H HUM U M
CA P TAT I O N S SONORES
© Léo Fouan 2018 0 Révolution numér ique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 7
9 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World
17 “6EQUJ5» The Signal from Cosmic Depths That Might Have Changed Human Civilization Voice Is the Next Big Platform, Unless You Have an Accent 20
24 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques
« Barbie Stasi », la poupée qui espionne les enfants 29
I see U : DIY Surveillance for the Masses …and the Makers 32
Help Scientists Record One Day of Sound on Earth 35 35 Chris Hadfield’s new album was recorded in space
The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 41 41 Le boitier anti-bruit : prouesse technologique ou gadget ?
48 Ces entrepreneurs qui veulent nous faire parler avec des objets ? Des cartes pour mesurer la pollution sonore 50
55 Sonar et pollution sonore de la mer : quel danger Ce papillon qui se joue du sonar des chauves-souris 57 pour les cétacés ?
Cats use the laws of physics to hunt their prey 64 64 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere
Sonic Notify : the inaudible QR codes only an app can hear 68 Can some people hear the jet stream ? 69
The Bloop mystery has been solved : it was never 76 77 Comment parler aux extraterrestres ? a giant sea monster
A Maddening Sound 81
83 The Sound of Earth
99 How Nasa's Voyager is bringing the sound of space Pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas de son dans l'espace ? 100 down to Earth
102 Open your ears to the freaky ambisonic magic of the ocean The cause of the Earth's maddening humming noise 105
Sommaire Sommaire ------
Hm, I´m really puzzled by this hum. I first heard it a couple of years ago, and I first thought it was a car engine running outside the house. It was no car there. So, I heard it a couple of times again, and then I lost it. Last week I read a report « Strange hum » in a daily newspaper, can you imagine how surprised I was to learn that other people had heard something alike? I tried to hear it, and yes it is still there. Not so loud, coming and going. I think I will try to build a humreceiver to make this strange phenomenon visible.I´ll be back with further reports from the Swedish westcoast.
Level : 2 varying in level.
______The hum tonight has been the most intense yet. henrik nykvist
We have gone searching for it in our cars, only to discover when we go out- side it goes away!
THERE IS SOMETHING GOING ON HERE
and I want an answer… I have been to every webpage I can find. But i am going to make this my HOME PAGE til I figure this out…..
______
Roddy Johnson, MD
Kirtland , NM USA - Sunday, May 16, 1999 at 04:39:54 (PDT)
------usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017
Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit Jean-Dominique Séval ? Premier chapitre de notre série d’articles sur les « pa- renthèses refermées », ce concept qu’utilise Jean-Do- minique Séval pour décrire la manière dont la révolu- tion numérique nous ramène à des comportements et modes d’organisations ancestraux. Pour le directeur général adjoint de l’IDATE Digiworld, le retour de l’oralité est sur le point de clôturer une parenthèse de plusieurs siècles de culture écrite. Le règne de la vidéo sur les réseaux sociaux, l’avènement des intelli- gences articifielles et celui des chatbots ont déjà enta- mé cette transition. Cela risque de bouleverser jusqu’à nos façons de penser et nos capacités cognitives.
Une journée sans lire une ligne, c’est désormais pos- sible. Mieux, c’est maintenant la norme, le cours nor- mal des choses. Comme passer un mois ou une année sans avoir besoin de faire un détour par l’écrit pour les actes de la vie quotidienne. Ce scénario, qui annonce l’effacement de notre culture écrite au profit d’une nouvelle civilisation orale, c’est celui que je vous prédis pour un futur sans doute moins éloigné que ce que nous pourrions croire. Si je suis aussi affirmatif, c’est que les ferments d’un tel bouleverse- ment sont déjà à l’œuvre aujourd’hui. C’est même une avalanche de signaux qui, tous ensemble, sont susceptibles de provoquer un tel basculement.
L’irrésistible invasion de la vidéo
Le plus important, sans doute, tient à la place enva- hissante que prend dans nos vies, chaque jour un peu plus, la vidéo. C’est le contenu roi, celui qui s’impose comme le standard de fait en matière de communica- tion. Cette tendance n’est pas nouvelle. Il s’agit même d’une lame de fond qui trouve son origine à la fin du XIXe siècle avec l’invention du cinéma, puis de la télévision dès les années trente. Le XXe siècle aura été rythmé par le développement continu de ces médias de masse qui furent d’abord accusés de tous les maux, avant de se hisser au rang de 7e art pour l’un et de première source d’information et de divertisse- ment pour l’autre.
Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 7 usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com
The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World 5 « Nous sommes sans doute aujourd’hui arrivés au point de basculement longtemps annon- cé, correspondant à l’avènement de la vidéo comme moyen de com- munication prioritaire » 2 blue Leslie Jamison
This article is excerpted from “52 Blue,” the newest single from the Atavist. You can purchase the full story from the Atavist’s website. It is also available on Amazon.
Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 8 9 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com
© Tim Jeffs Ce n’était pourtant qu’un début. La vidéo, devenue Dec. 7, 1992 : Whidbey Island, Puget Sound. à la demande et en passe de s’affranchir définitive- The World Wars were over. The other wars ment de la télévision d’hier, est omniprésente. were over : Korea, Vietnam, the Persian On n’en a jamais autant consommé. L’invasion des Gulf. The Cold War was finally over, too. écrans de toute taille, couplés à des plateformes The Whidbey Island Naval Air Station de diffusion aux catalogues pléthoriques, favorise remained. So did the Pacific, its waters vast une consommation sans frein, où les séries règnent and fathomless beyond an airfield named en maître, plébiscitées par de jeunes générations qui for an airman whose body was never found : en ont fait leur contenu de référence comme leurs William Ault, who died in the Battle of ancêtres avaient le théâtre, l’opéra, le roman ou the Coral Sea. le cinéma avant eux. But at that naval air station, on that day in December, the infinite Pacific appeared as something finite : audio data gathered by a network of hydrophones spread along the ocean floor. These hydrophones had turned the formless it of the ocean and its noises into something measurable : pages of printed graphs rolling out of a spectro- graph machine. These hydrophones had been used to monitor Soviet subs until the Cold War ended; after their declassification, the Navy started listening for other noises — other kinds of it — instead.
On Dec. 7, the it was a strange sound. The acoustic technicians thought they knew what it was, but then they realized they didn’t. Petty Officer 2nd Class Velma Ronquille stretched it out on a different spectrogram so she could see it better. She couldn’t quite believe it. It was coming in at 52 hertz.
She beckoned one of the technicians. He needed to come back, she said. He needed to take another look. Première campagne publicitaire française campagne publicitaire en 2104 pour dans le métro Première Netflix,
Au roman-feuilleton du XIXe siècle a succédé la série télé The technician came back. au XXIe siècle. Netflix a remplacé Balzac et l’oral a rempla- He took another look. His cé l’écrit. name was Joe George.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Ronquille told him, “I think this is a whale.”
Joe thought, Holy cow. It hardly seemed possible. For a blue whale, which is what this one seemed to be, a frequency of 52 hertz was basically off the charts. Blue whales usually come in somewhere between Internet a amplifié le phénomène jusqu’à l’excès. D’abord média de l’écrit, de par sa construction et par 15 and 20 — on the periphery of what the nécessité, il s’est rapidement ouvert aux images, puis human ear can hear, an almost impercep- aux vidéos dès que le débit des réseaux et la puissance tible rumble. But here it was, right in front of des terminaux l’ont permis. Nous sommes sans doute them, the audio signature of a creature aujourd’hui arrivés au point de basculement long- moving through Pacific waters with a singu- larly high-pitched song.
Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 10 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World 11 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com
temps annoncé, correspondant à l’avènement de Whales make calls for a number of millions d’abonnés ou German Garmendia, un jeune Soon after the report was published, the la vidéo comme moyen de communication prioritaire. reasons — to navigate, to find food, to com- chilien, dont les vidéos humoristiques sont suivies researchers started getting notes about the La plupart des sites Internet se doivent d’intégrer municate with each other — and for certain par plus de 30 millions d’abonnés ; comme ces profes- whale. They weren’t just typical pieces of des contenus vidéo pour attirer et retenir l’attention whales, like humpbacks and blues, songs seurs, étudiants ou amateurs qui, en France, professional correspondence. They came, des internautes. Les grandes plateformes univer- also seem to play a role in sexual selection. se mettent en scène pour raconter et vulgariser as New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin selles que sont devenues Google, Facebook ou encore Blue males sing louder than females, and la science (E-penser), la littérature (Booktubeuses), wrote at the time, “from whale lovers lamen- Snapchat sont en train d’opérer cette transition, the volume of their singing — at more than l’histoire (Nota Bene) ou la philosophie (Coup ting the notion of a lonely heart of the ceta- en passant de l’écrit et de l’image à la vidéo. À tel 180 decibels — makes them the loudest de phil). cean world”; others were “from deaf people point que Mark Zuckerberg annonce que d’ici cinq animals in the world. They click and grunt speculating that the whale might share their ans seulement la vidéo aura remplacé les contenus and trill and hum and moan. They sound like disability.” textes sur Facebook. Ce que sa responsable pour l’Eu- foghorns. Their calls can travel thousands rope, Nicola Mendelsohn, confirme en estimant que « Facebook sera définitivement mobile et probable- of miles through the ocean. After Revkin’s story ran that December, ment entièrement vidéo : chaque année, nous voyons headlined “Song of the Sea, a Cappella une diminution du texte… Si je devais parier sur The whale that Joe George and Velma and Unanswered,” more letters flooded quelque chose, je dirais : la vidéo, la vidéo, la vidéo. » Ronquille heard was an anomaly : His sound Woods Hole. One marine-mammal resear- patterns were recognizable as those cher quoted in the story, Kate Stafford, may of a blue whale, but his frequency was un- have inadvertently fanned the flames : “He’s heard-of. It was absolutely unprecedented. saying, ‘Hey, I’m out here,’ ” she told Re- « Une explication en vidéo est So they paid attention. They kept tracking vkin. “Well, nobody is phoning home.” These him for years, every migration season, as he letters came from the heartbroken and the souvent perçue comme plus effi- made his way south from Alaska to Mexico. deaf, from the lovelorn and the single; the cace qu’un texte traditionnel, et His path wasn’t unusual, only his song — and once bitten, twice shy and the twice bitten, the fact that they never detected any other forever shy — people who identified with bien plus attractive pour capter whales around him. He always seemed to be the whale or hurt for him, hurt for whatever alone. Le gamer PewDiePie, symbole de la génération des youtubers à set of feelings they’d projected onto him. l’attention volage d’internautes succès, avec plus de 58 millions d’abonnés. sur-sollicités » So this whale was calling out high, and he Un phénomène tellement structurant que tous les was calling out to no one — or at least, no médias s’y convertissent - les radios mettent des ca- one seemed to be answering. The acoustic méras dans leurs studios, les sites des titres de presse A legend was born : technicians would come to call him 52 Blue. Ce mouvement est clairement à l’œuvre chez produisent des contenus vidéos - et les temples du the loneliest whale les producteurs de pages Internet, professionnels A scientific report, published 12 years later savoir que sont les universités mettent leurs cours ou amateurs, qui privilégient la vidéo, support de by researchers at Woods Hole, would des- en ligne jusqu’à faire de certains de leurs professeurs in the world. communication préféré des internautes. Ne plus lire, cribe his case like this : de vraies stars du Web comme Walter Lewin pour ou le moins possible, car les écrans des smartphones, la physique au MIT ou Michael Sandel pour la philo- désormais le moyen le plus courant pour surfer sur sophie du droit à Harvard. Internet, exigent des formats de texte de plus en plus No other calls with similar characteristics In the years since, 52 Blue — or 52 Hertz, courts. Mais surtout parce qu’une explication en vidéo have been identified in the acoustic data as he is known to many of his devotees — paraît souvent plus efficace qu’un texte traditionnel has inspired numerous sob-story headlines : from any hydrophone system in the Nor- L’émergence des outils de l’oralité et bien plus attractive pour capter l’attention volage not just “The Loneliest Whale in the World” th Pacific basin. Only one series of these d’internautes sur-sollicités : c’est la raison du suc- but “The Whale Whose Unique Call Has Stop- cès grandissant des tutos en tout genre, des recettes 52-Hz calls has been recorded at a time, Ceci ne serait encore rien sans d’autres tendances ped Him Finding Love,” “A Lonely Whale’s de cuisines, des éditos de presse, des cartographies with no call overlap, suggesting that a single supplémentaires qui viennent enfoncer le clou. Unrequited Love Song,” “There Is One Whale animées, des publicités… Le tout en vidéo, le plus sou- whale produced the calls. … These tracks Un arsenal de technologies, arrivant à maturité par That Zero Other Whales Can Hear and It’s vent courtes, impactantes et didactiques. Et comme leur fiabilité grandissante et leurs coûts accessibles, consistently appeared to be unrelated to Very Alone. It’s the Saddest Thing Ever, and il faut pouvoir les visionner en toutes circonstances, ouvre la porte à la toute-puissance de la parole. Une the presence or movement of other whale Science Should Try to Talk to It.” There have elles sont souvent sous-titrées (l’écrit se défend !) parole qui, comme dans le fameux « sésame ouvre- been imaginative accounts of a solitary pour être regardées sans le son quand vous êtes species (blue, fin and humpback) monitored toi » du conte, nous permet désormais de prendre bachelor headed down to the Mexican Rivie- dans un bus, un métro, en cours ou, distrait, year-round with the same hydrophones. le contrôle de notre environnement. Il faudra nous y ra to troll haplessly for the biggest mammal lors d’une réunion de travail un peu trop longue. habituer, nous allons de plus en plus souvent conver- ser avec nos machines. Alors que jusqu’à présent, babes alive, “his musical mating calls ringing for hours through the darkness of the dee- Ne nous y trompons pas, il ne s’agit pas d’un phé- Much remained unknown, the report nous avions pris l’habitude d’appuyer sur des boutons pest seas, broadcasting a wide repertory of nomène marginal ou périphérique, mais bien d’une confessed, and difficult to explain : ou de leur écrire ! lame de fond dont les figures annonciatrices sont heartfelt tunes.” ces armées de youtubers qui donnent des rendez-vous Les progrès de la reconnaissance vocale sont tels réguliers à des milliers voire des millions de fans qui que nous serons de plus en plus tentés de nous passer A singer in New Mexico, unhappy at his day viennent rire, chanter avec eux, s’informer, We do not know the species of this whale, d’un clavier pour écrire. Ce sera la seconde mort job in tech, wrote an entire album dedicated se cultiver… Comme ailleurs, dans la littérature ou whether it was a hybrid or an anomalous symbolique de la Remington de l’écrivain. Ce dernier to 52; another singer in Michigan wrote a dans l’édition, on trouve le pire et le meilleur sur whale that we have been tracking. It is pe- pourra écrire ses œuvres comme un Michel de Mon- children’s song about the whale’s plight; an le plus d’un million de chaînes hébergées sur le site rhaps difficult to accept that … there could taigne dictait ses Essais en arpentant, les mains dans artist in upstate New York made a sculp- phare de Google : des stars comme PewDiePie, ce have been only one of this kind in this large le dos, le plancher de sa tour. Ecrire un texte se fera ture out of old plastic bottles and called it jeune suédois commentateur de jeux-vidéo aux 54 sous la dictée. C’est déjà possible, avec un traitement 52 Hertz. A music producer in Los Angeles oceanic expanse.
Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 12 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 13 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com
de texte du marché, quand votre ado se retrouve started buying cassette tapes at garage où la voix remplacera les clics, et où l’on navigue, I heard from Shorna, a 22-year-old in Kent, le bras dans le plâtre, et que cela ne le dispense même sales and recording over them with 52’s consulte, réserve ou achète en dialoguant avec ces England, who relates to 52 Blue because he plus de préparer sa rédaction pour la semaine pro- song, the song that was quickly becoming a assistants intelligents. reminds her of how difficult it was for her to chaine. Et pour moi, qui n’ai jamais appris à taper sur kind of sentimental seismograph suggesting Les outils vocaux qui se déclinent en text-to-speech, communicate with anyone after her brother un clavier avec tous les doigts, c’est la perspective multiple storylines : alienation and determi- speech-to-text et speech-to-speech, abordent grâce au was killed when she was 13 : “I felt I couldn’t de bientôt pouvoir m’en passer… nation, autonomy and longing; not only progrès de la technologie NMT (pour Neural Machine talk to no one. That no one understood or a failure to communicate but also a dogged Translation), la traduction simultanée. Comme c’est cared enough.” déjà le cas pour le projet de la startup Waverly Labs persistence in the face of this failure. qui, en levant en 2016 quatre millions de dollars sur I spoke to Sakina, a 28-year-old medical la plateforme de crowdfunding Indiegogo, s’apprête « Certains annoncent un nouvel People have set up Twitter accounts to actor living in Michigan, who associates 52 à commercialiser une oreillette traduisant les langues speak for him, like @52_Hz_Whale, who gets with a different kind of loss — a more spiri- Internet, où la voix remplacera les étrangères en temps réel. Finies les barrières entre les right to the point : tual struggle. She says 52 immediately made clics, et où l’on navigue, consulte, langues, quand il sera bientôt possible de travailler et de voyager en parlant et comprenant la langue de ses her think of the prophet Yunus, or Jonas, réserve ou achète en dialoguant interlocuteurs au fil de simples conversations : effacer who was swallowed by a whale. “It makes 52 hertz whale sense that the loneliest whale feels lonely,” avec ces assistants intelligents » Babel ! Et une ouverture de plus, vers une civilisation @52_Hz_Whale de l’orale sans frontière. she says. “Because he had a prophet with him, inside of him, and now he doesn’t.” Hellooooooo ? ! Yooohoooooo ! Is anyone out Mais, la promesse ultime de cette évolution est bien there ? #SadLife Les premiers pas d’une nouvelle ______l’extension du domaine de la reconnaissance vocale. Popularisée par Apple lors de l’introduction de Siri à 3 :10 PM - Jul 24, 2013 culture orale l’occasion du lancement de son iPhone 4S dès 2011, la Hast thou seen the white whale ? The hunt technologie encore imparfaite, est en train de faire les À quoi doit-on s’attendre, quand la somme de ces ten- for an elusive whale is — of course — the 52 hertz whale preuves de son efficacité. Au-delà des smartphones, dances, qui convergent toutes vers l’avènement d’une most famous narrative in the history of Ame- @52_Hz_Whale elle s’introduit au cœur de nos voitures où le bénéfice nouvelle culture orale dominante, mais numérique, rican literature. The whiteness of Moby Dick est évident et est en passe d’être généralisée à tous aura fait son œuvre ? is “a dumb blankness, full of meaning,” full les objets. C’est le sens de la toute nouvelle guerre I'm so lonely. :'( #lonely #ForeverAlone of many meanings : divinity or its absence, que se livrent les géants du Net : mettre au cœur des C’est bien sûr une mauvaise nouvelle de plus pour primal power or its refusal, the possibility foyers des assistants numériques universels capables 2 :40 PM - Jul 20, 2013 les amoureux du livre papier, dont la disparition est de piloter via nos ordres vocaux les applications of revenge or the possibility of annihilation. régulièrement annoncée sous les coups de boutoir (recherche, agenda personnel, météo, info,…) et les “Of all these things the Albino whale was the de la dématérialisation de l’édition et de la distri- objets connectés qui se multiplient à domicile (en- I started seeking out some of the people symbol,” Ishmael explains. “Wonder ye then bution comme du changement des habitudes de ceintes, lumières, fermetures, alarmes,…). Amazon who’ve become obsessed by this whale over at the fiery hunt ?” lecture. Même si la transition sera longue (les ventes a ouvert les hostilités en janvier 2017 à l’occasion the years : a 19-year-old English major at the de livres numériques aux Etats-Unis, qui étaient en du CES à Las Vegas (grande messe des équipements University of Toronto who thinks 52 Blue is No one has ever conducted a physical numériques) en dévoilant Alexa, face à Home de “the epitome of every person who’s ever progression constante, ont fortement baissé en 2015 search for 52 Blue. An entrepreneur named et en 2016), il est probable que nous n’aurons pas eu Google et Cortana de Microsoft. Tous ont en commun felt too weird to love.” A 26-year-old photo Dietmar Petutschnig is currently prowling the le temps de nous habituer longtemps à la lecture sur de miser sur la reconnaissance vocale, en permettant editor at the biggest daily tabloid in Poland, South Pacific in a small sailboat, but his hunt écran, car déjà une génération bascule dans l’oralité… notamment l’identification vocale de chaque utilisa- who decided to get the outline of 52 Blue for the whale seems more metaphorical, L’écrit ne disparaitra pas pour autant bien sûr, mais il teur. Une façon claire de miser sur ce qui, pour eux, a kind of personal branding. Dietmar calls tattooed across his back after the end of sera repoussé dans les marges : celles qu’occuperont est l’avenir des interfaces homme-machine : la voix. himself skipper and whalefinder and is a six-year relationship : toujours les amoureux de l’écrit ou ceux qui raisonne- joined by a co-captain and a chef, along ment mieux par écrit que mentalement… Le lien entre toutes ses applications tient aux progrès with a little spaniel named Vienna Linz who attendus de l’intelligence artificielle (et du deep is billed as security, angler, and crew morale learning), qui trouve dans ce domaine, comme dans officer. When I spoke to him on the phone beaucoup d’autres, un champ d’innovations privilé- i was deeply in love. but as it came out she while his boat was docked in Vanuatu, Diet- gié. En partant des applications de livres parlants et was treating me like a second category per- « Verra-t-on se lever une nouvelle mar was reluctant to do an interview but de vidéo-texte, ne serait-ce que pour les malvoyants son in relationship…i was devastadem mainy génération d’intellectuels aussi ou wanted to offer me a job working for him as pour qui l’écran est rédhibitoire, en passant par becose i have given her everything i could, le vaste marché des centres d’appels et de relation a freelance editor. “We are still in the middle and i thought she would do the same for plus à l’aise dans la manipulation client, avec la perspective d’automatiser une grande of our discovery,” he’d written earlier. partie des tâches avec, à la clé, des gains de producti- me. [Because] of her i lost connection with des concepts sans avoir à passer vité considérables, jusqu’aux médias qui commencent important friends. View of the wasted time par le truchement de l’écriture ? » à utiliser des speakers numériques qui lisent des made me sad….Story of 52 hz whale made “We do hope the whale will go out of fashion.” bulletins météos et des informations ou encore les me happy. For me he is symbol of being outils de génération automatique de résumés vidéo alone in a positive way…He is like a steate- d’évènements en tout genre. Car il est vrai que de tels changements ont et auront ment, that despite being alone he lives on. d’énormes conséquences. Déjà la lecture sur écran If anyone actually finds 52, it will probably be Plus fondamentalement, le Web vient d’entrer dans modifie nos aptitudes. Avec des bénéfices avérés Josh Zeman, a filmmaker currently working l’âge des chatbots, ces robots conversationnels, qui comme l’enrichissement de l’expérience que permet on a documentary called 52 : The Search dotent les applications les plus variées du don de la le lien hypertexte pour faire appel à un dictionnaire for the Loneliest Whale in the World. parole, petits logiciels capables de tenir une conversa- ou une page d’information. Mais aussi des inquié- Zeman had been hoping to conduct tion en temps réel avec un internaute et de s’adapter à ses réponses. Certains annoncent un nouvel Internet,
Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 14 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World Révolution numérique : la fin de la civilisation de l’écrit ? 15 The Legend of the Loneliest Whale in the World usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 27 août 2014 Leslie Jamison slate.com usbeketrica.com Jean-Dominique Séval 10 avr. 2017 30 dec. 2014 dailygalaxy.com
© Tim Jeffs tudes liées à la vitesse de lecture qui diminuerait his actual search this fall, planning to take a de 25% en moyenne en raison des sollicitations research vessel into the Pacific for 50 days, extérieures qui nous freinent (email, notifications, but his funding fell through two weeks after recherches…), aux troubles de l’attention chez it was announced by his producer, actor les plus jeunes ou à la capacité de conduire une lec- Adrian Grenier, at the Cannes Film Festival ture profonde sur un écran. Certains, comme l’auteur in May. américain Nicholas Carr, allant même jusqu’à agiter la Zeman first heard the story of 52 at an menace de la paresse intellectuelle qui nous guette à artists colony in the summer of 2012, force d’utiliser prioritairement la lecture numérique. and it struck him immediately. He was in the aftermath of a breakup. He’s been wor- Ces craintes qui nous habitent encore quant au king on the project ever since; he described passage de l’écrit papier au numérique ne seront rien à côté de celles qui vont se poser à l’occasion de la his relationship to the movie as “Ahabian.” transition annoncée de l’écrit à l’oral. Qu’en sera-t-il But figuring out how to make the trip work de nos capacités cognitives dès lors que nous aurons “is fucking complicated,” he told me. The abandonné l’écrit ? Comment raisonnerons-nous ? plan was to have a research vessel staffed Raisonnerons-nous encore ? Comment une pratique with five scientists and three crew, using orale dominante s’articulera avec les nombreuses sonar and old migration routes to locate 52. prothèses numériques disponibles (mémoires, tra- The data was more than a decade old. duction, speech-to-text,…) ? Verra-t-on se lever une nouvelle génération d’intellectuels aussi ou plus à One of the themes of Zeman’s film is mo- l’aise dans la manipulation des concepts sans avoir dern loneliness, that people are particularly à passer par le truchement de l’écriture ? On peut responsive to the story of 52 in the digital ainsi entrevoir que cette culture orale numérique sera era — when the Internet promises connecti- bien différente de celle qui a prévalu depuis l’aube de vity but can actually deliver us even deeper l’humanité, a minima en ce qu’elle englobera l’écrit into isolation. Ironically enough, the film’s en le mettant au service de l’oralité. Facebook page has become an effective epicenter for the 52 Hertz community : “6EQUJ5 » On pourra s’en désoler, comme un Platon s’insurgeait It’s where people post their responses des méfaits de l’écriture en faisant dire à Socrate dans to the story of the whale, register their son Phèdre que l’écriture est inhumaine, en ce qu’elle sympathy, report their desires. “This sto- The Signal prétend établir en dehors de l’esprit ce qui ne peut ry touched me so deeply,” wrote a woman être en réalité que dans l’esprit. Mais d’un autre côté, named Pamela. “I wish we could all help and from c’est toute une partie de l’humanité qui n’a jamais play whale songs for him.” She wanted to eu accès à l’écrit – et ils sont nombreux comme ces know why “we can build laptops and smart Cosmic Depths indiens Quetchua qui ont traversé les quatre milles phones but we cannot figure out a way dernières années en se passant d’écriture - et qui, dès to get this whale some companionship ?” That Might lors qu’elle sera dotée d’un smartphone, aura accès au savoir du reste de l’humanité par un Internet devenu Have Changed vidéo et parlant. Une sorte de revanche des illettrés Some posts struck a different chord. de tous les continents, de populations entières qui Catherine was actually a little sick of all the Human Civilization sauteront l’étape de l’écrit, comme ils ont sauté les “mawkish sadness” at this “anthropomor- étapes du téléphone et de l’internet fixe pour entrer phized meme,” and wasn’t afraid to say so, directement dans l’ère de la mobilité. though another user responded immedia- tely to her post. “52 Hertz isn’t a myth or a meme,” she shot back. “He’s real, and I think we’re all damn curious about him.”
Most of the posts converge on two themes : De même peut-on imaginer que les écrivains du futur August 15, 1977 : the night before Elvis « Notre pays renouera peut-être helping 52 and feeling bad for 52. A woman seront des conteurs que nous convoquerons a volonté Presley died, at 11 :16 p.m. an Ohio radio named Denise posted one message — “find pour nous seuls ou, lors de veillés numériques, pour telescope -a rectangular structure, larger avec son glorieux passé qui faisait 52 hertz” — over and over and over again un groupe d’amis, eux même dispersés aux quatre than three football feilds- called the Big Ear de nos ancêtres, tenants d’une one morning : at 8 :09, 8 :11, 8 :14, 8 :14 coins du monde. Assis à nos côtés ou au milieu de recorded a single pulse of radiation that (a second time), and 8 :16. A woman named nous, le conteur sera présent par la puissance de la seemed to come from somewhere in the civilisation de la transmission Jen wrote, only once : “Just want to give it réalité virtuelle et nous fera voyager dans sa création constellation of Sagittarius at the 1420 MHz grâce au pouvoir évocateur de la parole. Ce n’est pas orale, des maîtres de la hétorique, a hug.” hydrogen line, the vibration frequency of tant la mort du livre papier, en passe d’être supplanté hydrogen, the most common molecule in the reconnus dans tout le monde par le livre numérique, qui pose question, car c’est universe -exactly the signal E.T.-hunters had même un débat presque dépassé, mais bien la fin du been instructed to look out for. The signal antique jusqu’au cœur livre tout court… Poussons encore plus loin, en affir- was so strong that it pushed the Big Ear’s du sénat romain » mant que le débat n’est déjà plus de savoir « si Internet va remplacer le livre papier » mais bien « si la vidéo va recording device off the chart. remplacer l’écrit ».
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Certes, nous n’avons jamais collectivement autant Three nights later, on August 18, astronomer À cette occasion, notre pays renouera peut être avec phenomena that’s called “the cosmic wate- écrit qu’aujourd’hui, depuis l’avènement du Net et Jerry Ehman sat at his kitchen table flip- son glorieux passé, assez méconnu, qui faisaient de ring hole” in the electromagnetic spectrum. des nouveaux moyens de communication numé- ping through a thick computer-generated nos ancêtres tenant d’une civilisation de la trans- riques, sur nos ordinateurs, par email ou par texto. printout displaying the cryptic stream of mission orale, non seulement des guerriers craints “6EQUJ5” signified a sudden pulse of Comme si les premiers âges de l’Internet faisaient un blank spaces and black digits shown be- et respectés, mais aussi des maîtres de la rhétorique, radio energy when it appeared on Big Ear’s baroud d’honneur, comme pour mieux célébrer la fin low. As Ehman looked carefully through this reconnus dans tout le monde antique jusqu’au cœur printout, wrote Scharf in his brilliant new d’une époque et annoncer l’entrée dans une nouvelle forest of information, he zoomed in on a an du sénat romain. Ogmios, dieu de l’éloquence de la book, The Copernicus Complex : Our Cos- ère allégée du poids de l’écrit… Un peu comme notre odd column that read, from top to bottom : mythologie celtique gauloise, ne terrassait-il pas ses mic Significance in a Universe of Planets consommation de papier blanc ne cessa d’augmen- ennemis par la seule force de la parole ? “6EQUJ5.” and Probabilities. « Usually the faint signals ter à l’heure de la reprographie et de l’impression of natural noise only rated blank spaces, or numérique, alors même que nous était promis le zéro Au terme de cette transition numérique qui referme- This small section of paper with its imper- digits such as 1, 2, or 3. But if the signals got papier… qui finira bien par arriver quand la chaîne ra la parenthèse des civilisations de l’écrit, qui aura fectly printed characters, together with strong enough the computer would have complète de la dématérialisation, qui va de la création durée, plusieurs millénaires si on la fait s’ouvrir dès de contenu à son stockage, sera plus sure et achevée. Ehman’s emphatic note, « represent what ses débuts en Mésopotamie, ou à peine plus de cinq to shift up to letters — and by the time it got some people think remains the best evi- siècles si on préfère commencer avec Gutenberg qui to “U” it meant a signal about thirty times dence of a signal from the cosmic depths démocratisa le livre, un auteur contemporain pourra more powerful than the cosmic background. that was of artificial, purposeful, and in- un jour reprendre à son compte cette citation : « Je This pulse lasted for the duration of Big Ear’s telligent origin » according to Caleb Scharf, prends possession du monde par les vidéos », en écri- attention span on any one spot on the sky : director of the multidisciplinary Columbia vant les vidéos là où Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Les seventy-two seconds. It also came in at al- Astrobiology Center at Columbia University. carnets, 1953) avait écrit les mots ! most exactly the atomic hydrogen frequen- cy, the cosmic watering hole. But then it was The image above shows a graphic which gone. And it didn’t come back — ever. » was produced by the SE.T.I from the data of the « Wow » signal. A signal (Gaussian, triplet The Ohio State University researchers or pulse) arises only in a single narrowband wondered if it was man’s first contact with channel. All other channels contain noise. extraterrestrial intelligence. They trained the Up to now we do not know cosmic pheno- massive scope on that part of the sky for mena which would generate such signals. the next month, and have returned periodi- It would seem improbable that they have cally since, with no repeat of the signal no artificial origin. The imageshows a com- puter generated example of a strong And although many point to it as a possible Gaussian signal. extraterrestrial intelligence sighting, Eh man, says told the Cleveland Pain Dealer « We
Satatue de Socrate à l’Académie d’Athènes Satatue de Socrate à l’Académie The Big Ear team explored every possibility : should have seen it again when we looked military transmissions, reflections of Earth for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an signals off asteroids or satellites, natural Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected emissions from stars, but nothing fit. off a piece of space debris. » And most odd of all, the signal came from a blank patch of sky totally devoid of stars. The young engineer’s only thought was that it could have been beamed from a spaceship traveling through the universe in search of some sign of life. Laurent Hrybyk Big Ear was catching radio signals in a set Photo prise par : Laurent Hryk of fifty distinct frequency channels that in- cluded some that overlapped with a special natural frequency — the frequency at which atoms of hydrogen emit radiation when their proton and electron flip between quantum spin states.
This 1400 MHz or 21-centimeter line reveals Va-t-on revenir à la culture orale que plébiscitaient the glow of interstellar and intergalactic les Grecs anciens ? hydrogen gas. It can also reveal the moisture content of our atmosphere and even the salinity of our oceans here on Earth when detected from space. This frequency also sits at an especially quiet spot within the ga- lactic hubbub of radio waves, an attractive place to gather to listen for interesting
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« If those civilizations are out there – and we don’t know that they are – those that inhabit star systems that lie close to the plane of the Voi- Earth’s orbit around the sun will be the most motivated to send communications signals toward Earth, because those civilizations Is will surely have detected our annual transit across the face of the sun, telling them that Earth lies in a habitable zone, where liquid ce water is stable, » says Richard Conn Henry, of Johns Hopkins University. « Through spec- the Next troscopic analysis of our atmosphere, they will know that Earth likely bears life. Knowing where to look tremendously reduces the amount of radio telescope time we will need Big to conduct the search. » Platform, Henry and colleagues think that we limit our Unless You Have search for extra-terrestrial intelligence to the ecliptic plane in which our solar system’s planets orbit. This ecliptic band comprises only about 3 percent of the sky, which could an make it easier for scientists to effectively Ac- narrow their search for intelligent E.T.. The logic behind it postulates that if there is another, perhaps more advanced alien civilization in our galaxy out there; they may be trying to contact us, as well. If this is the case, Henry says a search focused on the cent ecliptic « should lead rapidly to the detection of other civilizations ».
Exoplanets in the ecliptic should be able to By Devon Maloney, Lily Hay Newman, see Earth passing in front of the Sun. These Sophia Chen, Sonia Paul, The Backchannel Team, Jason Fagone, transits are what Earth astronomers rely on Sara Wachter-boettcher, Erik Malinowski, Jean M. Twenge, and Brian Dear to identify a variety of information about the transiting planets, such as radius, density and composition. Transits also reveal the secret’s of a planet’s atmosphere, therefore any potential alien astronomers studying the Earth’s spectrum would theoretically find the indicators of life in our atmospheric oxygen, letting them know — just as we long to know — that they are not alone.
Henry, along with his colleagues, searches ©Lars Tunbjörk the ecliptic for these advanced alien civiliza- tions with the Allen Telescope Array, a set of My mother waited two months for her Amazon Echo dozens of antennae in Hat Creek, California. to arrive. Then, she waited again — leaving it in the box until I came to help her install it. Her forehead According to Greg Laughlin, an astronomer crinkled as I download the Alexa app on her phone. and extrasolar planet hunter at the Univer- Any device that requires vocal instructions makes my sity of California, Santa Cruz, if there is a mother skeptical. She has bad memories of Siri. stargazing civilization trying to make contact “She could not understand me,” my mom told me. with us within 50 light years, its inhabitants
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My mother was born in the Philippines, my father in would see the Earth as a bluish dot. All they But an AI can only recognize what it’s been trained Yet, the long-debated Drake Equation is of India. Both of them speak English as a third language. would need is an 8-metre space-based te- to hear. Its flexibility depends on the diversity of the still of seminal importance because it orders In the nearly 50 years they’ve lived in the United lescope with a good coronagraph along with accents to which it’s been introduced. Governments, our thinking. This one equation formed the States, they’ve spoken English daily — fluently, but a set of space-based infrared telescopes, academics, and smaller startups rely on collections backbone of astrobiology as a science. Carl with distinct accents and sometimes different phra- which would enable them to detect ozone of audio and transcriptions, called speech corpora, Sagan was inspired that the Drake Equation sings than a native speaker. In their experience, that and water vapor in our atmosphere. to bypass doing labor-intensive transcriptions them- showed the chances of intelligent alien life means Siri, Alexa, or basically any device that uses selves. The University of Pennsylvania’s Linguistic were high but he also added that extraordi- speech technology will struggle to recognize their Data Consortium (LDC) is a powerhouse of these data nary claims require extraordinary evidence. commands. sets, making them available under licensed agree- ments for companies and researchers. One of its most In 2010, the Italian astronomer Claudio Mac- My parents’ experience is hardly exclusive or famous corpora is Switchboard. cone published in the journal Acta Astronau- unknown. (It’s even been chronicled in comedy, with this infamous trapped-in-a-voice-activated elevator Texas Instruments launched Switchboard in the early tica the Statistical Drake Equation (SDE). It sketch.) My sister-in-law told me she gave up on using 1990s to build up a repository of voice data, which is mathematically more complex and robust Siri after it failed to recognize the “ethnic names” of was then distributed by the LDC for machine learning than the Classical Drake Equation (CDE). her friends and family. I can vouch for the frustra- programs. It’s a collection of roughly 2,400 telephone tion : The other day, my command of “Text Zahir” conversations, amassed from 543 people from around The SDE is based on the Central Limit morphed into “Text Zara here.” the US — a total of about 250 hours. Researchers lured Theorem, which states that given the the callers by offering them long-distance calling enough number of independent random Right now, it’s not much of a problem — but it’s slated cards. A participant would dial in and be connected variables with finite mean and variance, to become more serious, given that we are in the with another study participant. The two strangers those variables will be normally distributed middle of a voice revolution. Voice-based wearables, would then chat spontaneously about a given topic — as represented by a Gaussian or bell curve audio, and video entertainment systems are already say, childcare or sports. in a plot. In this way, each of the seven fac- Ohio State University Radio Observatory " Big Ear " here. Due in part to distracted drivers, voice control tors of the Drake Equation become inde- systems will soon be the norm in vehicles. Google For years linguists have assumed that because the pendent positive random variables. In his Home and Amazon’s Alexa are radicalizing the idea of LDC is located in Philadelphia, the conversations paper, Maccone tested his SDE using values a “smart home” across millions of households in the skewed towards a Northeastern accent. But when usually accepted by the SE.T.I community, US. That’s why it took so long for my mother’s Echo Marsal Gavaldà, the director of machine intelligence and the results may be good news for the to arrive — the Echo was among Amazon’s bestsellers at the messaging app Yik Yak, crunched the numbers “alien hunters”. this holiday season, with a 900 percent increase from in Switchboard’s demographic history, he found that 2016 sales. It was backordered for weeks. the accent pool skewed more midwestern. Although the numerical results were not his Most of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way South and North Midland accents comprised more objective, Maccone estimated with his SDE Overall, researchers estimate 24.5 million voice- galaxy are located in the galactic plane, than 40 percent of the voice data. that our galaxy may harbor 4,590 extra- driven devices will be delivered to Americans’ daily forming another great circle around the sky. terrestrial civilizations. Assuming the same routines this year — evidence that underscores The two great circles intersect near Taurus Other corpora exist, but Switchboard remains a values for each term the Classical Drake ComScore’s prediction that by 2020, half of all our benchmark for the models used in voice recognition and Sagittarius, two constellations opposite Equation estimates only 3,500. So the SDE searches will be performed by voice. systems. Case in point : Both IBM and Microsoft use each other in the Earth’s sky – areas where adds more than 1,000 civilizations to Switchboard to test the word error rates for their the search will initially concentrate. the previous estimate. But as technology shifts to respond to our vocal voice-based systems. “From this set of just over 500 chords, what happens to the huge swath of people speakers, pretty much all engines have been trained,” « We have no idea how many – if any – other who can’t be understood ? says Gavaldà. The image below is the Gaussian or bell civilizations there are in our galaxy,” Henry curve showing the probability of finding noted. “One critical factor is how long a civi- But building voice technology on a 26-year-old corpus the nearest extra terrestrial civilization lization – for example, our own – remains in ______inevitably lays a foundation for misunderstanding. from Earth. existence. If, as we dearly hope, the answer English is professional currency in the linguistic mar- is many millions of years, then even if civi- ketplace, but numerous speakers learn it as a second, To train a machine to recognize speech, you need a lizations are fairly rare, those in our ecliptic third, or fourth language. Gavaldà likens the process lot of audio samples. First, researchers have to collect plane will have learned of our existence. to drug trials. “It may have been tried in a hundred thousands of voices, speaking on a range of topics. DISTANCE OF NEAREST E.T. CIVILISATIONS They will know that life exists on Earth and patients, [but] for a narrow demographic,” he tells me. 5,63•10-20 They then manually transcribe the audio clips. This they will have the patience to beam easily ers) combination of data — audio clips and written trans- detectable radio (or optical) signals in our -20 criptions — allows machines to make associations direction, if necessary, for millions of years 4,5•10 between sound and words. The phrases that occur
most frequently become a pattern for an algorithm to in the hope, now realized, that a technologi- 3,38•10-20
learn how a human speaks. unction (l/met cal civilization will appear on Earth. » f “You try to extrapolate that to 2,25•10-20 Research of the past two decades have the general population, the dosage densi ty
shown that literally billions of planets in the ty -20 Milky Way might have niches that would sup- may be incorrect.” 1,13•10
port at least a level of life represented obabil
Pr 0 by Earth’s extreomophiles. 50005 00 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 E.T._Distance from Earth (in light years)
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______Another SDE advantage is to incorporate groups in these data sets tend to be groups that are Le 24 juillet 1954, un fier ingénieur de la the standard variation concept, which marginalized in general. A typical database of Ameri- marine américaine, James Trexler, s'asseyait shows how much variation exists from can voices, for example, would lack poor, uneducated, dans un coin du Centre de recherche navale Larger companies, of course, have to think globally rural, non-white, non-native English voices. to stay competitive — especially because most sales the average value. In this case the standard du Maryland, seul. Absorbé dans une intense of smartphones happen outside the US Technology variation concept is pretty high : 11,195. réflexion, il se parle à lui-même, grognant, companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon have pri- In other words, besides human society, zero esquissant de grands gestes avec les mains. vate, in-house methods of collecting this data for the to 15,785 advanced technological societies Un observateur extérieur aurait pu se per- languages and accents they’d like to accommodate. could exist in the Milky Way. “The more of those categories you suader que le bonhomme était devenu fou And the more consumers use their products, the more fall into, the worse speech recogni- et que ses plans de sous-marins lui étaient their feedback will improve the products, through If those galactic societies were equally montés au cerveau. Pourtant, James Trexler programs like Voice Training on the Alexa app. spaced, they could be at an average dis- tion is for you,” she says. allait très bien. Il venait juste d'inventer la tance of 28,845 light-years apart. That’s guerre électronique. But even if larger tech companies are making too far to have a dialogue with them, even headway in collecting more specific data, they’re through electromagnetic radiation traveling En effet, quelques jours auparavant, Trexler motivated by the market to not share it with anyone in the speed of light. So, even with such a avait entrepris de parler dans un micro- — which is why it takes so long for the technology to potentially high number of advanced civiliza- phone connecté à une formidable antenne trickle down. This secrecy also applied to my repor- tions, interstellar communication would still de la Stump Neck Facility, l'installation radio ting of this piece. Amazon never replied to my request be a major technological challenge.v de la base navale. Cette antenne était for comment, a spokesperson for Google directed me orientée vers la lune, ni plus ni moins. Aussi, to a blog post outlining its deep learning techniques, Still, according to SDE, the average distance quand Trexler a balbutié quelques mots dans and an Apple PR representative noted that Siri is now we should expect to find any alien intelligent son microphone, leur écho lui est revenu customized for 36 countries and supports 21 lan- life form may be 2,670 light-years from Ear- 2.5 secondes plus tard, après que les ondes guages, language variants, and accents. th. There is a 75% chance we could find E.T. sonores aient réalisé un trajet de 800 000 between 1,361 and 3,979 light-years away. kilomètres jusqu'à la Lune et retour. Même si Outside the US, companies are aware of the impor- 30 ans auparavant, un autre ingénieur créa- tance of catering to accents. The Chinese search We should also be open to the distinct pos- tif avait déjà entrepris de faire rebondir un engine company Baidu, for one, says its deep learning sibility that advanced alien communications signal radio sur la surface de la Lune, il était approach to speech recognition achieves accuracy technology a billion years old may operate le premier à avoir envoyé et reçu une trans- in English and Mandarin better than humans, and it’s developing a “deep speech” algorithm that will at the third, or perhaps even a fourth or fifth mission vocale via notre satellite. recognize a range of dialects and accents. “China has level -all of which are totally incomprehen- Cette expérience déterminante n'a pas été a fairly deep awareness of what’s happening in the sible to the human mind at our current state ______pensée du jour au lendemain. Durant ses English-speaking world, but the opposite is not true,” of evolution in 2014. jeunes années à l'université, Trexler avait Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng told The Atlantic. Still, Jeffrey Kofman, the CEO and co-founder of réalisé que l'ionosphère de la Lune pouvait Trint, another automated speech-to-text software servir de réflecteur pour les ondes radio. Yet smaller companies and individuals who can’t ND based in the UK, is confident accent recognition is Après avoir rejoint le Naval Research Center invest in collecting data on their own are beholden to UA LA something speech science will be able to eventually dans les années 40, il pousse son hypothèse cheaper, more readily available databases that may Q solve. We video chatted on the Trint platform itself, encore plus loin : et si la lune pouvait être not be as diverse as their target demographics. “[The where Australian English is now available alongside utilisée comme un « dispositif d'interception data’s] not really becoming more diverse, at least from British and North American English as transcription radar » capable d'espionner les communica- my perspective,” Arlo Faria, a speech researcher at accents. Trint also offers speech-to-text in a dozen tions soviétiques ? the conference transcription startup Remeeting, tells European languages, and plans to add South Asian me. Remeeting, for example, has used a corpus called English sometime this year, he said. Au cours des deux années qui ont suivi, Fisher that includes a group of non-native English LUNE Trexler a employé toute son énergie à prou- speakers — but Fisher’s accents are largely left up to Collecting data is expensive and cumbersome, which ver qu'un programme de renseignement chance, depending on who happened to participate SERVAIT is why certain key demographics take priority. For lunaire était parfaitement viable. in the data collection. There are some Spanish and Kofman, that’s South Asian accents, “because there En 1950, la marine américaine est convain- Indian accents, for instance, but very few British are so many people from India, Pakistan, and those cue par l'idée de Drexler. Elle construit alors accents, Faria recalls. À ESPIONNER countries here in England, in the US and Canada, deux grandes antennes pour tenter d'inter- who speak very clearly but with a distinct accent,” cepter les signaux de communication radio he says. Next, he suspects, he’ll prioritize South Afri- That’s why, very often, voice recognition technology L soviétiques : le projet Passive Moon Relay reacts to accents differently than humans, says Anne E S can accents. S UE (PAMOR) était né. Wootton, co-founder and CEO of the Oakland-based SOVIÉTIQ audio search platform Pop Up Archive, “Oftentimes Obviously, it’s not just technology that discriminates Le projet PAMOR n'a rencontré qu'un succès the software does a better job with like, Indian accents against people with accents. It’s also other people. DANIEL OBERHAUS mitigéé. En 1964, il est parvenu à capter un than deep Southern, like Shenandoah Valley accents,” Mass media and globalization are having a huge she says. “I think that’s a reflection of what the trai- effect on how people sound. Speech experts have signal en provenance de l'antenne radio dite ning data includes or does not include.” documented the decline of certain regional American du « Poulailler » l'une des plus sophistiquées Les propriétés réflectives de notre sa- accents since as early as 1960, for example, in favor of de l'Union soviétique. Cette antenne exerçait Rachael Tatman, a PhD candidate at the University of tellite ont permis à l'armée américaine a more homogenous accent fit for populations from une fascination sans borne sur l'armée amé- Washington’s Department of Linguistics who focuses d'intercepter des communications top mixed geographic areas. ricaine depuis sa découverte, permise par la on sociolinguistics, noted that the underrepresented secrètes au cours de la Guerre froide. réflexion d'ondes radio sur le nuage dégagé
Voice Is the Next Big Platform, Unless You Have an Accent 24 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques Voice Is the Next Big Platform, Unless You Have an Accent 25 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com Blackchannel Sonia Paul 3 mars 2017 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com
This effect is exacerbated when humans deal with par un essai nucléaire en URSS. Hélas, après digital assistants or operators; they tend to use a voice cette petite victoire, les autres tentatives devoid of colloquialisms and natural cadence. de transformer la lune en dispositif d'écoute Or, in other words, a voice devoid of an identity clandestine passif ont été peu probantes. and accent.
As voice recognition technology becomes better, using a robotic accent to communicate with a device stands to be challenged — if people feel less of a need to talk to their devices as if they are machines, they can start talking to them as naturally as they would a friend. And while some accent reduction coaches find their clients use voice assistants to practice neutralizing their thick foreign or regional accents, Lisa Wentz, a public speaking coach in San Francisco who works in accent reduction, says that she doesn’t recommend it.
That’s because, she tells me, most of her clients are ai- ming for other people to understand them. They don’t want to have to repeat themselves or feel like their accents prevent others from hearing them. Using de- vices that aren’t ready for different voices, then, only Le Projet Diana, précurseur de l'Opération Moon Bounce. stands to make this feeling echo.
Peu de temps après la création du projet ______PAMOR, Trexler et son superviseur Howard Lorenzen (le « père de la guerre électro- My mother and I set up her Alexa app together. She nique ») ont établi un contact radar avec la wasn’t very excited about it. I could already imagine Lune. Nous sommes en octobre 1951. Ils se her distrust and fear of a car purported to drive by the sont contentés de tester l'envoi et la récep- command of her voice. My mother would never ride tion d'une série d'impulsions courtes afin de in it; the risk of crashing would be too real. Still, she tester la fiabilité de la Lune lors qu'elle est tried out a couple of questions on the Echo. utilisée comme relais de communications.
“Alexa, play ‘Que sera sera,’” my mother said. Le premier satellite artificiel ne serait pla- cé en orbite que six ans plus tard. Ainsi, à “I can’t find the song ‘Kiss your ass era.’” l'époque, l'armée américaine était toujours My mom laughed, less out of frustration and more dépendante de la propagation ionosphé- out of amusement. She tried again, this time speaking rique, dont elle devait tenir compter pour slower, as if she were talking to a child. “Alexa, play envoyer ses signaux radio à ses unités à ‘Que sera sera.’” She sang out the syllables of sera in travers le monde. Ceci impliquait la réfrac- a slight melody, so that the device could clearly hear tion des ondes radio sur la ionosphère, la “se-rah.” couche supérieure de l'atmosphère terrestre qui possède une concentration élevée Alexa understood, and found what my mom was d'atomes chargés électriquement. Même si looking for. “Here’s a sample of ‘Que sera sera,’ cette technique fonctionnait assez bien, elle by Doris Day,” she said, pronouncing the sera a bit restait assez peu fiable puisqu'elles pouvait harsher — “se-raw.” être compromise par les éruptions solaires et les tempêtes géomagnétiques. The 1964 hit started to play, and my mother smiled at the pleasure of recognition. Avec ces nouvelles expériences au nom de code charmant, "Opération Moon Bounce", l'armée américaine espérait transformer la lune en un satellite de communication naturel une bonne fois pour toute. Après une première série de tests réussis, l'Opération Moon Bounce a été intégrée au sein d'un système de communication pleinement opé- rationnel, qui a été utilisé pour relier Hawaï à © US Navy Le miroir du transmetteur/récepteur radio à bord Washington DC en 1959. de l'USS Oxford. Il était utilisé pour les communications Terre-Lune et Lune-Terre.
26 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques Voice Is the Next Big Platform, Unless You Have an Accent 27 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com slate.fr Annabelle Georgen 23 fev. 2015 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com
"Moon Bounce est un exemple emblématique des techniques de collecte de renseigne- ment invraisemblables au premier abord, et qui ont pourtant révélé tout leur potentiel par BARBIE la suite"
STASI … peut-on lire dans les documents déclassifiés du programme. N'hésitez pas à la poupée qui espionne les consulter si vous aimez bien l'idée que des signaux radio top secrets puissent re- les enfants bondir allègrement à la surface de la Lune. (mais son vrai nom est « Hello Barbie »)
Repéré par Annabelle Georgen sur Stern et Huffington Post
« Barbie Stasi » : c’est ainsi que la presse allemande surnomme la nouvelle création de Mattel, qui porte en réalité le nom bien neutre de Hello Barbie. Cette poupée capable de dialoguer avec les enfants, grâce à un logiciel de reconnaissance vocale comparable à Siri, l’assistant vocal développé par Apple pour ses smartphones, devrait être commercialisée avant la fin de l’année, mais seulement aux Etats-Unis, d’après la version allemande du Huffington Post. La poupée aux proportions irréelles honnie par les féministes « ne menace cette fois-ci pas l’image de soi mais la sphère privée des enfants », écrit l’hebdomadaire Stern : « Pour que cela fonctionne, elle enregistre en per- © NASA Première image transmise en utilisant la Lune comme un relais de transmission pour les communications mili- manence l’ensemble des sons émis dans son envi- taires. ronnement. S’il elle reconnaît que quelqu’un est en train de parler, la poupée enregistre ce qui est dit et le transmet à un serveur Mattel. La langue est analysée là-bas et une réponse adéquate est générée. »
Pire, les centres d’intérêts des enfants devraient égale- ment être analysés par la poupée, poursuit l’hebdo- madaire :
En 1960, le système est officiellement inau- guré par une transmission entre deux offi- ciers de marine, qui se sont envoyé l'image d'un porte-avions sur lequel avait inscrit « Comme si l’idée d’une Barbie IM l'expression "RELAIS LUNAIRE". (abréviation de Inoffizieller Mitar-
Le système a été utilisé pendant des an- beiter, c’est-à-dire collaborateurs nées, mais il est devenu obsolète dès la fin officieux, nom donné autrefois par des années 60. La Lune avait été rempla- cée par des satellites de communication de la Stasi à ses indicateurs) n’était l'armée américaine, moins majestueux mais pas suffisamment inquiétante, plus efficaces que notre satellite naturel. Ces derniers ont cependant été construits Mattel veut également enregistrer sur la base des expérience de l'Opération les goûts des enfants. Moon Bounce, qui restera dans les mémoires comme l'une des opérations militaires les Cela sert soi-disant à donner plus audacieuses de la Guerre Froide. des réponses adéquates. © NASA
28 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques « Barbie Stasi », la poupée qui espionne les enfants 29 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques slate.fr Annabelle Georgen 23 fev. 2015 slate.fr Annabelle Georgen 23 fev. 2015 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com
On imagine aisément la valeur que représente pour un fabricant de jouets une base de données uti- lisable qui recense les goûts des en- fants. Peut-être que ce n’est qu’une question de temps pour que Hello Barbie ne commence à demander un cheval ou une voiture. »
Avec cette poupée connectée, Mattel espère reconqué- rir les chambres d’enfants, car les ventes de poupées Barbie sont en baisse depuis plusieurs années, face à la concurrence d’autres poupées comme les Monster High et les Bratz, moins lisses, certes, avec leurs looks trash et leur dégaine street, mais tout aussi maigri- chones et hyperféminines que leur aïeule blonde au sourire figé. L’influence négative de ces poupées sur les petites filles est de plus en plus pointée du doigt, comme en témoigne le flot de critiques qui a accompagné la sortie de Barbie ingénieure informa- tique en 2014 ou le tumblr d’une Australienne qui « démaquille » et désexualise ainsi les poupées Bratz, dont l’action a suscité l’enthousiasme de nombreux parents.
Il existe même désormais des alternatives à ces poupées, qui sont souvent le fait d’initia- tives individuelles, telles la « Barbie nor- male » ou plus récemment les « Barbie acné » et « Barbie cellulite ». © NASA
« Barbie Stasi », la poupée qui espionne les enfants 30 « Barbie Stasi », la poupée qui espionne les enfants 31 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques core77.com Teshia Treuhaft 5 août 2016 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com core77.com Teshia Treuhaft 5 août 2016 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com
I see U : © iseeu
DIY Sur- 2011. Feet the Best, is 5000 Omer Fast,
From the NSA to Mark Zuckerberg’s low-budget laptop camera tapeover — surveillance is a perva- veillance sive topic in our modern society. As Great Works CPH Partner, Pia Leichter puts it « The conversation around privacy is over — the illusion has long been shattered. » Hence why the agency decided to ap- proach surveillance as the theme of their first artistic project. I see U is a DIY surveillance kit cooked up for the Great Works as a response to the technological issues facing not only their clients, but society at large.
I see U combines open source electronics, rapid prototyping and a healthy dose of internet memes Masses … to create a kit that helps you eaves drop and match your findings with a representative animated gif. The kit comes equipped with a parabolic microphone, raspberry pi and touch screen, and manual for ease of assembly allowing anyone to spy on their immediate and the surroundings. The kit debuted at Trailer Park I/O last week with its first open workshop to build the devices and showcase them in action through their interactive installation. The workshop acted as a bit of a testing ground for the Great Works CPH team to see their kit Teshia Treuhaft in action for the first time and see the I/O through the Makers eyes of a spy.
In addition to the kit, the interaction installation worked as a running log of the overheard around the festival. Though clever implementation of the giphy API, the floor to ceiling screens populate with gifs pulled based on keywords overheard with the I see U device. As Leichter mentioned in her talk on the main stage of I/O, 40% of people share what they overhear on social media or blogs. Examples ranging from Why Should « just throw some bacon at the problem » overheard at Whole Foods to overheard at Trailer Park I/O : « I could be catching Pokemon right now. » The NSA Have All Attendees of Trailer Park I/O enjoy the gifs generated from overheard conversations around the event.
The Fun ? This is the first time the Great Works CPH team has toed the line between their digital work for the agency and artistic passion project. The decision to not only If you were wandering around the music, art and tech- tackle such a heavy topic but infuse it with unmista- nology festival Trailer Park I/O this past week you may kable maker vernacular of laser cutting and Raspberry find that your conversations are not as private as you Pi gives the entire project a lightness leaning more think. Touching on one of the festival’s key themes of toward LOLcat than Wikileak. ‘Spying Society’ and adding a layer of playfulness to the all too relevant topic of surveillance- was Copen- In the playful world of memes, gifs, cats, snaps, hagen’s own digital agency Great Works CPH with emojis, wows and likes, it’s easy to forget what we their project ‘I see U.’ do and share is being collected and distributed by
© NASA
I see U : DIY Surveillance for the Masses …and the Makers 32 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques I see U : DIY Surveillance for the Masses …and the Makers 33 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques core77.com Teshia Treuhaft 5 août 2016 12 juin 2017 Daniel Oberhaus motherboard.vice.com wired.com Brandon Keim 21 avr. 2014 10 août 2015 James Temperton wired.uk
© NASA governments and corporations. Companies provide ‘free’ services in exchange for our data – what we eat, Brandon Keim how we feel, where we go, what we say, our photos, Help faces, families and friends, which are all monetized, profiled and shared. We have the right to know how, Scientists Record why, where and by whom. » - Christian Langballe, Partner at Great Works CPH One Day of Sound Still, I see U makes a very relevant point about demo- cratized surveillance. As Leichter puts it « surveillance is the business model of the internet » - an concept on Earth particularly chilling when you consider the World Economic Forum’s projection that by 2025 over 50% of internet traffic will come from home appliance and devices. Bryan Pijanowski wants to capture the The Great Works CPH team is taking pre-order requests and will look toward open sourcing the sounds of the world on a single day, and plans for the device as well as going into small batch he needs your help. production in the next months.
To learn more about their project and vision for the future of democratized and DIY surveillance check On Earth Day, April 22, Pijanowski hopes to enlist out their website. thousands of people in recording a few minutes of their everyday surroundings with his Soundscape Recorder smartphone app. All those sonic snippets could create an unprecedented soundtrack to life on Earth — and as they accumulate, year after year, scientists could use them to measure patterns and changes in our sonic environments. Pijanowski’s work typically takes him to places like the Sonoran desert Chris Hadfield's or old-growth rain forests in Borneo, where he analy- zes recordings to learn more about ecosystem health and dynamics : relationships between biodiversity new album was and forest canopy structure, or how natural commu- nities recover from wildfire.
© iseeu recorded in space
Chris Hadfield is getting “I’ve been on a campaign to record ready to launch the first al- as many ecosystems as possible,” bum recorded (partially) in said Pijanowski, a soundscape space. ecologist at Purdue University. Space Sessions : Songs from a Tin Can, “But there’s only so many places in will be released on 9 October, with the world I can be. I thought about some of the tracks on the 11-song col- how I could get more recordings lection recorded aboard the Internatio- nal Space Station. Ahead of the album's into a database, and it occurred release Hadfield has uploaded the to me : We have a couple billion official lyric video to one of the tracks, people on this planet with smart- Feet Up. phones !” And recording music in space isn't wit- hout its difficulties. Hadfield, who shot to internet fame with his cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity, said that zero gravity played havoc with everything from holding a guitar stable to singing properly. © NASA
I see U : DIY Surveillance for the Masses …and the Makers 34 Quand la Lune servait à espionner les Soviétiques Help Scientists Record One Day of Sound on Earth 35 Chris Hadfield’s new album was recorded in space wired.com Brandon Keim 21 avr. 2014 10 août 2015 James Temperton wired.uk ------
Just recently over the past few months, I have been noticing in the early am hours (1-2am and 5-7am) the hum sound that you are talking about. I wasn’t sure what it was until I found your website information and map. I had heard of the hum..and was suspicious of govern- ment mind control. Your map helped me to recognize that our area is involved also. If you use foam ear plugs, will you still be affected by the hum..and should we unplug everything when not in use?? The Soundscape Recorder app in action. I read something about microwaves being very conducive to short waves and creating "The producer who was helping me, the hum sound. With the Global Soundscape project and its Sounds- Paul Mills, said : 'Your guitar playing is a cape Recorder app, now available for iOS and Android The hum was a form of waves that affected little messy.' I said, yeah, you come up devices, the emphasis is on cities and towns and su- a person during their alpha states of sleep.. here and play guitar," Hadfield told The burbs, and our relationships to their sonic character. the mind was more subject to suggestions. Globe and Mail. He also explained that After making a recordings with the app, people are as- zero-gravity caused a build-up of fluid ked a short series of questions about what they heard in the head, leading to a swelling of the ______and how they feel. The recording is then uploaded tongue and vocal cords. to the Global Soundscape database. “If we make this part of the Earth Day culture, something everyone My wife and I both have hears a high goes out and does, we can begin to characterize those Recording for many of the album's S&K
“We should get a sense of whether ______and how we’re making this a noisier planet, which I think we’re Marty Gibson doing,” Pijanowski continued.
Now back on Earth, Hadfield has been working with producer Robbie Lackritz and a team of professional musicians to add polish to his space recordings. Tracks on the album include Big Smoke, Space Lullaby and his now famous ren- dition of Space Oddity.
Help Scientists Record One Day of Sound on Earth 36 Chris Hadfield’s new album was recorded in space ------
Listen Up : It’s back. Much fainter than last year. The 8 month respite was nice but oddly I read something about THE HUM in a enought I think I missed it during that time. book of mysteries that I have which What used to sound like the engine sputte- says the hum was first heard as far ring now sounds more like a pulse. back as 1725 (the diesel engine noise) I picture an inboard-engine on a boat I live close to the recently closed El Toro Ma- also the hum has also been heard in accompanied with the dull slapping of waves rine Base in California. places such as the North Pole and the Desert where there is no or not much against its hull. I use to think that what I was hearing was civilisation ! some kinda of communication of low fre- quency. I too have heard the hum and members ______of my family have also heard it, The base is now closed and the sounds are a strange huming like a car engine in still happening. the early hours of the morning. Dave S
I always though it was the Marine Base, yet Tacoma, WA USA - now no one is there. Wednesday, February 21, 2001 at ______16:20:44 (PST)
Its not painful in any way. Camping on the middle fork of the Gila River, Phillip Smith hum was steadily increasing on 17th, 18th, and 19th of September. Three of us camping Just strange and my wife and son hear
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------BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 27 oct. 2016 Sarah Sermondadaz sciencesetavenir.fr
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SPOOKY b e o u it ro ie p WORLD r a it : Loud since yesterday early am. nti-bru Continues today, increasing in loudness. Sarah Sermondadaz OF THE Le Muzo boitier ______NUMBERS Jerry Deming
Norman, OK USA - Monday, October 16, 2000 at 08:05:58 STATIONS (PDT)
Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine
This is the era of hyper-tech espionage, encrypted emails and mindboggling Une start-up américaine cryptography. But you can hear a very promet la commercialisation old-fashioned form of espionage on d’un boîtier capable de sup- shortwave radio. primer le bruit ambiant.
It is 13 :03 on a Tuesday in a cramped room with some Un engagement technolo- fairly advanced radio equipment. What is suddenly gique sans doute un peu trop heard on a shortwave receiving station is a 10-minute ambitieux. message in Morse code.There is a small community of aficionados who believe messages like this are a SILENCIO. Mettre ses voisins bruyants sur throwback to the era of Cold War espionage. They are mute, ou isoler une conversation privée des the mysterious "numbers stations". passants indiscrets en un coup de télécom- mande, grâce à un boîtier connecté : c’est la At the apex of the Cold War, radio lovers across the promesse de Muzo. Le projet, porté par une globe started to notice bizarre broadcasts on the start-up californienne, a lancé en juin 2016 airwaves. Starting with a weird melody or the sound of several beeps, these transmissions might be fol- une campagne de financement participatif lowed by the unnerving sound of a strange woman's sur le web, rapidement devenue virale : les voice counting in German or the creepy voice of a internautes ayant mis la main au porte-mon- child reciting letters in English. naie devraient recevoir les premiers mo- dèles d’ici avril 2017. Mais l’acoustique est Encountering these shortwave radio messages, many une science complexe, surtout lorsqu’on ne radio hams concluded that they were being used to connaît a priori pas la localisation précise send coded messages across extremely long distances. des sources de bruit. Un tel appareil peut-il Coming across one of them was a curious experience. tenir ses promesses, et si oui, comment ?
------The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 41 Le boitier anti-bruit : prouesse technologique ou gadget ? BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 27 oct. 2016 Sarah Sermondadaz sciencesetavenir.fr BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 27 oct. 2016 Sarah Sermondadaz sciencesetavenir.fr Gongs or Chimes or Chimes Gongs
Principe de la réduction de bruit active
Le principe de l’appareil est celui de la réduc- tion active du bruit. Le son étant une onde, il en effet possible de l’annuler en lui oppo- sant une seconde source sonore produisant une forme d’onde exactement inverse, qui va ainsi annuler la première. En bref : grâce à un haut-parleur, on réémet (après traitement électronique permettant de « renverser » la forme d’onde) le son perçu par un micro- phone, le tout en temps réel.
Onde sonore incidente perçue par le microphone (S1) : Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations TCP/1111 (Special Extended Numbers Stations TCP/1111 Version) The Conet Project of Shortwave : Recordings Swedish Rhapsody
En rouge, l’onde sonore réémise par le haut parleur, visant à annuler l’onde précédente (S2)
Un risque cependant : le moindre décalage entre la source initiale S1 et la source réémi- se S2 n’aboutira pas pas au silence, mais à des interférences très désagréables. D’au- tant plus que le bruit est multidirectionnel, et ne connaît que rarement une seule origine ! L a qualité du (ou des) proces- seur(s) de traitement sonore, ainsi que le nombre de microphone et leur répartition spatiale est alors primordiale. C’est pour cela qu’aujourd’hui, l’anti-bruit se retrouve surtout dans des casques audio actifs ou dans des applications industrielles où les données du problème sont précisément connue. Le premier brevet déposé quant au contrôle actif du son, remontant à 1934, expliquait ainsi comment limiter le bruit des écoulement de tuyauterie.
Speech/Morse generator
The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 42 Le boitier anti-bruit : prouesse technologique ou gadget ? The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 43 Le boitier anti-bruit : prouesse technologique ou gadget ? BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 27 oct. 2016 Sarah Sermondadaz sciencesetavenir.fr BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 27 oct. 2016 Sarah Sermondadaz sciencesetavenir.fr
Le boîtier connecté Muzo se baserait donc Why might the numbers stations have Ce projet-ci, plus précautionneux, annonce sur ce principe pour faire la chasse aux un prototype pour 2017 (et non pas un pro- bruits. Mais selon quelles technologies ? Dur been used ? duit fini entièrement standardisé comme l’a de le savoir sans avoir pu expérimenter avec fait Muzo). On est bien loin de l’effet d’an- l’objet. »Vu la faible taille de l’appareil, il est "This system is completely secure because the nonce de Muzo sur les réseaux … Victime probable que la mise en oeuvre du principe messages can't be tracked, the recipient could be de son succès, Celestial Tribe, start-up à anti-bruit souffre d’imprécision, même si anywhere," says Akin Fernandez, the creator of the l’origine du produit, a d’ailleurs été amenée on doit bien pouvoir réaliser une analyse Conet Project - a comprehensive archive of the pheno- à préciser en juillet qu’il « leur était impos- statistique des bruits de fond », extrapole menon of numbers stations. "It is easy. You just send sible de fournir un silence absolu dans un un acousticien du bâtiment interrogé par the spies to a country and get them to buy a radio. environnement ouvert », et de préciser que Sciences et Avenir. Sur un fil Reddit dédié They know where to tune and when," he says. « la bulle de silence montrée dans la vidéo aux arnaques du financement participatif, n’est qu’une illustration de la fonction de les internautes, eux-aussi, spéculent avec masquage du son » scepticisme. En septembre 2016, le projet avait déjà Beaucoup de bruit pour rien ? recueilli plus de 1,5 millions de dollars de financement. À quoi peuvent s’attendre les Radio enthusiasts gave them colourful names like the Autre écueil : pour être totalement efficace, © Akin Fernandez internautes ayant mis la main au porte-mon- "Nancy Adam Susan", "The Lincolnshire Poacher," la technologie devrait embarquer plusieurs naie ? Certainement à une atténuation de "The Swedish Rhapsody" or "The Gong Station." unités dotées de microphones à répartir sur bruit légère, les autres fonctions de l’ap- The Lincolnshire Poacher was so named because chaque mur de la pièce au lieu d’un boîtier pareil comme la génération de sonorités of two bars from an English folk song of that name unique. les vibrations sonores peuvent en continues (vent, écoulement, crépitement being used as an "interval signal". effet se transmettre par toutes les surfaces d’un feu…) pouvant aussi contribuer à at- fermant une pièce. Whisper, autre projet ténuer les perceptions désagréables. Mais Times have changed and technology has evolved, (néo-zélandais cette fois-ci) du même type, pour la petite histoire, on rappellera qu’Amar but there's evidence that this old-fashioned see- également issu du financement participatif, Bose, créateur de l’entreprise d’électronique ming method of communication might still be used. se montre plus honnête en explicitant plus éponyme, a mis près de 15 ans et dépen- Shortwave numbers stations might seem low-tech but clairement sa technologie (qui ne fonctionne sé près de 50 millions de dollars avant de they probably remain the best option for transmitting Fernandez was fascinated by the mystery of numbers qu’en environnement fermé) sur sa page de stations. finaliser le développement du casque audio information to agents in the field, some espionage présentation, et en annonçant qu’il faudra à réduction de bruit active emblématique de experts suggest. sa marque. Et on rappellera aux internautes multiplier les boîtiers pour plus d’efficacité. "It was so weird I wanted to know more about them," qu’en pré-commandant ce type de produit he says. He put three years of his life aside in order to "Nobody has found a more convenient and expedient sur Kickstarter, c’est surtout au financement put together a coherent archive of these stations. way of communicating with an agent," says Rupert de la R&D d’un produit qu’ils contribuent, Allason, an author specialising in espionage issues "Once you hear them, it has an effect on you," he says. sans garanties que ce dernier corresponde and writing under the pen name Nigel West. "Their Unlike other aspects of the Cold War era, the numbers vraiment à leurs attentes au final. sole purpose is for intelligence agencies to commu- stations didn't leave a lasting impression on popular nicate with their agents in denied areas - a territory culture. "It is a dry subject until you listen to them," where it is difficult to use a consensual form of com- Fernandez says. munications," Allason says. "It is a way of communicating securely between the A former GCHQ officer, who does not wish to be -na Secret Intelligent Service and agents, and it is incom- med, whose duty was to intercept signals towards the prehensible," says Philip Davies, a politics and history UK and search for these numbers stations in the 1980s professor at the Brunel University in London. is also adamant that these were broadcasts to agents in the field or in residencies or directed to embassies. "I never expected to be talking
Efficacité des boîtiers Whisper selon la position de la about it 17 years after hearing it It was "one-way traffic" — source sonore (crédits : Noxcel Limited) for the first time - when the Conet the transmitters broadcast num- Project first started." bers to the recipient. The recipient did not reply.
Efficacité des boîtiers Whisper selon la position des sources sonores et l’architecture de la pièce (crédits : Noxcel Limited)
The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 44 Le boitier anti-bruit : prouesse technologique ou gadget ? The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 45 Le boitier anti-bruit : prouesse technologique ou gadget ? BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 27 oct. 2016 Sarah Sermondadaz sciencesetavenir.fr
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Most people have watched a spy film, but few have ever met someone from the intelligence community. So how close are real spies to the Bournes and the Bonds ? Peter Taylor looks at the world of the modern day secret agent.
© Léo de Fouan
The Magazine on spies
Revelations about the US National Security Agency's spying have provoked global outrage. But government snooping is nothing new, says Anthony Zurcher. People and nations spy, even on friends. But in the realm of international electronic espionage, the US wields a nuclear arsenal while the rest of the globe fights with guns, says Tara McKelvey.
The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 46 47 Le boitier anti-bruit : prouesse technologique ou gadget ? BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 24 mai 2017 Clémence Lesacq usbeketrica.com BBC News Magazine Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine 6 avr. 2014 24 mai 2017 Clémence Lesacq usbeketrica.com
But espionage was not the only explanation posited. Some people have even argued that the phenomenon was an elaborate prank. But the scale of the stations — multiple frequencies in different languages — makes that explanation seem far-fetched. Fernandez notes that any prankster would need to buy millions of pounds of radio transmitters. Qui sont ces
Despite the general veil of secrecy around espionage, the odd bit of corroborative evidence for the purpose entrepreneurs of numbers stations has leaked out. "The purpose of numbers stations has been guessed at first by ano- nymous leaks, stories of people being arrested with qui veulent nous radios and 'one-time pads' and other scattered pieces of evidence, as well as some privately published books and magazines" says Fernandez. The one-time pads faire parler avec enabled a form of code that would have been uncrac- kable to anyone listening in. des objets In 1989, a Czech spy was arrested in the UK because Car le marché du vocal, en plein essor de his equipment was faulty and it radiated into other l’autre côté de l’Atlantique avec des acteurs people's flats. He was unlucky. "When the Ceausescu ? "The danger with a computer is comme Apple, Google, Microsoft ou encore Amazon, n’est qu’à ses premiers pas par- regime collapsed, there was a cessation of broadcasts that if you get caught, the data on from Romania," the former GCHQ officer says. tout ailleurs. En France, l’arrivée d’Alexa, Experts are confident that numbers stations do still it is still retrievable. Whereas with l’assistant vocal d’Amazon enfin traduite en langue de Molière, n’est prévue qu’en fin exist, even if there are fewer of them. Computers a one-time pad, you can eat it or almost always leave traces, whereas a paper and a pen d’année, en même temps que le premier are easy to destroy. flush it down the toilet," he says. assistant virtuel européen : Djingo de Orange Smartly.ai développe une solution pour et Deutsche Telekom. Deux cadeaux sous créer rapidement des applications vocales le sapin qu’attendent Hicham et son équipe à destination d’objets connectés. Convain- avec fébrilité. « Aujourd’hui, nous sommes cue que le conversationnel est l’interface encore en avance sur notre marché. Depuis In the 2010 raids on a Russian spy ring in the US, homme-machine de demain, la start-up cinq ans, alors que le vocal est notre cœur a cependant dû élargir son commerce au court papers alleged that they had used "coded radio transmissions and encrypted data", a hint that they de métier, nous réalisons l’essentiel de notre chatbot, en attendant la maturité d’un mar- chiffre d’affaires grâce à d’autres activités, "In the same way spy tricks such as ché encore très américain… might have received their orders via shortwave nu- mbers stations. Despite all the clues, no government comme le chatbot - sur Messenger, Twitter, pretending to feed ducks around has ever officially admitted or denied using numbers boîtes mail - depuis début 2016. » Ultime a pond might still exist, numbers stations, nor have intelligence agencies. bouée en attendant la marée (et signe qu’ils « On est vraiment bien ici au WAI* mais tu ne sont pas les seuls à croire en leur mar- stations still exist too," verras, on est un peu au milieu du chemin, ché) : la boîte a réussi une levée de fonds de says Al Bolton, a radio amateur. entre deux étages… » 400 000 euros à l’été 2016**. "It is an old-fashioned means "Once The Conet Project was Sérendipité of communication but you have Massif et aussi large d’épaules que sa voix released, some spy agencies ad- to think of security." est douce, Hicham Tahiri, CEO de la start-up mitted that they were, 'not for pu- spécialisée dans les applis vocales Smart- Les balbutiements de Smartly.ai, on les doit ly.ai, n’est pas de ces entrepreneurs qui blic consumption'. This is as near au 4 octobre 2011. Ce jour-là, Apple peut se s’écoutent parler. Alors, quand on lui fait to an admission that we have been rengorger : l’entreprise dévoile à la presse remarquer l’ironie de cette géographie, il le premier assistant vocal de masse, Siri, et sourit franchement et s’amuse du sens able to obtain," Fernandez says. l’iPhone associé, le 4S. Le sang de Hicham, caché de ses mots. Il faut dire que depuis ingénieur en application vocale chez Parrot sa création il y a bientôt cinq ans, Smartly.ai pendant cinq ans, ne fait qu’un tour : l’heure fait partie de ces start-ups entre deux eaux. est venue, enfin, de démocratiser cette Pile la mer monte et submerge tout sous son Enthusiasts might be fighting sceptics about the technologie. « Jusqu’ici le vocal était un écume ; face la lune attire les vagues à elle stations' real purpose, but what is certain is that they domaine d’experts et c’était extrêmement et laisse l’entreprise croître sous les étoiles. aren't a pure product of imagination. If you don't frustrant de ne pas pouvoir apporter plus Équilibre précaire pour entreprise (un peu believe so "you could always get yourself a short wave de vocal dans la vie des gens. Car au fond, trop) pionnière. radio, wait till the night time and then start scanning la parole est le moyen le plus naturel que for them", Fernandez says. nous avons de communiquer.
And then listen and wonder. ** Levée de fonds auprès de Fa Dièse, BNP Paribas Développement et JMYX Holding.
The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 48 Ces entrepreneurs qui veulent nous faire parler avec des objets ? The spooky world of the « numbers stations » 49 Ces entrepreneurs qui veulent nous faire parler avec des objets ? slate.fr Andréa Fradin 19 nov. 2014 24 mai 2017 Clémence Lesacq usbeketrica.com slate.fr Andréa Fradin 19 nov. 2014 24 mai 2017 Clémence Lesacq usbeketrica.com
L’interface homme-machine DES CARTES Tout enfant parle avant d’écrire. » Dans WideNoise Map de demain sa roue, Hicham entraînera Karim Lourci, consultant en transformation digitale, avec Pris à part, les deux cofondateurs ont un POUR MESURER qui il a usé les poches arrière de ses jeans même motto : le vocal est la prochaine sur les bancs de la prépa scientifique de interface entre l’homme et la machine. Cergy. Hicham : « ça va donner accès au numé- LA POLLUTION rique à des gens qui n’y avaient pas accès : L’idée d’alors est simple : le duo d’entre- les personnes âgées, ceux qui ne savent preneurs veut faciliter la création d’applis pas lire ou écrire, les malvoyants… Le vocal Repéré par SONORE vocales sur Siri, et ainsi enrichir l’assistant c’est très facile : il suffit de savoir parler. » vocal d’Apple. « Notre solution aurait permis, Et la croyance, inébranlable, anime la petite Andréa Fra- par exemple, de créer en quelques minutes équipe de désormais huit convaincus qui se une appli vocale pour un journal sportif, serrent sur des tables blanches au milieu din qui donnerait des résultats, des pronostics des autres colocataires du WAI*. Le bruit est une question sérieuse. Il serait même et des commentaires pertinents à travers identifié par les Européens comme l’un des « pro- Siri. » Dans l’attente - qui sera vaine - de blèmes environnementaux majeurs », explique l’ouverture de Siri aux développeurs, Hi- l’agence européenne en charge de l’environne- cham et Karim déposent les statuts de leur ment, qui compte dans ses rangs un organisme, le entreprise à l’été 2012 et travaillent sur des bien-nommé NOISE, précisément chargé de relever projets avec le salon Futur en Seine 2013, les données sur la pollution sonore sur le continent. Seb ou encore l’équipe innovation de Peu- Ce dernier les présente sous la forme d’une carte, geot, pour qui ils conçoivent l’interface mais il est loin d’être le seul. Comme l’indique le blog vocale d’un concept-car. « C’est lors de Google maps mania, de nombreux services tentent de cette mission que nous avons créé notre mesurer et de représenter la pollution sonore dans le outil pour développer facilement des appli- monde. À l’aide d’outils de cartographie tels que Goo- cations vocales. Comme Peugeot souhaitait gle Maps, ces plateformes s’appuient le plus souvent pouvoir faire évoluer par eux-mêmes les sur des données récoltées collectivement. Pour en « use cases » de leur appli, on a été obligé de faciliter la collecte, ils existent également parfois sous créer cet outil facilitateur. À la fin, Peugeot forme d’application mobile : c’est par exemple le cas nous a demandé s’il pouvait l’acheter ! » de WideNoise Map ou de AirCasting. Parfaite sérendipité.
Chacune de ces apps représentent l’intensité de la En s’abonnant à la plateforme Smartly. pollution sonore selon une progression de couleurs (le ai, des développeurs ou des entreprises plus souvent du vert au rouge), et AirCasting permet peuvent donc créer eux-mêmes leurs solu- notamment d’enregistrer directement le son, pour tions vocales l’annoter sur une carte, à partir de son téléphone. WideNoise Map compte parfois plusieurs milliers de Hicham et Karim comprennent qu’ils contributions par ville : Paris en totalise près de 2.000, tiennent là leur futur produit phare. Plus qu’à pour un volume de décibels moyen de 60 (quelque l’améliorer et à le rendre accessible à tous. part entre le bruit d’une voiture en ville et le ronron- “Finalement, nous n’avons pas pu le com- nement d’un ordinateur). mercialiser pour Siri, mais nous sommes devenus compatibles avec Alexa d’Ama- zon et Google Assistant.” En s’abonnant à À noter que rares sont celles qui dépasse la plateforme Smartly.ai, des développeurs ce volume sonore. ou des entreprises - quasi-uniquement aux USA - peuvent donc créer eux-mêmes, sans difficulté et très rapidement, leurs solutions Une autre plateforme, NoiseWatch, croise « des vocales. Une version gratuite, avec 5 000 sources scientifiques officielles et des observations conversations offertes et à la portée du pre- crowdsourcées », indique Google maps mania. Cette mier internaute venu, est même disponible. dernière semble avoir une certaine popularité, puisque des sites tels que El Correo ou ABC de Sevilla, mentionnent des initiatives citoyennes visant à mesurer les bruits des villes espagnoles en s’appuyant précisément sur ce site, qui, là encore, dispose d’une version mobile.
Moins anxiogènes, d’autres initiatives cherchent WideNoise Map WideNoise également à cartographier le monde via le prisme de nos cinq sens, mais dans une optique plus poétique que pratique.
*WAI : We Are Innovation, l’incubateur de BNP Paribas à Paris.
Des cartes pour mesurer la pollution sonore 50 Ces entrepreneurs qui veulent nous faire parler avec des objets ? Des cartes pour mesurer la pollution sonore 51 Ces entrepreneurs qui veulent nous faire parler avec des objets ? slate.fr Andréa Fradin 19 nov. 2014 24 mai 2017 Clémence Lesacq usbeketrica.com slate.fr Andréa Fradin 19 nov. 2014 24 mai 2017 Clémence Lesacq usbeketrica.com
Ainsi, nous vous parlions il y a quelques Réussir à faire passer le vocal dans les usages de tout un chacun, c’est le défi que semaines de ces scientifiques qui dressent les deux trentenaires veulent relever. Pour le la carte sonore de la Terre, entre ses bruits reste, prêts depuis cinq ans pour l’ouverture du marché, Hicham et Karim voient la fin de forêts, de vagues, mais aussi ses varia- de l’année 2017 et l’arrivée en France d’Ale- tions urbaines. xa et Djingo comme la fin d’un long tunnel. « On ne peut que croire à notre marché : le nombre d’applis vocales sur Alexa ex- plose, on a allègrement dépassé les 10 000, avec des courbes comparables à celles du mobile. Bientôt, toutes les applis auront leur pendant vocal. Y avoir cru avant l’heure va L’équipe de la start-up Smartly.ai se transformer en chance : notre solution est aujourd’hui la plus aboutie. » En plein recrutement, pour atteindre 15 à 20 salariés d’ici la fin de l’année, Smartly.ai a déjà fait le pari que la pièce lancée en l’air tombera face vers le haut.
« Ne pas aller vers le vocal, c’est passer à côté de quelque chose d’énorme : le fait d’humaniser la technologie en la rendant conversationnelle. » Mais aux conseils avisés et à l’humour de K2000, cité dans les pa- roles enthousiastes de Hicham, on oppose les voix de CARL500 et de Samantha de Her. « C’est vrai que le conversationnel a aussi des côtés flippants » nous concède
WideNoise Map - Paris WideNoise Hicham et Karim, un brin taquins. « Mais on Map - Paris WideNoise peut toujours éteindre l’objet ou désactiver l’assistant personnel ! » tente de rassurer l’ingénieur. Et le sujet de la vie privée et des micros intégrés ? Le duo y oppose des constructeurs respectueux de la protection des données et une réflexion sur des com- portements déjà acquis.
« Aujourd’hui sur Facebook, on est content de retrouver ses amis et d’être au courant des dernières actualités, tout en sachant qu’on lâche des informations privées sur soi, des photos… Si on veut profiter des apports de la technologie, c’est déjà un compromis accepté. » Karim abonde : « en France, on est assez tatillon sur le sujet et les affaires comme celle des écoutes de la NSA n’ont pas arrangé les choses. Mais pour moi c’est clair : les bénéfices sont supérieurs aux doutes. » « Bientôt, toutes les applis auront leur pendant vocal »
Des cartes pour mesurer la pollution sonore 52 Ces entrepreneurs qui veulent nous faire parler avec des objets ? Des cartes pour mesurer la pollution sonore 53 Ces entrepreneurs qui veulent nous faire parler avec des objets ? 14 fev. 2010 Low Frequency Active Sonar slate.fr Andréa Fradin 19 nov. 2014 14 fev. 2010 Low Frequency Active Sonar
Crâne Bourse antérieure Lèvres phoniques Sonar et Bourse postérieure pollution
Organe émetteur du son chez le dauphin. dauphin. le son chez du Organe émetteur Futura-Sciences© DR, traduction sonore de la mer : quel danger pour les
Aperçu des cartes d’AirCasting. Plus la zone est rouge, plus le volume sonore est élevé. cétacés ? D’autres encore s’amusent à représenter les odeurs des grandes villes du monde : c’est le cas de Kate McLean, une Britannique qui se définit comme « artiste et designer multisensorielle », écrivions-nous fin septembre, et qui a déjà cartographié Amsterdam, ou Edimbourg.
Pour les cétacés, le milieu marin est un monde de sons, principal moyen de percep- © Sensory Maps tion et de communication, faute de lumière. Depuis la conquête du milieu marin, le bruit n’a cessé d’y augmenter.
Le son se propage particulièrement bien sous l’eau, l’atténuation due à l’absorption et à la diffusion est beaucoup plus faible que pour les ondes électromagnétiques. Les ondes acoustiques constituent le meilleur
54 Sonar et pollution sonore de la mer : quel danger pour les cétacés ? Des cartes pour mesurer la pollution sonore 55 Sonar et pollution sonore de la mer : quel danger pour les cétacés ? slate.fr Andréa Fradin 19 nov. 2014 14 fev. 2010 Low Frequency Active Sonar Passeur de sciences Pierre Barthélémy 22 fev. 2015 14 fev. 2010 Low Frequency Active Sonar
moyen de transmission sous l’eau. Les Le problème des sonars longueurs d’onde couramment rencontrées dans l’océan s’étendent du millimètre à CE Quelques exemples d’échouages constatés environ 50 mètres. La vitesse du son dans suite à des essais de LFAS : l’eau étant approximativement égale à 1500 m.s-1, cela correspond à des fréquences • Otan, Méditerranée 1996, 150 dB, 12 ba- de 30 Hz à 1,5 Mhz (la limite audible pour leines à bec de Cuvier ; l’Homme est de 20 Khz). Ce sonar envoie des sons de 235 dB à 100-500 hertz qui se • US Navy, côtes californiennes, 1997, 3 propagent à des centaines de kilomètres. PAPILLON baleines et 1 cachalot dans la zone ; Par comparaison, une baleine émet des • US Navy, Bahamas, 2000, 2,8 à 3,5 kHz, sons de 185 dB et l’oreille humaine supporte QUI 235 dB, 17 cétacés. un son de 160 dB maximum.
© Herminio Nieves SE JOUE DU Cette dernière fois, un scientifique, Ken Balcomb, de l’Observatoire marin des Bahamas, récupère la tête de deux indivi- dus et constate une altération du système d’écholocation. Il a montré que la mort des baleines était due à ce phénomène qui a déchiré les tissus situés à proximité des SONAR oreilles et du cerveau. Différents tests effectués par l’US Navy, au large d’Hawaï, montrent une concentration de requins marteaux, une désertion des baleines et la séparation de plusieurs jeunes de leur mère. Mais la Navy est juge et par- tie dans cette histoire et finance (presque) Le trafic maritime a engendré une pollution sonore pour toute la recherche sur les cétacés aux les espèces marines. États-Unis, et ne se gêne pas pour imposer le silence à ses chercheurs en cas de be- soin (devoir de réserve !) Il n’y a pas que l’US Navy, l’Otan fait des essais en Méditerranée, mais les États-Unis Les travaux de Johnson semblent indi- veulent déployer le système LFAS sur 80 quer que les variations de fréquence et de % des océans : 4 bateaux suffiraient… Une niveaux ne sont pas suffisantes pour provo- polémique est ouverte sur le LFAS (Low quer des lésions, certaines baleines bleues Frequency Active Sonar) construit par l’US ou à bosse émettent des sons équivalents Navy. Associations et scientifiques militent à ceux du sonar à basse fréquence mais un en défaveur de cet outil qui provoque des son constant qui engendre un effet de réso- échouages de cétacés : cette fois-ci c’est nance… et cela dépend aussi des espèces certain ! sans doute…
L’écholocation des cétacés Patrick Miller, de l’Institut océanographique DES de Woods Hole dans le Massachussets, et son équipe ont coopéré avec l’US Navy Les mammifères marins utilisent l’écholo- (matériel) pour mener leurs recherches. Ils cation pour le contact, la surveillance des ont suivi seize mâles, sans sonar, puis avec. jeunes, le déplacement et la nourriture. Le Pendant la saison de reproduction, seuls cachalot chasse le calmar à 1.000 mètres les mâles « chantent ». Le comportement de profondeur. Le spectre audible du dau- des baleines a été transformé quand ils phin s’étend de 100 Hz à 150 kHz (Homme CHAUVES- étaient exposés au sonar LFA (basse fré- 20Hz à 20kHz). L’écholocation implique quence). Ces sonars utilisés pour repérer l’émission de sons de forte puissance et des sous-marins peuvent produire un son la réception d’échos très affaiblis. Ce qui semblable à celui d’une explosion quand ils nécessite un appareil auditif sensible pro- touchent les fonds marins. Or l’altération du tégé lors de l’émission, comme avec les « chant » peut altérer la démographie. chauves-souris. Les cétacés ont des sinus aériens et des tissus mous autour de leur SOURIS tympan fixé par des ligaments amortisseurs. Pierre Barthélémy
Des cartes pour mesurer la pollution sonore 56 Sonar et pollution sonore de la mer : quel danger pour les cétacés ? Ce papillon qui se joue du sonar des chauves-souris 57 Sonar et pollution sonore de la mer : quel danger pour les cétacés ? Passeur de sciences Pierre Barthélémy 22 fev. 2015 14 fev. 2010 Low Frequency Active Sonar Passeur de sciences Pierre Barthélémy 22 fev. 2015
Cela dure depuis plus de 60 millions d’années. Depuis Il faut donc s’inquiéter du bruit que fait tout ce temps, chauves-souris d’un côté, papillons de l’Homme dans les eaux sous-marines. Sé- nuit de l’autre, sont engagés dans une course aux ar- curité nationale et respect de l’environne- mements, les premières pour perfectionner les outils ment : est-ce conciliable ? Mais à quel prix ? © Chris Palmer. Papillon lune. acoustiques de détection de leurs proies volantes, les La Navy a reconnu les faits, mais après le 11 seconds pour se soustraire aux attaques de leurs pré- septembre, difficile de remettre en cause la dateurs. La majorité des chiroptères se servent ainsi sécurité nationale ! d’un sonar à ultrasons pour localiser les insectes dans l’obscurité. Côté papillons de nuit, près de la moitié On recense de nombreux problèmes des quelque 140 000 espèces connues ont dévelop- concernant les cétacés, même si on ne peut pé un système auditif leur permettant de détecter pas encore prouver que les sonars en sont l’usage dudit sonar. On a également découvert en 2013 que plusieurs lépidoptères produisaient eux-mêmes totalement responsables : dégâts physiques, des ultrasons pour « brouiller » les ondes exploitées stress, sensibilité aux maladies, perte ou at- par les chauves-souris. Il n’en reste pas moins qu’un teinte, temporaire ou permanente, de l’ouïe grand nombre d’espèces de papillons semblent ne pas (Balcomb), mort par atteinte des tissus et avoir de défense contre les mammifères volants. des organes, avec hémorragies internes (poumons, oreilles internes), mort directe Parmi elles on trouve notamment certains membres à proximité immédiate de la source, pertur- bations du comportement, problèmes de de la famille des saturnidés, qui intriguent les Les résultats sont plutôt éloquents. Lorsque les communication, changements de la route de biologistes en raison des très grands appendices papillons lunes avaient conservé leurs appendices, qui prolongent leurs ailes inférieures, un peu comme migration (US Navy), changement des vocali- seulement 34,5 % d’entre eux étaient mangés. des queues. Dès 1903, l’entomologiste américain sations chez les baleines bleues et Dans un certain nombre de cas, les chauves-souris Archibald Weeks s’interrogeait sur la fonction des les rorquals communs (US Navy). parvenaient à leur arracher ces extrémités d’ailes « extensions » du papillon lune (en photo ci-dessus) mais les insectes restaient en vie sans être trop abî- et supputait qu’elles pouvaient sauver la vie de son Les bancs de poissons sont aussi concer- més. En revanche, lorsque les lépidoptères avaient été porteur : en étant prises pour cibles, ces parties de l’ai- nés, voir à ce sujet un site (en allemand privés de leurs « queues », le taux de réussite de leurs le pouvaient être aisément sacrifiées sans que la vie et en anglais, mais bien fait) http ://www. prédateurs grimpait en flèche et passait à 81,2 % (et de l’insecte soit compromise, un peu comme certains sounds-of-seas.com il montait à 97,5 % avec les pyrales du groupe témoin). lézards arborent un bout de queue vivement coloré Les prises de vue montrent que, dans le premier cas, pour dévier les attaques de leur prédateurs vers un Il y a aussi le transport maritime, les indus- les chiroptères ont tendance à passer sous le papillon morceau non crucial et détachable de leur anatomie. tries minières, la thermométrie acoustique (voir la vidéo ci-dessous, extraite de l’étude) tandis Dans une étude publiée le 17 février dans les Procee- et les pêcheries. Une coopération internatio- que dans le second cas, ils visent davantage le milieu dings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), nale et des normes devraient être dévelop- du corps de l’insecte. une équipe américaine est allée plus loin encore en pées pour lutter contre la pollution sonore émettant l’hypothèse que les appendices flexibles dans les océans. Notre développement doit Les appendices du papillon lune semblent donc réel- et ondulants du papillon lune modifient la signature se réaliser avec la nature. lement servir de parade anti-sonar même si les cher- acoustique de ce dernier et, en lui donnant un aspect cheurs ne sont pas parvenus à déterminer exactement allongé sur le sonar des chauves-souris, détournent la manière dont ils agissent sur l’outil de détection les attaques de celles-ci vers… le vide. des chauves-souris : ne font-ils que déporter la cible vers le bas ou bien créent-ils l’illusion de cibles multi- Pour mettre cette hypothèse du leurre à l’épreuve, ples à la manière des leurres employés contre les mis- ces chercheurs ont monté une expérience de préda- siles anti-aériens ? L’étude n’a pas permis de trancher. tion relativement basique, que d’aucuns pourront Ses auteurs ont en revanche réussi à déterminer trouver cruelle : ils ont opposé plusieurs dizaines que l’apparition de ces extensions s’est produite de ces papillons aux ailes émeraude à huit grandes de manière indépendante chez plusieurs espèces chauves-souris brunes (Eptesicus fuscus). La moitié de papillons de nuit, comme par exemplel’africain des lépidoptères avaient leurs appendices coupés — Eudaemonia troglophylla. Les chercheurs ont égale- ce qui ne les handicape pas et modifie peu les caracté- ment la certitude que l’évolution de la forme de l’aile ristiques de leur vol — tandis que les autres individus du papillon lune s’est faite sous la pression de la pré- étaient intacts. Des pyrales, papillons sans appen- dation. En effet, ces appendices ne jouent aucun rôle dices, étaient utilisées comme groupe de contrôle. dans la reproduction car il n’y a pas de parade nup- L’idée des chercheurs était de filmer sous des angles tiale chez cet insecte, la femelle s’accouplant littérale- différents, grâce à trois caméras infra-rouge, les tenta- ment avec le premier venu. De même, les appendices tives de prédation, de déterminer où les chiroptères ne procurent aucun avantage pour le vol. Il se pourrait portaient leurs attaques et de calculer leur pourcen- même qu’en raison de leur inertie, ils réduisent tage de réussite suivant la silhouette de leurs proies. la fréquence des battements d’ailes. Un handicap Pour que les papillons ne se sauvent pas et restent qui serait plus que compensé par la protection contre dans le champ des caméras, ils étaient reliés au pla- les chauves-souris qu’ils apportent. fond par un filin.
Ce papillon qui se joue du sonar des chauves-souris 58 Sonar et pollution sonore de la mer : quel danger pour les cétacés ? Ce papillon qui se joue du sonar des chauves-souris 59 ------
Its like only I can hear it. !!! Sometimes it turns into a small pinging Am to be a grandmother any day, and worry sound, sometimes like a the hum of a truck about the hum upon our newborns, and faith in the distance. or not I find the HUM totally unacceptable. Its annoying like heck and it makes me mad Babies folks .. little tiny babies.. when I try and listen to my music… it changes tones and volume when different music is played. ______Its not reoccuring it comes and goes, sometimes I can trigger it myself. janicejoplin
I now think of that word jumble as a spell.
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FaiaSutoomu Omaha , NE USA - Wednesday, May 23, 2001 at 07:34:08 (PDT) I’m ready to move, if I knew where I could move away from the « Hum ».
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Jerry Deming
The hum is awful here tonight.
7 II L It has been strong yesterday and today. Very heavy vibration! I called my power company today.
Sound not real loud, but composed of If no let up, I will call the military and lower frequencies than usual. others who need to know about this. Lots of pressure in ears. Incredible! The energy with it is strong enough to Still in awe of this thing. stall certain electrical powered things.
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Janice Wright
Carbondale, IL USA - OK USA - Friday, March 29, 2002 at 20:31:52 (PST) Monday, May 20, 2002 at 19:28:20 (PDT)
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Can anyone tell me some sort of antidote that will allow some peace at all ? Please!
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Heard it for first time last week. Jerry Cummings
I turned off every electrical device in my home. And still heard the noise. Couldn’t go back to sleep. Kept me up for 40 minutes. I work in a call centre and wear a head- set all day.. Maybe that’s the cause.
Anyways.. I hope I don’t hear it tonight. And yeah..
Everybody I tell this too think I’m crazy.
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Erik
Gatineau, PQ Canada - Friday, March 17, 2006 at 13:39:34 (PST)
Over here it seems to get louder round about a full moon has any one else observed that ?
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DR BARNES
------wired.com Victoria Woollaston 15 juin 2016 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com wired.com Victoria Woollaston 15 juin 2016
The Cats use Sound the laws NowhereThat of physics Comes to hunt From
their prey Julie Beck
Victoria Woollaston
Millions of people have a rin- ging in their ears — a condi- tion called tinnitus — often By using causal logic with a keen sense of with no discernible cause. hearing, cats can predict where prey hides
When hunting for prey, cats have been found to not only understand the principle of cause and effect, they also use certain elements of physics.
By combining these abilities with their keen sense of hearing, felines can predict where possible prey hides, and how to hunt it down.
Previous work, conducted by researchers from Kyoto University in Japan, found cats predict the presence of invisible objects based on what they hear. In the present study, the researchers wanted to find out if cats use a causal rule to infer if a box contains an object, based on whether it is shaken along with a sound or not. The team also wanted to establish if cats expect an object to fall out or not, once the container is turned over. Melanie West, 63, has had a ringing in her A total of 30 domestic cats were recorded while a ears as long as she can remember. When researcher shook a container. In some cases this she was a kid in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was action was accompanied by a rattling sound. In others a high-pitched sound in both ears that her it wasn’t, to simulate the box was empty. After the doctors did not believe existed. “I would go shaking phase, the container was turned over and an from doctor to doctor explaining, ‘I hear this object either dropped out, or it didn’t. sound inside of my head, and it won’t let me sleep.’ I was having a hard time concentra- Two experimental conditions were in line with phy- ting, and they would tell me that I don’t have sical laws - the shaking was accompanied by a sound it,” she says. When West was stressed, or and an object fell out of the container. The other two hadn’t had enough sleep, it would get worse conditions were incongruent to the laws of physics. and her grades would plummet. Once, the Either a rattling sound was followed by no object noise made her so tense that she broke a dropping out of the container or the shaking pro- hairbrush she was holding. duced no sound but an object still fell out.
Cats use the laws of physics to hunt their prey 64 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere Cats use the laws of physics to hunt their prey 65 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com wired.com Victoria Woollaston 15 juin 2016 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com
The cats looked longer at the containers which were The trouble with tinnitus — the medical shaken together with a noise. This suggests they used term for ear-ringing — is there’s really no a physical law to infer the existence, or absence, good way to measure a sound that only the of objects based on whether they heard a rattle or not. patient can hear. Interest in and recognition This helped them predict whether an object would of the condition has improved in the past appear once the container was overturned. couple decades, partly thanks to advances in brain science. But when West, now The animals also stared longer at containers in incon- the CEO and chair of the board of directors gruent conditions as if they « realised that such condi- of the American Tinnitus Association (ATA), tions did not fit into their grasp of causal logic, » said was young, it was less understood. the researchers. « Cats use a causal-logical understan- ding of noise or sounds to predict the appearance of invisible objects,” explained lead author Saho Takagi. Over time, she adapted. She read a lot of psychology books and says those helped. Researchers suggest a cats’ surroundings influence She started to manage a pretty good quality their ability to find out information based on what of life, until she got in a car accident in 2008. they hear and their natural hunting style may favour Another vehicle rear-ended hers at about the ability to listen for sounds. Takagi added that 55 miles per hour, and something about this hunting cats often need to infer the location or the event changed the sound considerably. distance of their prey from sounds alone because they stake out places of poor visibility. It got louder — about twice as loud, she says — and fuller, and made more of a “shh” Further research is needed to find out exactly what sound. The noise is now louder in her right cats see in their mind’s eye when they pick up noises, ear than her left, “so they’re not the same, and if they can extract information such as quantity and even that becomes a little irritating,” and size from what they hear. The findings are publi- she says. After the accident, “I couldn’t shed in Springer’s journal Animal Cognition. sleep, I didn’t want to eat. It just affects eve- ry single part of your life.”
Talking with doctors, once again, was frus- trating. She describes visiting otolaryngolo- gists — ear, nose, and throat doctors — and “literally, I sat in the parking lot, crying, because they would simply look at you and say ‘There’s nothing we can do for you,’” she says. “‘Go home and learn to live with it’ — I have heard that so many times in my life.”
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Tinnitus is often described as ringing in the ears, but that’s not the only sound that qua- lifies. It can also present as buzzing, roaring, clicking, hissing, or a noise like crickets, among other things. A type known as pulsa- tile tinnitus is rhythmic, often keeping time with the person’s heartbeat. © Léo de Fouan Most people will probably experience tem- porary tinnitus at some point in their lives after exposure to loud noises — after a concert, say. But it will likely go away. Estimating how many people have tinnitus, and the severity of each case, is difficult, because different studies have defined it in different ways. According to one measure, 50 million Americans — or 25 percent of the population — experienced any tinnitus in the past year, while 16 million, or 8 percent, experienced it “frequently.” The ATA reports
66 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere Cats use the laws of physics to hunt their prey 67 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere wired.com Duncan Geere 8 fev. 2012 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com New Scientist Dr Joseph Hanlon 8 nov. 1978 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com The Sonic Notify app The Sonic
that 20 million people have “burdensome” Labs told Evolver.fm. « With Sonic, we can unlock Descriptions of tinnitus date all the way back tinnitus and 2 million have “extreme and anything that your iPhone or Android can do, as long to ancient civilizations. An Egyptian sheet debilitating” cases. The National Institute as the SonicNotify SDK is built into an app that’s run- of papyrus from the 16th century B.C. des- on Deafness and Other Communication ning in the background on your phone. » cribes “bewitched ear,” and the Assyrians Disorders (NIDCD) asks people if they’ve wrote on clay tablets around 700 B.C. about had tinnitus that lasted for more than five At Fashion Week, buyers and journalists with the app three different kinds of tinnitus : “whispe- minutes in the past year — 10 percent installed will be able to access images of the models as ring,” “speaking,” and “singing” of the ears. (25 million) have. “We’re interested in so- they step onto the catwalk, so they can see the outfits up close too. mething that pushes the threshold so that We now know, though, that it’s actually they noticed it for a while,” says Howard the brain that’s singing, usually. A study from If you want to give it a try, you can do so right now Hoffman, the director of epidemiology and 1981 looked at patients with tinnitus who by grabbing the Sonic Notify app for iOS or Android. statistics Sonic Notify’s website has several demos that you can had surgery to cut their auditory nerves. at the NIDCD. use. Forty-five percent said their tinnitus impro- ved post-surgery, but 55 percent said Suffice it to say it’s a com- it stayed the same or got worse. Even after the nerve responsible for hearing was se- mon experience — and, for a vered, they still heard the sound, indicating Sonic Notify : significant number of people, that whatever was happening to them, the inaudible an exhausting one. CAN SOME it wasn’t only in the ear. Tinnitus is not a disease in and of itself, QR codes Müller-Brockmann Josef Weniger Lärm, (1960) but it can be a symptom of other under- only an app lying problems. It can also be a symptom of PEOPLE nothing in particular. Pulsatile tinnitus, which accounts for less than 10 percent of tinnitus can hear cases, is unique in that it can typically be heard by the doctor as well as the patient, HEAR Duncan Geere and it tends to be a sign of something wrong with the vascular system. With idiopathic tinnitus — the kind only the sufferer can THE JET hear — the story is more complex. It is often associated with hearing loss, but not always, and the chances of getting it increase with STREAM ? age. It can indicate a tumor (in which case A startup called Sonic Notify is working the tinnitus will usually be one-sided) or on a product that embeds inaudibly appear as part of Ménière’s disease, otos- clerosis (a disorder that causes progressive high-pitched signals into music deafness), or disorders of the temperoman- Dr Joseph Hanlon and audio, which can be detected dibular joint that connects the jaw to the skull. Exposure to loud noises, especially by your smartphone. over long periods of time, puts a person at risk, so construction workers and musicians have higher rates of tinnitus than the general When a woman threatened suicide because When a compatible app hears the signal, it could be population. Tinnitus is also the number-one of noises that no one else could hear, the local triggered to take an action — linking you to a website, disability among veterans. displaying text or an image, or bringing up a location public health authority contacted a nearby on a map. That yields all sorts of possibilities — you But “in a majority of cases, there is no university, and a noise expert went out to could vote on your favourite song of a performance, known cause,” says Deborah Hall, a profes- or be directed to a secret aftershow party, for example. check. He could hear nothing, but he recorded sor of hearing sciences at the University the “nothing’* and after analysing the tape of Nottingham. She estimates that about The app is funded by the band MGMT’s record label, 80 percent of the time, doctors would not was surprised to find it showed a peak in the Cantora Records, which recently opened a technology be able to pinpoint where a patient’s tinnitus division. It’s offering between £17,000 and £63,000 background noise between 30 and 40 Hz. came from. to startups with interesting ideas. A newspaper article brought other reports When the ear is damaged, some of the flooding in, and Dr Philip Dickinson and auditory input the brain is used to getting Sonic Notify is one of the first. « [Sonic Notify] trans- ______suddenly disappears, explains Jinsheng mits a high-frequency sound wave through speakers several associates have now investigated Zhang, a professor of otolaryngology and — we can’t hear the frequency but smartphones more than 50 cases of people complaining communication sciences and disorders at can hear it, so we’re able to unlock content at live about a low throbbing background noise that Wayne State University. (Zhang is also the events, TV shows, and through the web », Jesse Israel, chair of the ATA’s scientific-advisory com- co-founder of Cantora Records. no one else can hear. mittee.) To compensate for the loss of those
Sonic Notify : the inaudible QR codes only an app can hear 68 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere Can some people hear the jet stream ? 69 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere New Scientist Dr Joseph Hanlon 8 nov. 1978 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com New Scientist Dr Joseph Hanlon 8 nov. 1978 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com
He discussed his work in a talk given as part of the signals from the outside world, the brain’s But to others the idea seems plausible. In an article “The way we manage it not only needs Institute of Biology conference The Biology of Urbani- auditory system becomes more active. in New Scientist recently (vol 59, p 738), Dr Michael to treat an audiological problem, but there’s sation on 28 September. “Now, you can hear my voice, because Bryan pointed out that there is a group of “noise quite a lot of psychology in there as well,” sensitive” people who are much more bothered by my voice is a sound that’s converted to Hall says. “Trying to change the way that The results are only preliminary — it is a spare time noise than average. Last week, Bryan said that there a signal,” Zhang says. “My sound signal is people think about their tinnitus and what project by a researcher best known for aircraft noise converted by your hair cells into neural is ample evidence of people being extremely dis- significance it has for them.” work. But all cases seem to have similar characteris- signals and they travel to the brain. This turbed by specific types of noise. He also noted that tics. There is always the peak between 30 and 40 Hz stimulates lots of nerve cells in the brain. odd noises at the extreme ends of the audible spec- and the noise is only heard when the weather is cool trum, that people cannot identify, tend to be more They become excited and they start to fire. and there is a light breeze (particularly early in worrying than other noises. The increased neural activity is coded, it has ______the morning). Further, the noise victims always seem meaning. But if the ear is damaged, there to be in an area, perhaps 10 km or more in diameter, And some people have much better hearing than where this noise is measureably louder. Preliminary is no sound but the brain has enhanced ac- others. Although he has done no work himself in checks with local doctors and medical officers of tivity. This enhanced activity has no coded the area, Bryan said it is plausible that people who Here are some ways people tried to treat health suggest that there might be an unusual inci- meaning.” The meaningless activity can be are both sensitive and have better hearing might find tinnitus in the past : The ancient Egyptians dence of “tummy upset” in these areas. perceived as a sound, and then you’ve got objectionable low frequency sounds that other people suggested poking reeds into your ears. tinnitus. do not even notice. The Assyrians would chant an incantation. What could this noise be, and why should some Pliny the Elder, an ancient Roman scholar, people respond to it while most do not ? As to the This is the simple explanation. Exactly what favored earthworms boiled in goose grease source of the noise, Dickinson suggests that these the brain is doing to compensate is more and stuck into the ear as a treatment for all people may actually be hearing the jet stream — complex and hard to understand, and likely manner of ear maladies. A Welsh manuscript air flowing at a great height at 4500 km/h. The jet differs from person to person, given the Dickinson says it is probably from the 14th century recommends taking a stream, he explains, would shear against adjacent wide variability in how people experience hot loaf of bread out of the oven, tearing it in slower moving air, and this shearing would make a tinnitus. Some tinnitus, as previously noted, like a dripping tap — some people half and holding it over your ears. “Bind and noise. Acoustic calculations show that the power and doesn’t involve hearing loss, which doesn’t can ignore it while others become thus produce perspiration, and by the help frequency of this noise would be about right to cause seem to jive with the idea that the brain is of God you will be cured,” it reads. nearly audible sound at ground level between 10 and compensating for missing sound. But re- obsessed by it. Could this sort 40 Hz, if the transmission conditions were right. search in mice has shown that there can of noise, he wondered, be the real Today, the available treatments are less The sound would be bent down to the earth in just be damage present in the inner ear even yeasty. They focus on the two avenues Hall the right way by a temperature inversion, which without changes to the animal’s hearing problem with some people who suggested : masking the sound, and helping occurs about 60 per cent of the time. The time when threshold, so it may be that problems can have been admitted to mental people cope with it. people respond — cool early mornings with light lurk even under seemingly perfect hearing breezes — just corresponds to a temperature inver- — or that current tools may not be able to hospitals because they hear bells There is still a lot about tinnitus that is not sion plus a lack of other noise to block out this sound. detect some kinds of slight hearing loss. ringing or drums beating that understood, and there is no cure. There’s nothing doctors can do as of yet to make Manmade factors might amplify the sound and cause no one else can hear ? the sound go away, though researchers are additional problems. Power line posts are just the looking into different kinds of brain stimu- right size to radiate this sound. Half the people inves- tigated have posts nearby and in some cases the posts To treat tinnitus, a Welsh lation as a possibility. But everyone I spoke were vibrating so much that it was painful to place the to was adamant that doctors should not tell manuscript from the 14th Perhaps the most speculative suggestion of all ear against them. One executive who sometimes went patients they just have to live with it. is that low frequency sound might be connected with to work at 5 am to get away from the sound could see century recommends taking ill feelings caused by winds like the Fern. They, too, 25 posts from his window. Another possibility is that As with pain, doctors treating tinnitus a hot loaf of bread out of the would have shear layers which could cause ground the sound is amplified by rooms which have resonant (usually) only have the patient’s subjective oven, tearing it in half and level noise. frequencies in this range. experience to go on. Hall says doctors will holding it over your ears. typically just talk with the patient about The data are suggestive, but there is no hard proof what kinds of sounds they’re hearing, how and the suggestion is highly controversial. Dr Geof- loud, and how often. To determine the pitch frey Leventhall, a senior lecturer with the Chelsea and volume, they may play sound recordings College Acoustics Group and an expert on low and ask the patient which one matches their frequency sound, called Dickinson’s suggestion Aside from the auditory system, brain tinnitus, but “those kind of objective mea- “absolute nonsense”. regions that deal with attention, arousal, sures are still more often in the domain of and emotions are also involved in the expe- research rather than in the clinic,” she says. rience of tinnitus — the condition is defined Usually, it’s just patient reports. As long as not just by the sound, but by how people there are no indications of anything more react to it. If you constantly heard ringing, serious, like a brain tumor or the vascular but you were cool with it, then it wouldn’t problems that can come with pulsatile tin- be a huge problem. Zhang compares it to nitus, it’s not totally necessary to figure out pain — two people may get the same injury the sound’s origins in order to treat it. and one may be able to tolerate the pain better than the other.
Can some people hear the jet stream ? 70 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere Can some people hear the jet stream ? 71 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere ------
Here we go again, Y’all! The hum follows me to work out in the middle of nowhere at the coal mine, no gas lines for 30 miles. Sunday was a delightful day, with minimum background of maybe 1 or so. The hum follows me to the mountains in Wyoming, no nothing, The hum follows Grand day ! me to Idaho and Washington in remote Went walking with my dogs. Then, about 9 sites. No gas lines for miles. PM, I got the first little inkling that it was May be from gas lines in some areas. going to go up again. Sure did. Little dip around 5 AM, then screaming right on up there ‘til headache time again. It has started Pretty much always the same intensity its oscillating sound again. of 3-4. Maybe it will rain? My sympathy to John. Bless your heart. ______I concur with all that others have written. Prayer, and a personal relationship with God is all that ever works. Rich
Linda C Tuskegee, AL USA - Monday, March 03, 2003 at 14:04:00 (PST)
Somebody is REMOVING MESSAGES from this site, is that because this site is MONITORED and the messages are too close to the truth?
hum hearer
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USA - Thursday, April 24, 2003 at 13:03:00 (PDT)
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My wife can hear the Hum, but we have not heard it for some weeks.
It has completely disappeared, THANK GOD…
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To All Hum hearers. Dave Murray
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Tonight around 12:00 Stoney
Birds are chattier then normal tonight. =\
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Scott
Ojai, CA USA - Sunday, June 01, 2003 at 01:15:11 (PDT)
------wired.com Ian Steadman 29 nov. 2012 21 jan. 2016 Julie Beck theatlantic.com wired.com Ian Steadman 29 nov. 2012 7 juin 2017 Adrien Rivierre usbeketrica.com
“The concern is how it interferes with - people’s daily life, as opposed to putting a However, the NOAA is pretty sure that it wasn't an animal, but the sound of a relatively common event label on it, saying ‘Well, this is due to that,” THE Bloop — the cracking of an ice shelf as it breaks up from Hoffman says. Antarctica. Several people have linked to the NOAA's website over the past week excitedly claiming that ? MYSTERY the mystery of the Bloop has been "solved", but as the For people whose tinnitus comes with information on the NOAA website was undated and hearing loss, getting a hearing aid can often without a source, Wired.co.uk spoke to NOAA and HAS BEEN improve their tinnitus as well as their hea- Oregon State University seismologist Robert Dziak by email to check it out. He confirmed that the Bloop ring. Doctors may recommend cognitive-be- A really was just an icequake — and it turns out that's havioral therapy to reduce the distress that d kind of what they always thought it was. The theory of tinnitus can cause. Or they may recommend r SOLVED : a giant animal making noises loud enough to be heard sound therapy, which distracts the brain across the Pacific was more fantasy than science. i from the noise it’s creating by masking it Dziak explained to us the NOAA's findings, and e IT WAS with other sounds. This can be as simple as confirmed that "the frequency and time-duration playing background music, or as elaborate n characteristics of the Bloop signal are consistent, as a hearing aid that can also pipe white and essentially identical, to icequake signals we have NEVER A noise into the ear. recorded off Antarctica". He explained : "We began R an acoustic survey of the Bransfield Strait and Drake i The American Tinnitus Association has a Passage in 2005 which lasted until 2010. It was in v GIANT SEA story its members like to tell, about how analysis of this recent acoustic data that it became i its co-founders, Jack Vernon and Charles clear that the sounds of ice breaking up and cracking Unice, came up with the idea for sound is a dominant source of natural sound in the sou- e MONSTER therapy. According to West (and to a story in thern ocean. Each year there are tens of thousands of r the spring 2011 issue of the ATA’s magazine what we call 'icequakes' created by the cracking and r Tinnitus Today), Unice, who suffered from melting of sea ice and ice calving off glaciers into the e tinnitus himself, came to Portland from Cali- ocean, and these signals are very similar in character fornia in 1971 to visit Vernon. While they were to the Bloop." Ian Steadman out for lunch, they passed Portland’s Love- joy Fountain. Unice stopped in his tracks and That makes it "extremely unlikely" that the sound declared that while he stood by the fountain, is animal in origin, but he also pointed out that the he couldn’t hear his tinnitus. And thus the hypothesis that the Bloop was caused by an animal two men realized that if noise is the pro- wasn't ever really a serious one. He said : "What has blem, the solution is … more noise. led to a lot of the misperception of the animal origin Comment aux parler extrater restres In 1997, the Bloop was heard on hydro- sound of the Bloop is how the sound is played back. Typically, it is played at 16 times normal speed, which West has found this to be true for herself. phones across the Pacific. It was a loud, makes it sounds like an animal vocalisation of some Un matin en apparence comme les autres, After her car accident, she reached out to sort. However, when the sound is played in real-time vous vous réveillez tranquillement. Comme ultra-low frequency sound that was heard an ATA support group, which recommended it has more of a 'quake' sound to it, similar to thun- à votre habitude, vous consultez votre fil at listening stations underwater over she see Michael Robb, an oto-neurologist der." You can hear a recording of the Bloop in the d’actualité Twitter. Et là, vous apprenez que in Phoenix, Arizona. “It took him a year to 5,000km apart, and one of many mys- video accompanying this story. l’homme a découvert la première espèce convince me,” she says. “I’ve got a little bit terious noises picked up by the National extraterrestre. of vanity in me.” But once he fitted her with There aren't even that many mysterious sounds hearing aids that also provide sound the- Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up by the NOAA's hydrophones, according to Elle vit sur une exopla- (NOAA). Several articles in the years that rapy, the volume of her tinnitus went down Dziak : "Nearly all sounds can be attributed to major by half. She was so impressed with Robb’s sound categories; geophysical (submarine volcanoes nète. C’est officiel, nous ne followed popularised one suggestion that work that she volunteered to work with him or earthquakes), weather (storms, waves, wind), sommes plus les seuls dans the Bloop might have been the sound of as an assistant and a scheduler. A little while anthropogenic (ships, airguns), ice (sea ice, iceberg later, he hired her for the job as a paid po- groundings), and animals (cetaceans, fish)." Anything l’univers ! an unknown animal due to the "organic" sition. She does this now in addition to her else is usually just some kind of electronic interfe- nature of the noise, a theory that elevated role as CEO of the ATA. rence with the signal. L’heure est alors venue de communiquer avec eux, de leur parler. Sont-ils hostiles ou the Bloop to the level of a great unsolved It's easy to see why the Bloop was such a compelling bienveillants ? Sont-ils effrayés ou heureux ? mystery. mystery. The deep oceans are still mostly unexplored Quelles sont leurs intentions ? Disposent-ils by humans (more than 95 percent, according to the d’une intelligence supérieure à la nôtre ? "[The hearing aids have] made a tremendous NOAA), and only a few weeks ago an entirely new spe- Nous comprennent-ils ? Et si oui, comment difference, and that’s why I dedicate myself cies of whale washed up on a beach in New Zealand. s’en assurer ? Il faut leur parler… mais com- to helping other people enjoy a better quality It was only in 2004 that the first video footage was ment ? Peut-être en s’inspirant de la façon of life,” she says. “Do, please, in your article, recorded of a giant squid in the wild. To paraphrase dont communiquent les dauphins, répond give people hope. And be sure to use some Donald Rumsfeld, we know there's a lot we don't Adrien Rivierre, lecteur et contributeur régu- ear protection.” know about the deep ocean. lier d’Usbek & Rica.
The Bloop mystery has been solved : it was never a giant sea monster 76 The Sound That Comes From Nowhere The Bloop mystery has been solved : it was never a giant sea monster 77 Comment parler aux extraterrestres ? 7 juin 2017 Adrien Rivierre usbeketrica.com wired.com Ian Steadman 29 nov. 2012
Ce scénario d’une rencontre « physique » avec des extraterrestres, récemment mis en scène dans le film Premier Contact de Denis Villeneuve, est sorti du champ de la science-fiction depuis qu’on découvre des exoplanètes tous les mois ou presque, dont certaines abriteraient de l’eau, ce qui laisse envisager la possibilité d’une forme de vie extraterrestre. Mais certaines de ces pla- nètes se situant à 39 années lumières de Pieter van der Heyden (1530–1572) notre Terre, aucune rencontre imminente The Big Fish Eat the Little Fish, n’est à l’ordre du jour… à moins que, comme Satire on the Fall of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, 1557 dans Premier Contact, ce soient plutôt les extraterrestres qui viennent à nous !
René Laloux, La Planète Sauvage, 1973
Fans of horror fiction were also delighted to note that the location pinpointed as the source of the Bloop was located a mere 1,760km from the location of the sun- ken city of R'yleh, where (according to HP Lovecraft) the mythical beast Cthulhu is imprisoned.
78 Comment parler aux extraterrestres ? The Bloop mystery has been solved : it was never a giant sea monster 79 wired.com Ian Steadman 29 nov. 2012 7 juin 2017 Adrien Rivierre usbeketrica.com newrepublic.com Colin Dickey 8 avr. 2016 7 juin 2017 Adrien Rivierre usbeketrica.com
Cthulhu would certainly fit the AAAA Les dauphins marquent des bill of a giant sea creature capable silences, des pauses, pour of emitting a sound that could laisser leurs congénères travel for thousands of kilometres répondre, preuve qu’ils through the ocean, but unfor- MadMadMadMad s’écoutent et dialoguent ! tunately science has, once again, Mais il serait faux de penser que la façon ruined the fun. Alas. Dans un tel cas de figure se pose la question dont communiquent les animaux n’a rien à de savoir comment communiquer et interagir nous apprendre. Dans le monde animal, les avec eux. Par où commencer ? Quelles mé- deningdeningdeningdening dauphins sont réputés pour être parmi les thodes utiliser ? Nos savoirs et technologies mammifères les plus intelligents et évolués sont-ils assez avancés pour y parvenir ? sur Terre. La chercheuse Denise Herzing The Bloop souligne ainsi que le rapport entre la taille de leur cerveau et de leur corps, indicateur scientifique d’intelligence, est le deuxième Si la recherche a montré depuis longtemps SoundSoundSoundSound meilleur derrière… les humains. Les cétacés que les végétaux, comme les animaux, passent aussi le test dit « du miroir », qui communiquent entre eux, le langage de Sue Taylor first started hearing it at night in 2009. prouve qu’ils ont conscience d’eux-mêmes l’homme est plus élaboré car nous sommes A retired psychiatric nurse, Taylor lives in Roslin, (ils se reconnaissent en se voyant, comme capables de manier les symboles ; là où les Scotland, a small village seven miles outside of les chimpanzés, les bonobos ou les cor- animaux ne comprennent que des signaux Edinburgh. “A thick, low hum,” is how she described beaux). Nous savons aussi qu’ils utilisent de dans un contexte précis. Autrement dit, it, something “permeating the entire house,” keeping nombreux sons pour interagir en groupe, contrairement à ces derniers, nous sommes her awake. At first she thought it was from a nearby chasser ou jouer à plusieurs. Mieux en- capables de dissocier le signe de la réalité factory, or perhaps a generator of some kind. She core, les dauphins marquent des silences, exprimée (je peux parler de New York sans began spending her evenings looking for the source, des pauses, pour laisser leurs congénères jamais être allé à New York). Ainsi, l’homme listening outside her neighbors’ homes in the early répondre, preuve qu’ils s’écoutent et dia- peut imaginer avoir une maîtrise du monde hours of the morning. She couldn’t find anything de- loguent ! Selon les chercheurs, ces quelques par ses mots, quand les animaux sont limi- finitive. She had her hearing checked and was told it caractéristiques non exhaustives signifient tés à des comportements instinctifs et à was perfect, but the noise persisted. She became dizzy que leur langage est proche de celui des l’automatisme. and nauseous, overcome, she says, by a crushing êtres humains. sense of despair and hopelessness at her inability to locate or escape the sound. When things got bad, it La start-up suédoise Gavagai AB, qui a felt to Taylor like the bed — and the whole house — développé un logiciel basé sur l’intelligence was vibrating. Like her head was going to explode. artificielle capable d’analyser des millions de Her husband, who had tinnitus, didn’t hear a thing. textes dans plus de 40 langues différentes, “People looked at me like I was mad,” she said. souhaite aujourd’hui l’enrichir en étudiant le langage des dauphins. En s’associant au KTH Lori Steinborn lives in Tavares, Florida, outside of Royal Institute of Technology de Stockholm, Orlando, and in 2006 she had started hearing a noise similar to the one Taylor was hearing. Steinborn elle espère décrypter leur communication thought it was her neighbors at first : some nearby d’ici quatre ans, en répertoriant tous les stereo blasting, the bass coming through the walls. It sons émis par les dauphins pour créer un would start most nights between 7 and 8 p.m. and last véritable dictionnaire. Gavagai AB espère until the early hours of the morning. Like Taylor, she aussi découvrir des mécanismes que nous began searching for the sound; leaving town helped n’utilisons pas, comme la grande capaci- her get away from it, but it was waiting when she té des dauphins à se synchroniser grâce à returned. l’émission de sons et la réalisation de gestes simultanés.
by byby Quand nous entendons les sons émis par les dauphins, nous n’en entendons en réalité ColinColin qu’une partie seulement, notre oreille n’étant Colin pas assez développée. DickeyDickeyDickey Tentative de comunication avec les extraterrestres, dans le film Premier Contact.
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The experience described by Steinborn and Taylor, Comme le montre le film de Denis Villeneuve, device, and in a 1998 X-Files episode the Hum (or so- Une telle initiative exploratoire pourra en and many others, is what’s come to be known as “the dans le cas d’une rencontre extra-terrestre, mething very much like it) caused spontaneous head tout cas mener à des découvertes utiles Hum,” a mysterious auditory phenomenon that, by nous ne pourrions utiliser que les méthodes explosions. On a Facebook page for Hum sufferers, pour développer de nouveaux outils et some estimates, 2 percent of the population can hear. à notre disposition, c’est-à-dire celles appli- one rambling post describes how “advanced satellite améliorer la compréhension de notre propre It’s not clear when the Hum first began, or when quées, par exemple, lors de la découverte technology” is being used as “a brutal torture ins- langage, de celui des animaux et, un jour, people started noticing it, but it started drawing des tribus d’Amazonie. En théorie, décryp- trument by transmitting sounds, voices, and images utiliser ces connaissances pour parler aux media attention in the 1970s, in Bristol, England. ter un langage extraterrestre ne devrait pas directly into the brain, creating numerous pains and extraterrestres. After receiving several isolated reports, the British faire appel à des méthodes radicalement sensations throughout the body and significantly alte- tabloid the Sunday Mirror asked, in 1977, “Have You ring energy level and emotional states.” The post goes différentes, mais plus elles auront été tes- Heard the Hum ?” Hundreds of letters came flooding on to name several people who have been targeted by tées sur des êtres vivants variés, plus elles in. For the most part, the reports were consistent : a this technology, including Miriam Carey, the dental seront robustes. low, distant rumbling, like an idling diesel engine, hygienist who drove through a White House check- mostly audible at night, mostly noticeable indoors. point in 2013, setting off a high-speed chase that led No obvious source. En l’absence d’espèces extraterrestres à to her death, and Aaron Alexis, the civilian contractor étudier, ce sont les animaux qui servent who, on September 16, 2013, entered the Washing- aujourd’hui de cobayes pour faire progres- ton, D.C., Navy Yard and killed twelve people before ser la recherche. La communication des dying in a firefight with police. Alexis has become, for The story of the Hum begins in such dauphins offre à ce titre des perspectives some, proof positive that the Hum is not merely an enthousiasmantes. Ces cétacés utilisent un annoyance but a massive government conspiracy. In a places, far from the hustle and bustle of spectre sonore bien plus aigu que celui de message later recovered by authorities from his com- cities, where stillness blankets everything. l’Homme. Quand nous entendons les sons puter, Alexis wrote that “Ultra low frequency attack émis par les dauphins, nous n’en entendons is what I’ve been subject to for the last three months. That’s where you hear it, and that’s where en réalité qu’une partie seulement, notre And to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven me it becomes intolerable. After it was first oreille n’étant pas assez développée. to this.”
reported in Bristol, it emerged in Taos, There are many things we know the Hum is not, New Mexico; Kokomo, Indiana; Largs, but few things we actually know it is. I’d first heard Scotland. A small city newspaper would stories of the Hum a few years ago, in the genre of weird conspiracies and odd occurrences one reads publish a report of a local person suffe- about when traveling the internet : another tin foil ring from an unidentified noise, followed hat theory to go with the UFOs, Flat Earthers, and Raelians. But then I learned about Glen MacPherson, by a torrent of letters to the editor with a high school math teacher in British Columbia, who similar complaints. had attracted attention not for sharing strange tales of the Hum but for doing serious, scientific work on the phenomenon. Word was that he had undertaken a research project that, if successful, could hold the Sometimes, this would lead to a begrudging official secret to understanding the Hum once and for all. So I investigation, but these nearly always ended incon- traveled to western Canada to hear about the sound. clusively. Far more likely was widespread dismissal Denise Herzing en train d’essayer de communiquer avec of the complaints, which made the experience that des dauphins dans les eaux des Bahamas As far back as the early nineteenth century, one finds much more frustrating for those who heard the Hum. records of strange noises, mysterious humming, inex- Though University of Southampton researchers plicable sounds. A traveler summiting the Pyrenees R.N. Vasudevan and Colin G. Gordon, who investi- Les équipes de Denise Herzing et de l’Uni- in 1828 described how, when his party first beheld gated claims of the Hum in 1977, established that it versité de Georgia Tech avaient déjà mis Mount Maladeta, “we were most forcibly struck with was “very probably” a real phenomenon and not an au point des interfaces de communication a dull, low, moaning, aeolian sound, which alone auditory hallucination, Hum sufferers have been bilatérales pour permettre aux humains de broke upon the deathly silence, evidently proceeding consistently written off as either delusional or simply dialoguer avec les dauphins. Grâce à l’intel- from the body of this mighty mass, though we in vain suffering from tinnitus. When asked by The Inde- ligence artificielle, les travaux exploratoires attempted to connect it with any particular spot, or pendent about the Hum in 1994, Jonathan Hazell, de la start-up Gavagai AB auront pour objec- assign an adequate cause for these solemn strains.” head of research at the U.K.’s Royal National Institute tif de repousser les limites de nos connais- These enigmatic sounds were attributed to various for Deaf People, responded, “Rubbish. Everybody sances sur le langage. Ce qui laisse ainsi es- causes — insect swarms just out of sight, shifting who has tinnitus complains at first of environmental pérer l’élaboration de logiciels sophistiqués sands — but, being rare and benign, they were mostly noise. ‘Hummers’ are a group of people who cannot pour réaliser des tâches plus complexes. ignored. accept that they have tinnitus.” S’il est aujourd’hui trop tôt pour déterminer Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises. quelles seront leurs applications concrètes, The Industrial Revolution changed attitudes toward Dismissed by governments and mainstream re- les découvertes pourront par exemple servir noise, as machines and urban life introduced a Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and searchers, Hum sufferers become demoralized, à la marine américaine. Cette dernière étu- constant, deafening racket into the world. By the hurt not. despondent. In such isolation the discourse festers, die déjà les animaux marins depuis plusieurs end of the nineteenth century we’d begun a war on breeding conspiracy theories and kooks. In 2009, the décennies, et notamment les dauphins qui the noise we had created, particularly in the United first episode of the reality show Conspiracy Theo- les aident par exemple à détecter des mines States, where it quickly became a question of personal ry With Jesse Ventura offered a theory of the Hum — Shakespeare, The Tempest sous-marines. liberty and privacy. “How soon shall we learn,” the possibly stemming from a government mind-control
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magazine Current Literature editorialized in 1900, The twelve-minute sound essay was deal of skepticism was duly expressed, but “that one has no more right to throw noises than conceived for two audiences : the human not one person hung up before they’d heard they have to throw stones into a house ?” In 1930, the and the extraterrestrial. In the former, we the whole story. Saturday Evening Post commented that “People dare hoped to evoke smiles of recognition, and in not enter a man’s house or peep into it, yet he has no the latter, a sense of the variety of auditory And some of them were instantly engaged way of preventing them from filling his house and his experiences that are part of life on Earth. by the notion of Voyager’s grand reach office with nerve-racking noise.” We wanted to use the microphone as the across space and time. Dr. Roger Payne of ear’s camera in further enhancing Voyager’s Rockefeller University was such a person. Different cities tried different tactics. New York set up portrait of our planet and ourselves. He was very excited by our desire to extend “Zones of Quiet” around hospitals and schools, and The world of our imagined extraterrestrials whale greetings on the record. When I told established the Society for the Suppression of Unne- would be the result of a vastly different him that as a long overdue gesture of res- cessary Noise, which pushed through a 1907 act prohi- biting the needless use of steam whistles in maritime pattern of what Darwin described as “life’s pect for these intelligent co-residents of traffic — the first noise-abatement legislation passed ever- branching and beautiful ramifications.” Earth, we wished to include their salutations by Congress. In Baltimore, a dedicated anti-noise cop The murmurs of such a place would be very among those of the statesmen and diplo- named Maurice E. Pease was appointed to instruct unlike our own, and we might reasonably mats, he was thrilled. any huckster shouting about their wares that business expect to share with its inhabitants only a could be conducted more efficiently via printed signs. few of the most fundamental geological, Chicago banned the hawking of wares outright in 1911, meteorological and possibly technological idioms. Indeed, the very idea of distingui- and peddlers responded with a riot that stretched “Proper respect !” he cried. “Who is this ? Oh, over three days, in what the Tribune called “a day of shing between “musical” and “nonmusical” at last ! Wonderful ! You can have anything rioting and wild disorder such as has not been seen in sounds posed a problem. We realized that Chicago since the garment workers’ strike.” elsewhere in the universe such a distinc- I have. I’ll bring it to you myself. The most tion would be even more blurred that it is beautiful whale greeting was one we heard After the introduction in the 1920s of the decibel as here; perhaps cricket songs, a gavotte and off the coast of Bermuda in 1970. That’s the an objective unit for measuring noise, cities were able the harbor-filling bray of an ocean liner’s one that should last forever. Please send that to implement noise-abatement policies that cut the foghorn would seem of a piece to alien one.” overall volume to (mostly) manageable levels. But senses. Because we could not know how perversely, it’s precisely these noise-reduction laws the message would be perceived by them, that allowed the Hum to emerge. In a loud environ- we decided to risk some fairly flagrant loca- Ferndale, Rhondda Fawr, 1993, © John Davies ment like New York City, it’s far too difficult to hear lisms in the interest of presenting as much When we heard the tape, we were en- the Hum, since it tends to just blend in with the din about ourselves as possible. chanted by its graceful exuberance, a series and chaos of everything else. The Hum, you could say, The process of selecting the sounds be- of expanding exultations so free and com- is not so much a sound but what’s left over, the noise gan outside of Ithaca, New York, on a bright municative of another way of moving and you hear once all the other noises have been taken spring day that was auspiciously abuzz with being on Earth. We listened to it many times away. wild May country noises. Timothy Ferris, and always with a feeling of irony that our Wendy Gradison and I joined the Sagans at imagined extraterrestrials of a billion years Further confusing matters is the fact that some their dining-room table for a vigorous round hence might grasp a message from fellow reports of the Hum have been definitively traced to earthlings that had been incomprehensible specific sources and corrected. The Hum was heard in of group onomatopoeia. We tried to think of every sound we’d ever heard, and I wrote to us. Sausalito, California, in the mid-1980s, but was even- Alan Botto of Princeton, New Jersey, was tually found to be the result of the mating sounds of a most of them down. On the following day another friend of the project. Fred Durant fish called the plainfin midshipman, whose call could I returned to New York City and set about of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air penetrate the steel hulls of the houseboats in the trying to locate the best examples of each. and Space Museum told me to call Mr. Botto marina. The Windsor Hum was investigated by the I started by phoning sound libraries and uni- for the “best rocket launch you ever heard. Canadian government and ultimately traced to facto- versities all over North America. ries on Zug Island, across the Detroit River in Michi- ” It turned out to be a rousing Saturn 5 lift- gan. After an extensive study of the Hum in Kokomo, “I understand that you have the finest re- off recorded in a highly passionate Mission Indiana, researchers determined that it was caused by cordings of croaking frogs” or “the meanest Control room, with a countdown, ignition two nearby manufacturing plants whose production hyenas” or “the most devastating earth- roar, cheers, applause and the heartfelt facilities were emitting specific low frequencies. quake. How would I go about obtaining a wish “Fly, bird” blurted out by a man mo- copy ?” mentarily overwhelmed by what people can The Hum soon stopped for some people in Kokomo “For what purpose ?” was the standard res- do. Botto also supplied us with a great hurt- — but not for everyone. Even in cases where there’s a ponse. ling freight train. likely culprit, it’s difficult to prove for sure. Dr. Colin “We’re sending a record into interstellar When 1 reached Mickey Kapp, president of Novak, one of the lead researchers of the Windsor space,” I’d reply in what I judged to be my Warner Special Products, he was in Rome on Hum, concluded his report in May 2014, but in a CBC least manic voice. “And I’m trying to put his vacation. A space enthusiast for many article that year he was quoted saying that while there together a suite of the sounds that we hear years, Mr. Kapp spoke of Jupiter and Saturn was a high probability the cause was the Zug Island on Earth.” This usually meant some empty as if they were stations on an old commute. factories, “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find that long-distance static while I reeled off the “Why, sure,” he said from his room at the smoking gun.” Without a longer study and more coo- corroborative phone numbers of federal Excelsior to mine on West 74th, “you’re wel- peration from U.S. authorities, researchers couldn’t agencies and well-known scientists. A great come to all our sounds. Take as many as you
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Using recordings uploaded to YouTube, Louivere+Vanessa broadcast audio files through a digital spectrometer to create images. These were then printed, using definitively identify the source. “It’s like chasing a want. ” He placed the entire Elektra Sound archival inkjet printer, onto handmade Japanese kozo paper, which was dibond ghost,” Novak said. Archives at our disposal and hand-delivered primed with gesso, covered in gold leaf, and coated with resin. the cuts we selected. It would have been “I love science. I love mysteries. I love figuring things impossible to complete the sound essay out,” said Glen MacPherson, the high school teacher in such as short time without his very kind and founder of the World Hum Map and Database cooperation. Project, a site that has, since 2012, gathered and map- ped reports of the Hum worldwide, including its loca- Some of the people who declined to parti- tion, intensity, and relevant biographical facts on the cipate cited their mistrust of any endeavor individual reporting it. MacPherson lives in Gibsons, sponsored by the government. Others British Columbia, a tiny town on the far west side of wanted substantial amounts of money in an inlet called Howe Sound. To get there you hook up with the Trans-Canada Highway and take it west until return for a moment’s whoosh of the breeze it runs out of road at a place called Horseshoe Bay, through the trees or the rush of a river. We and from there a ferry carries you across the sound. couldn’t afford to give them much more than the cost of a reel of tape and return The air in Gibsons is lucid and still; you can hear the postage. One man who was reputed to have call of birds echoing across that pure stillness. Even a wonderful collection of children’s street the ferry and its cargo seem deferential to the silence cries threw me out of his office, shouting of the water and its sparsely inhabited islands. The after me that NASA “had some nerve sen- humble city of Vancouver, 30 miles away, seems a ding a little girl to talk to a big soundman noisy urban nightmare. like me.” But almost everyone else was very nice and eager for a dab of the immortality We were sitting in the conference room of the Gibsons that Voyager’s unique passage to millions of & District Public Library on a Saturday afternoon. It years from now seemed to confer. was quiet inside; any kids who could get away with Timothy Ferris and I went to Washington, it were out soaking up one of the last good weekends D.C., to meet with the Sagans and Murry Sid- of the season. As I listened to MacPherson’s story of lin for a series of late-night musical reper- a mysterious noise, I couldn’t help but notice a sign toire conferences. During the day we visited tacked to the wall behind him, written in the big, the headquarters of the National Geographic gentle hand of a kindergarten teacher : “Be kind, be Society, where we found some huffy oran- safe, be listening.” gutan grunts. We also went to the Library of Congress’ Archive of Recorded Sound. It was So I listened. MacPherson’s Hum story, at least initial- there that we heard a terrible sound. ly, was fairly typical : In 2012, he was living in Sechelt, just a few miles from Gibsons, when he began hearing When we arrived, an engineer was waiting at night the droning of what he assumed were seapla- for us with a supermarket shopping cart nes taking off and landing. “I couldn’t tell if it was a full of records, some in jackets and others week or two or a month,” he recalled, “but it became quite obvious at one point that this sound was not in tom ma- nila sleeves. The engineer told being caused by planes. So I waited until it started the us not to touch them. As he went through following evening — it seemed to have a pretty regu- them, we were to point to the cuts that we lar onset at 10 to 10 :30 p.m. — and I went outside, and wished to hear. Somewhere in among the the noise stopped.” wolves and the brine shrimp was a heavy lacquer disc of what is believed to be the “My logic was that if it was louder inside and it first field recording ever made during a bat- stopped outside, then the source was inside : a tle : an ugly repeating loop of a World War I refrigerator, a piece of machinery, whatever it was. I skirmish in France with an American soldier started walking through the house, and the sound was urging a mustard-gas grenade launcher relatively consistent.” MacPherson began turning off to fire. The soldier’s voice seems horribly various appliances, all to no avail. One oddity he did cheerful and thoughtless, as mechanical a notice, however, was that the noise would stop if he sound as the answering hiccup of the poison turned his head sharply or exhaled, though it would canister. It drones at us from across sixty instantly return. “And then I ran out of ideas, and so I years, and Tim and I try to see what this did what many people ultimately do : I cut the power man must have been seeing, but all we can to the house — and it got louder.” manage is bits of war stolen from movies and some smoke. Though his experience with the Hum has not been as We try to stop hearing it all day long. It’s so excruciating as some others (he describes himself as tainting that we both hesitate before men- The resulting photographs are aural visualizations of an elusive noise : a Hum “hearer” rather than “sufferer”), MacPherson tioning it to the others at dinner. This leads the Hum. Above is a recording from Bristol, England. was drawn to the problem of this mysterious noise : us into a discussion of just exactly how “Less than one month after beginning my informal in- realistic a picture of life on Earth we wished
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quiries, I did what essentially every single person who to convey. Was the Voyager message to be a visits the Hum web site has done : You go to Google.” historical gesture or merely a social one ? He found an article in The Journal of Scientific Explo- Murry was adamant that we should send ration, by a geophysicist named David Deming, titled only the best of ourselves. And while none “The Hum : An Anomalous Sound Heard Around the of us was absolutely convinced that the World.” record would be incomplete without so vivid a demonstration of our imperfection as Deming, who has taught at the University of Oklaho- our violence, there was a feeling that being ma since 1992, was one of the first scientists to take truthful was important in ways that might be the problem of the Hum seriously. (He also heard the momentarily obscured by culture. Most of Hum.) Crucially, Deming was able to distinguish the the cherished beliefs of the previous decade Hum from tinnitus. Tinnitus, usually a ringing in the ear, can take a number of forms, but while its inten- turned flimsy in this one. And even now the sity may wax and wane, it is more or less omnipresent, prejudices of this particular moment lose and those who suffer from it tend to hear it in any their currency and change into something environment. The Hum, which is constant but only else. When we contemplated Voyager’s under certain circumstances (indoors, rural areas, inconceivable future, composed of maybe etc.), defies a simple correlation with tinnitus. Addi- a million times ten years or sixty years, we tionally, Deming notes that if the Hum were related to despaired at knowing what the citizens of tinnitus, one would expect a fairly normal geographic that age would understand or prize. If we distribution rather than clusters in small towns. showed ourselves as we really are, a spe- cies involved with struggle, wouldn’t we at Deming believed that the Hum wasn’t an acoustic least be assured of the record’s value as an sound, but possibly a low-frequency vibration that accurate document ? some people interpret as sound. The most likely culprit of the Hum was a Navy project known as Take We failed to come to any conclusion that Charge and Move Out, or TACAMO. Begun in the early evening. Instead, we drifted back into the 1960s, TACAMO is a network of aircraft that carry very debate about the musical repertoire. The low frequency (VLF) antennae to communicate with next day Tim and I flew back to New York nuclear submarines. VLF waves, which require extre- City and took my father to a Mets game. mely long broadcast antennae and massive amounts There were roughly sixty thousand people of energy, can cover the globe and penetrate nearly making noise at Shea Stadium. Several times any surface (they reach submarines a hundred feet I found myself shutting my eyes as tightly as below the surface). Deming proposed a simple experi- I could to see what I could hear. ment to test this hypothesis : Three boxes, each large A week later, we had the fifty sounds we’d enough to hold a human, one that blocked sound, one been looking for and we were ready to begin that blocked low-frequency waves and other types our work in the studio that CBS had provided of electromagnetic radiation, and a control box that for us. Our sound engineer was a calm, rus- blocked neither. ty-haired man in his early fifties named Russ Aside from Deming’s article, MacPherson realized, Payne. He is a very patient man, a student there was very little out there : The few user forums of the Jain philosophy who speaks with a were rife with nonsense, heavy on anecdote, and light cowboy accent. During our breaks he would on fact. There were enough reports from far-flung eat a piece of fruit, smoke a cigarette and places to suggest that the problem went beyond Taos talk about the life of the spirit. When we got and Bristol, but no one seemed to be doing anything to the part of the tape with the locomotive systematic to gather all this information. As it hap- on it, he told us that his daddy has been an pens, MacPherson had a background in technology. engineer and had taken him on some trains “My degree major was in computer science program- that sounded just like that one. ming, minors in mathematics and Russian language. A rock-and-roll sound prodigy from Brooklyn I also worked briefly as a web professional in the named Jimmy Iovine showed up a couple early 2000s alongside my teaching.” In 2012, he used of times to raise the levels on the elephants a simple Google Docs tool to create a list of self-re- and to check out the surf. He was very an- ported experiences with the Hum. “In combination xious to have a photograph taken of him- of that and the Google form, and me knowing how to self in front of the rocket ship. He said he whip up web sites in a few hours, it began : the World wanted to give it to his mother. But the task Hum Map.” of engineering the sound essay fell entirely to Russ and Tim. They used a sixteen-track © NASA MacPherson’s database allows users to input their Ampex. experience with the Hum, including information on where and when it’s the loudest, if the hearer has There were many helpful suggestions made, tinnitus, if anything makes it stop, and so on. most notably Tim’s and Jon Lomberg’s, as to
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how the sounds should be organized within The World Hum Map soon came to the attention of Les du sons Voyageur Golden Record the essay. I felt that it would be most infor- Reddit, and submissions began pouring in; there are mative to arrange them chronologically. We now over 5,000 data points. The first thing the site took many liberties within that very broad revealed was that the Hum wasn’t restricted to Taos structure, but the fundamental direction of and Bristol. It was everywhere. the montage is evolutionary : from the geo- logical through the biological into the tech- It’s in Overland Park, Kansas, where it sounds like “a nological. metallic sound of something vibrating”; in Ankara, Turkey, where it’s a “very deep and quiet rumble that Since horsecarts, chopping wood, the hiss sounds like a very distant diesel generator”; and in of bus brakes, and other sounds of our era Hervey Bay, Australia, where it’s “a pulsating conti- take up as much time on the record as the nuous low background aircraft rumble that does not rippling of primeval ponds, the sequence is go away.” It seems to show up mostly in rural areas open to the criticism that it, like our written and in small cities : More people have heard it in history, vastly overemphasizes the last Boise, Idaho, than in Washington, D.C. Reports dot few thousand years at the expense of the the globe, from Iceland to the Philippines, but they’re millions that preceded them in the chro- concentrated in North America and Europe; MacPher- nicle of our species. But if the sounds in the son surmises this is only because the site is in English. essay accurately reflected the time scale of Earth’s four-and-a-half-billion-year story, all As I listened to MacPherson tell his story, the wind but the last few moments would have been kept batting a branch against the windows, creating only the gurgle of waves and the whisper of a noise just slight enough to hear but that gradually wind across barren plains; mammals would became maddening, as I found myself unable to tune have to roar out all they had to roar in a few it out. Hearing is complicated. It’s not just the physi- seconds, and the proud accomplishments of cal sound waves that matter; it’s also what your brain all human civilization would have expired in does with that information. It’s important to remem- a single beep of Morse code. If the denizens ber that there’s so much we still don’t know about of a distant planet can make sense of the how hearing works. We know low-frequency waves U534, Birkenhead 2004, © John Davies essay — and arguably it may be the easiest can cause pain, nausea, and other deleterious effects part of the record for an alien intelligence to on humans — indeed, the United States and other relate to — perhaps they will not be wholly governments have long experimented with using unacquainted with the paradoxes time en- sound and vibration as non-lethal weapons. Over a genders, and will listen in a tolerant spirit. decade ago, the WaveBand Corporation introduced a Here are the Sounds of the Earth in sequen- device known as Mob Excess Deterrent Using Sound tial order : Audio (MEDUSA), which uses directed microwaves to create a strong, discomforting audio sensation in the victim’s head. More common are Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADS), which use ear-splitting 1 focused noise and have been used on everyone from Music of the Spheres protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, to Somali pirates attacking cruise ships. Add to this the fact that since the early twentieth century we’ve been bombarding The essay begins with the giddy whirl of the atmosphere with all manner of frequencies and tones reflecting the motions of the Sun’s waves. Rather than dismiss Hum hearers as delu- planets in their orbits — a musical readout sional tinnitus sufferers, the question that might be of Johannes Kepler’s Harmonica Mundi, the better asked is why don’t more of us hear it ? sixteenth-century mathematical tract whose NASA © echoes may still be found in the formu- MacPherson liked his map and thought it was useful las that make Voyager possible. Kepler’s for creating a community for Hum sufferers. But he concept was realized on a computer at Bell knew there was nothing scientific about it, nothing Telephone Laboratories by composer Laurie that would lead to a breakthrough in the Hum’s Spiegel in collaboration with Yale professors source. “People tell me where they are and what they John Rogers and Willie Ruff. Each frequency hear and I put a dot on a map,” he said. Then, a few represents a planet; the highest pitch repre- months after he started hearing the Hum, he realized sents the motion of Mercury around the Sun “this crucial experiment that Deming had envisioned as seen from Earth; the lowest frequency hadn’t been done yet.” The boxes. No one had thought represents Jupiter’s orbital motion. Inner to attempt Deming’s simple proposal of three boxes planets circle the Sun more swiftly than that could easily and definitively prove whether the outer planets. The particular segment that Hum was an acoustic noise or a frequency, and no appears on the record corresponds to very one had thought to try it. “I couldn’t believe it.” So roughly a century of planetary motion. Ke- MacPherson crowdsourced a few hundred dollars to pler was enamored of a literal “music of the cover the material costs and built the first one, the one that would block VLF waves. "Supermarket", one of the photographs on the Voyager Golden Record
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MacPherson’s Deming box is six feet by three feet spheres, ” and I think he would have loved by two feet, and made of black low-carbon steel. It their haunting representation here. looks like a cross between a coffin and the monolith from 2001. He keeps it in a woodshed not far from his house. “Deming,” MacPherson said, “suggested 2 that the first box out of three — which is what this Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Thunder is — should be able to completely block VLF radio waves.” Deming’s solution was a box with walls made from inch-thick aluminum, which would have been A series of rumblings to signify the dramatic cost-prohibitive, to say nothing of technically diffi- upheavals of our planet’s early history, inclu- cult. “Then I went on with my research and disco- ding a rare tape of a 1971 Australian earth- vered that mild steel, with a minimum thickness of quake, obtained from Dr. David Simpson of 1.2 millimeters, would provide what they call, in the the Lamont-Doherty Geological Laboratories. physics lingo, about ten skin depths. Each skin depth of mild steel attenuates the signal to, let’s see,” — he Most of the Earth’s atmosphere is thought mumbled a few figures, working out some math in his to have been outgassed through volca- head — “about 30 percent of what the original signal noes, fumaroles and cracks in the surface strength would be. Ten skin depths essentially provi- of our planet in the first few hundred million des 100 percent coverage.” If a Hum sufferer were to years of geological time. Chemical reactions get in the box, and if the Hum was indeed caused by induced by solar ultraviolet light and electri- VLF waves, then the noise should stop once inside the cal storms initiated a sequence of chemical box. This is the test that MacPherson was planning reactions that led eventually to the origin of to do while I was there. His goal was to take it on the life. road, bringing it down the Pacific Coast to meet up with other Hum sufferers and test it. 3 The welds on the box were thick, running along the Mud Pots edges like long-healed scars; as I ran a finger along one of them, he said, “The welding is crucial, because VLF radio waves have a peculiar habit of being able to Geological gurgling sounds similar to the penetrate, and find cracks, just like water.” glub-glub of chocolate pudding on a stove — suggestive, we hoped, of simmering life. He pried open the hatch so I could peer inside. It looked claustrophobic, a pure black interior not long enough for an adult to lie in comfortably. 4 Wind, Rain and Surf “So you’ll need some kind of oxygen source,” I asked, feeling a bit queasy at the thought of spending time locked in there. A momentary evocation of the hundreds of millions of years when these were the only “No need,” MacPherson answered. “There’s plenty Sounds of Earth, with special emphasis on of air inside a box that size, enough for, I don’t know, the oceans as the scene of our origins. The four hours of breathing.” This was probably technical- oceans themselves were out- gassed from ly correct but not at all reassuring. the Earth’s interior. MacPherson propped a foot up on the edge of the box. “If it were a different frequency than VLF,” he said, “like something around microwave, or cell phone 5 frequency, which some people suggest, then this Crickets, Frogs would not have taken me off and on three years to build.” I asked why, and he said that those waves can easily be blocked by thin layers of foil. “You know, the Intended to betoken the debut of vociferous classic — ” life on earth, most of these sounds were taken from the CBS library, with the excep- “The tin foil hat,” I finished, both of us laughing. That tion of one adult male cricket, Teleogryllus he’s able to joke about this suggests his even-keeled oceanicus, who is performing a solo sere- approach to this whole question, but the hint of fringe nade to the females. He was recorded by Dr. conspiracy theories always lurks just around the Ronald R. Hoy at the Langmuir Laboratory at corner and makes actual progress on solving the Hum Cornell University. © NASA extraordinarily difficult.
A Maddening Sound 92 The Sound of Earth 93 The Sound of Earth newrepublic.com Colin Dickey 8 avr. 2016 newrepublic.com Colin Dickey 8 avr. 2016 1978 Ann Druyan Murmurs of Earth
Take, for instance, another prominent voice in the 6 Hum community : Steve Kohlhase, a mechanical Birds, Hyena and Elephant Visualization of a Hum recording from Taos, New Mexico. engineer living in Brookfield, Connecticut, who first started hearing the Hum in 2009. “At one time it was very quiet around here,” Kohlhase told me over the A chorus of creatures to suggest the deve- phone. “We moved up here from New Jersey in 1994, loping varieties of fauna as Earth gets really and there were two Algonquin pipelines by us” — gas busy with life. pipelines — “and an Iroquois pipeline behind us. We bought the house realizing all that. But it was quiet, no issues at all. And during the 2000s, under Bush 7 and all that — and I’m a Republican by the way — Chimpanzee they decided they were going to start expanding. They put a couple of compressor stations behind us, and after they installed those, probably seven months The voice of a lone primate rises above the later, I started sensing a low-frequency disturbing others and seems to screech its mad an- noise when I was in bed — the typical thing : One nouncement of a new consciousness. person hears it and the rest of the family doesn’t.” He wasn’t alone in hearing the noise, he said. “The dog started acting up, and the coyotes started acting up : 8 They started to walk up and down the street, leaving Wild Dog their habitat. … The dog went on Prozac because he couldn’t handle it.” A lonely baying that reverberates with the Kohlhase believes the pipelines running through dangers and uncertainties of our beginnings. his neighborhood and throughout the country are producing the Hum. He claims many of his neighbors hear it too but are afraid to say anything for fear of 9 driving down property values. Other Hum sufferers Footsteps, Heartbeats and Laughter have connected the Hum to electromagnetic radia- tion from nearby power plants, cell phone towers, or “smart” utility meters that broadcast their readings. A human being makes its first appearance, Any facet of modern life that emits a signal or has walking erect with its hands free to change moving parts has at one point or another been put the world. forward as a potential cause of this unbearable noise, as though the Hum were something of a Rorschach blot of technological woe. 10 Fire and Speech But from this set of information Kohlhase has ex- trapolated a conclusion more and more sweeping in scope. He believes that most — if not all — mass Humans begin to use fire to alter their envi- shootings of the past few decades can be traced to na- ronment, and the hearth becomes, perhaps, tural gas pipelines emitting low-frequency radiation. the site of the birth of language and culture. I asked Kohlhase about Aaron Alexis, the Washington The words are those of Professor Richard Navy Yard shooter. “I don’t think he was crazy,” he Lee of the University of Toronto extending said. “I think he was basically sane given the condi- greetings in the !Kung language of the Ka- tions he was experiencing.” Nor does he think Alexis lahari Bushmen, one of the last representa- was alone. Using MacPherson’s maps of Hum reports, tives of the hunter-gatherer societies that and his own research, Kohlhase claimed to have sustained the human endeavor for almost found a correlation between high numbers of Hum all our several-million-year history. A pho- sufferers and mass shootings : “[Alexis] was probably tograph of Bushman hunters is included as affected mentally by living in these Hum clusters, item 60 of the picture sequence. such as many of these other murderers — in Denver, Albuquerque, Tucson, out in California, even out here in Connecticut, at Newtown.” In the wake of the San- dy Hook shooting, Kohlhase submitted material to 11 the Connecticut State Police suggesting that a natural The First Tools gas pipeline near Adam Lanza’s home may have been what drove him to kill 27 people. Our upright posture left our hands free for Tao's Hum Tao's This reading of recent gun tragedies is pretty distur- manipulating the environment. A critical mo- bing in its desire to explain with one stroke the root ment in human history occurred when the cause of these violent episodes, neatly sidestepping first stone tools were made out of soft rock more than two million years ago. Enormous
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the problem of mental health, easy access to high-ca- numbers of stone-cutting, flaking, penetra- 15 pacity assault weapons, and many other factors. It ting and pounding tools are found in many Ships, Horse and Cart, Train, Truck, Tractor, also sidesteps the deep conflicts, ambiguous pro- paleolithic sites. We wished to include the Bus, Automobile, F-lll Flyby, Saturn 5 Lift-Off blems, and difficult solutions in favor of what you sound of stone on stone, of stone tools in could call a magic bullet that resolves the problem the course of being fashioned. Carl walked once and for all. But in the absence of serious scien- the streets of midtown New York in a poi- A great many human miles are covered in tific inquiry, this is precisely the kind of logic that’s gnant effort to find two suitable rocks; not this transportation sequence. The horse and allowed to prevail. only were there no suitable rocks, there cart start out on a dirt road and end up on a were no rocks of any sort to be found. He paved one. The transition modes from there Perhaps this is the reason so many people have seized called Alexander Marshack of the Museum of on come very quickly and reflect accura- on MacPherson’s experiment : its elegant simpli- Comparative Zoology at Harvard for recom- tely the astonishing pace of progress in the city, its promise of silencing the crackpots. With development of transportation over the last one simple test, it seems, we’ll know once and for mendations on a source of soft rock and hundred years. The train and the supersonic all whether the Hum is related to VLF waves. If this a short description of the method of ma- aircraft convey in stereo a satisfying sense theory is correct, we’ll know right away : If someone nufacturing stone tools. Linda Sagan then of motion. This sequence roughly parallels can hear the Hum outside of the box but not inside it, obtained appropriate flint samples from Dr. pictures 102, 105, and 113. there will be strong evidence that it’s a low-frequency Ralph Solecki of the Department of Anthro- issue (the box isn’t soundproof). But the fact that it’s pology, Columbia University, who also provi- such a simple experiment is also why it’s so frustra- ded thick gloves and goggles : flint is sharp, ting that MacPherson hasn’t tried it yet. and there must have been many accidents 16 attendant to the ancient manufacture of Kiss “As it turns out,” MacPherson told me, standing next tools. The record includes this satisfying to his steel monolith, “this unit, despite its very mun- sound of flint fracturing and crumbling when dane and sepulchral appearance, has not been tested. struck sharply with another rock. Some of This wonderful sound proved to be the most Nobody has entered this yet, and I’m going to be the the results would have made adequate, al- difficult to record. We were under strict or- first person.” though rudimentary, knives and spears. ders from NASA to keep it heterosexual, and within such a constraint we tried every per- When I asked him why he hasn’t gone in yet, mutation we could think of without success. MacPherson gave me a range of answers. “For one,” he 12 Jimmy Iovine happened to show up that day, said, “I don’t think this location will work. For many Tame Dog and he was most anxious to produce a be- people the Hum is inaudible out of doors.” The wood- Agecroft Power Station, Salford, 1983, © John Davies lievable kiss by sucking his arm. But this was shed MacPherson uses for the box is covered but not to be that impossible thing, a kiss that would sealed, and has no door on it. He won’t bring it inside The dog is heard to bark again, but this time last forever, and we wanted it to be real. his own house, claiming it won’t fit inside the door. all traces of menace are gone; animals have After many unusable kisses that were either So he has to move it. “In the big picture scientifically, been domesticated. Almost every sound too faint or too smacky, Tim kissed me softly this sounds ludicrous, but I need a trailer. The box that follows on the essay is the result of hu- on the cheek; it felt and sounded fine. looks too much like a coffin. I don’t want it seen out in man activity. Dogs are represented as items public too much.” 43, 61 and 68 of the picture sequence. 17 But it’s not just that he doesn’t want to be seen driving Mother and Child it around; he doesn’t want to be seen testing it, either. 13 “It’ll need to be put in someone’s garage, because that Herding Sheep, Blacksmith Shop, Sawing, will provide the blocking for the ambient sound, but Tractor and Riveter The very first cries of an infant and the stil- it’ll also provide the privacy necessary.” When I threw ling of a six-month-old’s cries by his mother out the possibility of just going ahead and renting were provided for us through the courtesy him a U-Haul, he demurred, changing the topic back A suite of agricultural and construction of Dr. Margaret Bullowa and Dr. Lise Menn of to the theoretical discussion. Having come this far, he sounds. We tested several roosters and seemed suddenly uncomfortable with what he had M.I.T. cows, but they all sounded terribly stagy. made.
Gibsons, after all, is a small town of only a few 18 thousand people, and MacPherson has taught high 14 Life Signs school here for 26 years. Without exaggeration, it’s Morse Code safe to say that most everyone who lives here or their children has gone through his classroom. Since he’s We know that EEG patterns register some begun this project he’s become known locally as the When it came time to decide what message changes in thought. Would it be possible, I Hum guy : When he goes grocery shopping, one of the within the message we would be sending in wondered, for a highly advanced technology teenage clerks will stand behind him out of sight and Morse code, Carl immediately suggested Ad of several million years from now to deci- hum quietly. It’s the kind of joke MacPherson takes in astra per aspera — To the stars through dif- pher my thoughts ? On the chance that it stride. “If I don’t show a sense of humor on this,” he ficulties. William R. Schoppe, Jr. (WB2FWS), a might be, I contacted Dr. Julius Korein of the said, “it’s going to be hell.” ham radio operator at CBS, was kind enough New York University Medical Center, and with to tap it out for us. Tim’s help we set up a recording session David Deming has more or less ended his involve-
A Maddening Sound 96 The Sound of Earth A Maddening Sound 97 The Sound of Earth newrepublic.com Colin Dickey 8 avr. 2016 1978 Ann Druyan Murmurs of Earth newrepublic.com Colin Dickey 8 avr. 2016 17 sept. 2013 Tom Ser vice theguardian.com
ment with the Hum; he’s no longer doing research on for my innermost self. Using a medical-data There was only so long I could stare at a metal box, it, and he declined an interview on the topic (though recorder attached to an audiotape recorder, particularly once MacPherson made it clear that he did answer a few brief questions via email). One I was left to meditate alone in a room for an neither of us were going inside it. We’d talked about How wonders if this is because of people like Kohlhase, hour while the workings of my brain, heart, going out to one of the places where MacPherson has , who Deming sees as the main problem standing in the eyes and muscles were being recorded. heard the Hum the loudest, but instead he took me to way of understanding the Hum and other scientific A short segment of the graphs of my vital his high school. He was eager to show me the garden Nasa s anomalies. “They are inexorably attracted to anoma- signs appears below. he’d set up in the back of his classroom, where his lies of all types, but their behavior is fundamentally Despite the fact that there was only a tiny students were growing tomatoes and various herbs. irrational,” he wrote in a 2007 paper. “On internet He talked about his other hobbies — surfing, cooking, chance that my mind would ever be read in discussion forums, these people relentlessly drive playing bass guitar. He seemed far more enthusiastic this way, the course of my thoughts seemed Voyager out good posters and ruin everything they come into about what his students are doing, and at times see- to me to be worthy of serious consideration. contact with. They need to be condemned swiftly and med quite over the Hum and his role in it. mercilessly.” I made a sort of mental itinerary of the ideas and individuals of history whose memory I I’d come to Gibsons to see the thing that was finally is bringing MacPherson is a bit more tolerant. “Everybody gets a hoped to perpetuate, and with the exception going to solve the problem of the Hum, made by the chance with me,” he said. An inexorable attraction to of a couple of irrepressible facts of my own one man best positioned to make that happen. But anomalies is one of the ways science moves forward. life, I managed to stick to it pretty well. The MacPherson has already begun downplaying the im- William R. Corliss, the controversial physicist who hour was electronically compressed into a pact of the box he’s built. It doesn’t have much prac- spent years collecting records of scientific oddities minute, and it is a fierce sound, something tical use, after all : You can’t live in an airtight steel from singing sands to the Nazca Lines, once wrote of like a string of exploding firecrackers. box all your life. Several people have written about the such research that, “while not science per se,” it no- possibility of living in metal shipping containers as a the sound netheless “has the potential to destabilize paradigms means to escape the Hum, but since VLF waves can and accelerate scientific change. Anomalies reveal 19 permeate most surfaces, one would have to flawlessly nature as it really is : complex, chaotic, possibly even Pulsar seal the container to get any kind of permanent relief. of space unplumbable.” If it is VLF, in other words, it is inescapable, and MacPherson will at best only be able to verify that the When Wolfgang Pauli first proposed the existence of The concluding moment of the essay sounds Hum is everywhere. neutrino particles in 1930, he almost immediately ironically like the rasp of a phonograph nee- down to regretted it, referring to them as a “desperate remedy” dle left to languish unattended at the end of Rather than hoping to end the problem once and for to explain anomalous readings of radioactive decay. a record. It is in fact a recording of a quickly all, MacPherson hopes that his experiment — if he The work that ultimately proved their existence led varying natural radio source some 600 light- ever conducts it — will serve as a catalyst for more Earth to a Nobel Prize in 1995, but there were still problems, years away from us and designated CP1133. serious investigation. “I expect at some point I’ll have and neutrinos continued to confront scientists with It was provided for us by Frank Drake and this taken away from me by a big university lab,” he unexplained readings, unpredictable data, and other Amahl Shakhashiri of the National Astronomy said. He believes that the entire problem could be anomalies that confound known models. Ultimately and Ionosphere Center. The regularity of the solved with a good lab and a small amount of funding. Tom Service the so-called solar neutrino problem (referring to the pulsar beat was considered, when the first fact that only a third of expected neutrinos emitted pulsar was discovered, to be a sign of intelli- from the sun are recorded as expected) was solved in gent life (although we now know that pulsars 1998, leading to another Nobel in 2015 for neutrino are rapidly rotating neutron stars). My re- research. corded life signs sound a little like recorded “The problem is that no one’s In space, no-one can hear you scream, but you can now hear what is going on out there, There are many in the Hum community who see radio static from the depths of space. The paying for this, no one has picked electrical signatures of a human being and a thanks to Nasa's Voyager MacPherson’s box as an equally important scientific this up,” he said. “It’s me and feat. “Regardless of the ultimate findings,” a poster star seem, in such recordings, not so diffe- commented on MacPherson’s site, “you have moved rent, and symbolize our relatedness and a few people sending me PayPal indebtedness to the cosmos. the investigation on the Hum forward in an unpa- Voyager's journey past the heliosphere and Nineteen hundred years ago Horace wrote accounts through the mail that’s ralleled manner.” Having come this far, on the verge into the interstellar medium is one of the that “words challenge eternity.” The fact that of finally testing the VLF theory, excitement among essentially made a big metal box most astonishing and moving feats of human we recall his epigram proves him right. We the Hum community is pretty high. “Thank you,” sitting in a woodshed.” exploration. Voyager's, er, voyage, puts us all another commenter wrote, “for the inspiring initia- have no way of knowing how much of this in our place : remember that photo it sent tive which may eventually bring back a life to many beautiful planet will have been obliterated back in 1990, with the Earth a minuscule, wandering spirits.” long before Voyager ceases its wandering; barely visible blue dot ? Here was, made how many of the voices celebrated on this real, the terrifying Total Perspective Vortex But having finally completed the box, MacPherson record will have been silenced forever by from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy suddenly stopped. After weeks of telling me that he our carelessness or merely by time. Voyager that showed its hapless victims how tiny our would conduct his experiment in my presence, he moves among the stars, bearing its cargo of lives are in the grand scheme of the uni- made it clear that it would not happen. Partly, he said, echoes and images, and, in the logic of such verse's quasi-infinity ! this had to do with the school year starting up again distances, it keeps us alive. and the increasing demands of his main job and his other hobbies. A few weeks later, when MacPherson The reason Nasa knew that Voyager had still hadn’t tested it, a poster on MacPherson’s web entered a new interstellar realm is that they site snarled at him. “Go in already,” he wrote. “What is heard it : or rather, they saw the vibrations it with this cliff-hanger shit ?” of interstellar plasma detected by Voyager's
A Maddening Sound 98 The Sound of Earth A Maddening Sound 99 How Nasa's Voyager is bringing the sound of space down to Earth sciences-tech.krinein.com Loïc Massaïa 18 mars 2013 17 sept. 2013 Tom Ser vice theguardian.com sciences-tech.krinein.com Loïc Massaïa 18 mars 2013 Sound capturedSound by Voyager 1 POURQUOI antennae, and amplified and played them through a speaker. "These frequencies are N'Y A-T-IL within the range heard by human ears", Nasa says - and you too can hear them, here. It PAS was these eruptions of plasmic vibration, interstellar records of explosions on the sun that happened a year before, that told Don DE SON Gurnett and his team of plasma-wave wat- chers at the University of Iowa that Voyager DANS had finally breached the heliosphere and gone still further out there where no man may quite possibly ever (alas) go. (Officially, L'ESPACE ? Voyager has still got a long way - another 14-28,000 years, according to NASA - to truly get out of the reach of the solar sys- Plouf ! L'eau permet à l'onde de se propager. tem; that's how long it will take to escape the Oort cloud and the last vestiges of the gravitational pull of the sun, by which time Voyager's power will have long since been Loïc run out, probably by 2025.) Massaïa As any fule - but very few Hollywood direc- tors - kno, in space no-one can hear you scream, or fire lasers, or attack aliens. As Josh Dzieza of The Daily Beast explains, the interstellar sounds are "not something you could hear if you were aboard Voyager. Chacun a en tête l'image de combats spa- [They are] the result of electrons oscilla- tiaux dantesques où X-Wing, Enterprise ting back and forth, creating an electro- static wave, not air particles colliding, ou autres Vipers participent à des joutes like the pressure waves we hear." But when tonitruantes. Pourtant, depuis Alien, the waves are transliterated into sound, chacun le sait : dans l'espace, personne ne what you hear are those pulses of corusca- ting, ever-rising whistling. Nasa and Voyager vous entendra crier ! Et en effet, le son ne have already given us the sounds of the se propage pas en ces terres arides. solar system (and Don Gurnett has collected some of his favourites here, including "Jovian Mais pourquoi donc que le son y s'aven- upstream ion acoustic waves", and other ture pas en ces lieux ? greatest hits), but these audible messages from the furthest limits of how far humanity has travelled in the universe are perhaps Vous vous doutez bien que ce n'est pas parce qu'il est the most extraordinary of all. frileux ou qu'il a peur du noir. En réalité, la plupart Listen to the universe ! d'entre-vous connaissent certainement une réponse simplifiée, utilisant un raccourci certes vrai, mais dénué d'explication : il n'y a pas de son dans l'espace, car il n'y a pas d'air. L'étendue et sa vitesse de propagation sont liées à la densité du support sur lequel l'onde navigue. En effet, En effet, le son est une onde, et chaque onde a besoin plus ce support est dense plus la vitesse de propaga- d'un support pour se propager. Jetez un caillou dans tion va être grande. Cela s'explique par le fait que les de l'eau, et vous verrez une onde se créer et s'étaler particules de matière qui le composent sont plus ser- de plus en plus. rées. Elles interagissent donc plus vite. Par exemple, dans l'air la vitesse du son est de 343m par seconde. C'est pareil dans l'air. Un son va créer un mouve- Dans l'eau, elle est 4,37 fois plus rapide, et dans l'acier ment au niveau microscopique, un choc, qui va faire 14,57 fois plus rapide que dans l'air. vibrer l'air de façon différente selon son intensité et son positionnement dans le spectre sonore (grave ou A contrario, cette densité est un obstacle à son éten- aigu). Les particules composant l'air vont se "pous- due, puisqu'il devient plus difficile de faire "bouger" ser" les unes les autres pour étendre l'onde, qui ira en des choses quand elles sont plus serrées. Ainsi l'onde, s'atténuant au fur et à mesure qu'elle s'éloignera de si elle se propagera plus vite dans l'eau, ira finalement son point d'origine. moins loin…
Pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas de son dans l'espace ? 100 How Nasa's Voyager is bringing the sound of space down to Earth Pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas de son dans l'espace ? 101 sciences-tech.krinein.com Loïc Massaïa 18 mars 2013 7 sept. 2017 Jack Needham wired.co.uk sciences-tech.krinein.com Loïc Massaïa 18 mars 2013
Quid de l'espace, donc ?
Il est vide, ou presque (environ 1 atome par mètre cube). Ce qui ne permet pas aux ondes de se propager. Effectivement, envoyez un cailloux dans une mare Jack vide, ou parsemée de quelques gouttes d'eau, et vous pourrez attendre longtemps l'observation de petites vagues (même si des ondes se créent tout de même lors du contact avec le sol, l'une se propageant dans l'air, l'autre au travers de la terre) ! Ainsi, vous n'enten- drez pas l'explosion d'un chasseur TIE même si vous mettez un micro à quelques mètres de lui. AMBISONIC Par contre, le choc produit sera suffisamment violent pour éjecter de la chaleur, des rayonnements (lumi- neux, electro-magnétiques…), d'éventuels effets gra- vitationnels (même si infimes à cette échelle) et de la Need matière (les débris de l'appareil) jusqu'à votre X-Wing, provocant -outre d'éventuels dégâts- un puissant capharnaüm sonore dans votre cabine de pilotage. ham En effet, les vibrations auxquelles votre appareil est soumis se propageront très efficacement sous forme de sons dans votre cabine pressurisée et oxygénée.
Du coup on peut se poser une nouvelle question : une telle explosion est-elle possible dans l'univers, puisque nous savons qu'il n'y a pas d'oxygène (indis- pensable à la combustion) et que la propagation due au choc s'avère difficile ? Field recordist Chris Watson is mapping the sounds of the Et bien oui ! Comment ferions-nous décoller des appareils de la Lune autrement ? Pour qu'il y ait sea to create immersive au- combustion, il suffit d'avoir suffisamment de- com dio art bustible et de comburant pour démarrer la réaction et la maintenir. Les moteurs et réacteurs sont ainsi alimentés en combustible (un carburant comme le “As a teenager, way back when, I remem- kérosène par exemple) et en comburant (le dioxygène est le plus courant). Un chasseur TIE transporte suffi- ber reading a book by the famous marine samment de matière explosive (carburant et arsenal) biologist Jacques Cousteau called ‘The et d'oxygène (la cabine et son système d'alimentation) Silent Undersea World’…and I thought that it pour réaliser une jolie explosion, mais silencieuse, et was bollocks,” says Chris Watson. As a field peu étendue, carburant et comburant se consumant, recordist, sound designer and composer, se dispersant et se refroidissant vite. Watson’s work uncovers the natural, audial phenomena of our world. Mais…
…Une autre question pourrait tarauder les plus curieux d'entre vous : "Si l'onde sonore a tant de diffi- Throughout September, he will take resi- culté à se propager dans l'espace, pourquoi n'en est-il dence at Torbay’s The Tale arts festival with pas de même pour les ondes lumineuses et pour les the sound piece No Man’s Land. “The sea ondes radios ?" is full of sound, it’s very sound rich, and a lot of the sounds of the sea we allude to as Ah ah, bonne question, petit sacripant, tu auras music. We call it ‘seal song’, or ‘whale song’, un bon point ! and there’s a remarkable characteristic in that which I find very engaging. We think we Eh bien, parce que la lumière, si elle se comporte live on planet Earth. We don’t, we live on pla- comme une onde, se déplace avec son propre sup- net Ocean.” port : Le photon. Mais ça tu le savais déjà, n'est-ce pas ? Alors pourquoi poser la question ? Rends-moi Watson turns natural sound into narratives ton bon point ! by placing a microphone where you can’t
Les satellites communiquent par radio © NASA
Pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas de son dans l'espace ? 102 Open your ears to the freaky ambisonic magic of the ocean Pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas de son dans l'espace ? 103 sciences-tech.krinein.com Loïc Massaïa 18 mars 2013 7 sept. 2017 Jack Needham wired.co.uk independent.co.uk Plymouth Herald 16 avr., 2015 7 sept. 2017 Jack Needham wired.co.uk
C'est exactement la même chose pour l'onde radio : put your ears. In No Man’s Land, perched SCIENTISTS software. A 16-channel mixer, four subwoo- Tout comme la lumière, elle est une onde électroma- atop a cliff in Berry Head, Torquay, Watson fers and four vertical speaker systems gnétique. De fait, d'un point de vue quantique, uses frequencies from the deep to carry suspended from the walls of the cliff creates ces ondes sont à la fois onde et matière (sous forme d the listener through the ocean currents THINK THEY'VE a 360-degree sphere of audio – where the e corpuscules), elles peuvent donc également se of the world. gulls of Brixham Harbour circle above your déplacer dans l'espace grace à leur corps matériel… head as the shore of Berry Head washes FOUND THE against your feet.
“The cliff face is a place that was once CAUSE OF on the sea bed, so I thought it would be great to create something that would place an “No Man’s Land is rooted in a sound that THE EARTH'S everybody will know. The sound of waves on audience within the environment where that cliff face once stood,” he says. “So that’s a beach, or the opening and closing of the what we did. You experience the sounds MADDENING ocean,” Watson explains. “But we’ve taken of Weddell seals under the sea ice of the An- these sounds into a really strange, some- tarctic, then travel to coral reefs in the south times dark, scary and wild place. We’d last China sea,” Watson explains. “You hear the HUMMING literally two minutes under the surface, but songs of humpback whales off the coast of it’s a place that we can experience sonically.” the Dominican Republic, to Orcas hunting in NOISE the north atlantic. This creates an amazing musical composition, and I hope it liberates people to think about what’s underneath the water. It’s a journey of the imagination, Plymouth Herald if anything.”
People all over the world have complained Watson’s journey into sound began as a of a strange humming noise. founding member of Sheffield’s pop-indus- trialists Cabaret Voltaire. Since then, he has recorded polar bears in the Antarctic for the BBC Frozen Planet series with Sir David Scientists have confirmed the cause of a strange Attenborough, and spent a month crafting humming noise that emanates from the Earth and music from the natural tectonic rhythms of has baffled people for more than forty years – and was even a factor in one reported suicide. Mexico’s Ghost Train for his 2011 LP El Tren Fantasma. The noise has been talked about worldwide and also made local newspaper headlines in the UK. It is often But, by Watson’s own admission, No Man’s referred to as a “phenomenon” and “the hum”, usually Land is his most ambitious project yet, one prefixed with the location of where it is heard. three years in the making that covers thou- sands of miles. “If I’ve ever been anywhere In Britain, the most famous example was the “Bristol near the sea during my travels I’ve made hum” that made the news in the late 1970s. One news- new recordings with this project in mind,” he paper asked readers in the city: “Have you heard the says. “But even in Torbay there are still areas Hum?” and at least 800 people said they had – accor- left undiscovered, the sea bed being one of ding to the BBC – and some had suffered headaches them. Sound travels almost five times faster and nosebleeds from it. underwater than it does through the air, and that’s the only reason why we’re able to It has been described like “a diesel car idling in the hear these sounds. I’m interested in explo- distance” by a BBC interviewee and the maddening ring what’s there. It’s a celebration of ocean sound has driven people stir-crazy in trying to figure sound.” it out. Especially when they can only hear it at home and during the night. Using ambisonic recordings, a technique that derives height, depth and width from People living on the south coast have complained this a sound source, Watson’s 45-minute long week of a constant and low-pitched sound for which composition is mapped to the specifica- they have found no cause – as reported by Plymouth tions of the cliff face using spatialized audio Herald.
Pourquoi n'y a-t-il pas de son dans l'espace ? 104 Open your ears to the freaky ambisonic magic of the ocean The cause of the Earth's maddening humming noise 105 Open your ears to the freaky ambisonic magic of the ocean independent.co.uk Plymouth Herald 16 avr., 2015 independent.co.uk Plymouth Herald 16 avr., 2015
It has been mistaken for leaking pipes, phone masts, wind farms, low-frequency submarine communica- tions and even mating fish.
“For the first few years I lost sleep, couldn’t concen- trate and was unable to do anything. I was constantly in tears, which put a great strain on my husband. It has changed me from an active, creative person to a stifled, angry pessimist,” a woman told The Inde- pendent back in 1994.
Doctors blamed patients’ abilities to hear it on tinni- tus, until Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge had confirmed sometime in the 1990s that the cause is external.
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However, the search for the truth could now be over as researchers claim that microseismic activity from long ocean waves impacting the sea bed is what makes our planet vibrate and produces the droning sound.
The pressure of the waves on the seafloor generates seismic waves that cause the Earth to oscillate, said Fabrice Ardhuin, a senior research scientist at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France.
The continuous waves produce sounds lasting from 13 to 300 seconds. They can be heard by a relatively small proportion of people – who are sensitive to the hums – and also by seismic instruments.
“We have made a big step in explaining this myste- rious signal and where it is coming from and what is the mechanism,” Ardhuin said of the study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Understanding the ringing could also help resear- chers gain a better knowledge of the Earth’s structure, he added.
Microseismic waves penetrate through the Earth’s mantle so recording these waves could give scientists a much more detailed picture of what lies beneath. Submarines, as well as masts and gas pipes, were blamed for the hum Discovering fainter seismic signals could also allow scientists to better detect small or faraway earthquakes.
The cause of the Earth's maddening humming noise 106 The cause of the Earth's maddening humming noise 107 ------
I bounced out of bed at exactly 1:00AM. Very dominating HUM. Now 1:16, the pul- sating begins. No decrease.
Trembling within the body, nausea.
Better get my book out and turn up the T.V.
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Terry Harris
Parkersburg, WV USA - Wednesday, February 13, 2002 at 22:20:45 (PST)
------Cet ouvrage, version web d'un livre bien réel et physique, peut être téléchargé et imprimé si besoin, mais non vendu, sous format physique ou numérique. Il fut conçu Léo Fouan, graphiste et musicien de 21 ans, dans le cadre du cours de Patrick Paleta, à l'ESAD d'Amiens, entre septembre 2017 et fevrier 2018. Il regroupe des articles de sources diverses se concentrant autour du thème de la preuve de présence par la captation du son. Cette troisième version s'appelle TROIS. © Léo Fouan 2018