in the sound? (just a quick speculation)

[diskcat]

There was that radio emission that was meant to contact aliens or some such.

Perhaps the aliens thought that some stupid deaf hunam sent it.

[gaur]

> They speculate that it could be malformed, or a hybrid of a blue whale and another species.

Are there whale species that have calls significantly higher than 50 Hz? Any ungulate experts here who can comment?

[hamburglar]

When you cross breed whales of two different frequencies, do you get a "beat" interference pattern in the offspring? :)

[selfsimilar]

I think you meant cetacean expert. Which I'm not, but I know a whale's not an ungulate :)

[matteisn]

Orcas in the form of clicking sounds and humpback whales, who can sing in ranges as high as 8000Hz.

However, these calls are produced via an entirely different vocalization method.

[eggy]

And yet it survived, or at least the sound reoccurs every year for how long? I would think a malformation would doom its ability to communicate and feed correctly, no?

[tilt_error]

I see the map of this whale's migration pattern goes north and south along the north american coast. Is it following an alternating current?

[jldugger]

If you mean the alternating directions of the Kremlin, maybe.

[nommm-nommm]

I read the citation given in the wiki but I can't figure out why exactly deaf people may think this whale may be deaf. It is not clear to me.

[knughit]

Because it vocalizes at an nonstandard pitch for its species, like deaf humans do.

And because it appears to be unable/unwilling to live in a pod with other whales, perhaps due to its inability to communicate with them vocally.

[whalesalad]

The worlds loneliest whale. How fascinating and sad!

[userbinator]

I wonder if it's really a whale, or some sort of man-made source (possibly a classified military technology) that coincidentally happens to be particularly whale-like?

[ars]

I thought of that, but if I were making some secret military sound I would try very hard to blend in exactly like other whales, not do something unique and identifiable.

[rdc12]

Thw wikipedia article mentions that the US Navy partially declassified thoe orginal recordings after the Cold War, and made the array availble to researchers.

If there was a military tech involved (with the source), I highly doubt they would have declassified that or as a conspiracy theory, it is misdirection...

[audiosampling]

Makes sense. Trying to mask an acoustic signature around 50-60Hz, by using a sound that ressembles to a whale.

[thebouv]

Maybe it's trying to find The Bloop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop

[emmelaich]

My half-arsed guesses (apart from the ones given) 1. birth defect affecting the 'vocal' cords 2. autistic or similar 3. dwarfism

[adt2bt]

If we can track it, is it possible to locate the whale and observe it?

[davidjade]

Looks like they've been trying to already.

http://www.lonelywhale.org

http://52thesearch.com/

[digi_owl]

I suspect the researchers would love to, but that would mean expenses regarding ship, crew, and all that comes along.

Try getting that past management when all you got is a weird plot on a spectrogram.

[PepeGomez]

It doesn't appear to be as monotonous as the tiny spectrogram suggests, it's a sequence of subtly different tones: http://imgur.com/Z7S9Chq

[intrasight]

Just notice that when I clicked to comment there were "52 comments" - interesting coincidence.

Is locating the source that difficult? Don't we have tons of listening/triangulating stuff out in the oceans now?

[chillydawg]

Whales roam the oceans. I expect in some deep devops cave in a military office somewhere, they have a monitor showing the real time location of this whale using their sub hunting tech for a laugh. I really hope that's true.

[brador]

How hard is it to simply triangulate the signal and find the exact location of origin?

[Lanzaa]

I think the issue is how quickly they identify the whales location. It seems like they have been able to track the movement fairly well. I imagine it takes a while to get a ship out to the identified location of the sound's origin, by which time the source has probably moved on.

[nakodari]

This reminds me of Moby Dick

[aroman]

Reminds me of the plot of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home!

[keirerish]

Free Willy.

[remarkEon]

Somehow this seems like the plot to the next Disney/Pixar film