![]() ![]() ![]() However, despite science coming out against the mysterious frequency, I had to know for sure. What he's saying is that while sound can be an extremely powerful thing and produce real physical effects, the brown note is most likely a big steaming pile of bullshit. If you make it strong enough, then yes, you can knock anything over, I suppose." "As you get to low frequencies," he says, "the amount of air movement you need in vibration is basically just the mechanical damage of getting blown backwards and forwards. He gives the example of a frequency being able to shatter a wine glass if it causes enough vibrations. With something as messy, wet and floppy as a human, how could something be as precise as brown noise?"ĭr Wright tells me that, among the scientific community, brown noise is considered to be an elaborate myth, based off the power of sound in other situations. There's no particular reason why the bowels would respond differently than any other part of your body. "But the idea that there's a magical frequency where astounding things happen is wishful thinking. "The idea that there is a frequency that your body may respond a bit more and a bit less to might be true," explains Dr Matthew Wright, a Senior Lecturer in Acoustics at the University of Southampton. It's probably worth noting that he didn't soil himself either, so consider that one strike against the brown note being a real thing. Nothing happened to me and I was still alive at the end of it." "It was turned up to 145 decibels, which was a very high level and clearly audible. "I was so mad about this that I sat in my sound chamber to listen to 7 hertz myself," he says. One day, back in the 1970s, Dr Leventhall read a French scientific paper that suggested subjecting yourself to this frequency could cause instant death. Within this infrasound region, the frequency of 7 hertz has always been shrouded in mystery because of supposedly harmful effects. Here's what we know about the "brown note": it's supposedly in the infrasound area, somewhere below 20 hertz – which is beyond the lower limit of what the average human can detect. Reading like a 19th century slapstick comedy, it's not hard to see how it captured so many imaginations. It claims that during the national anthem a horn let off the supposed "brown note", causing the crowd to immediately start wetting themselves and uncontrollably shitting everywhere. The article refers to the opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition in Victorian England, where thousands of people gathered. "I remember when I first saw the article after it was published in 1974 I didn't quite cotton on that it was a spoof. "It's the earliest reference to a sound causing diarrhoea that I've come across," he says. ![]() So where do the myths about the brown noise come from? The internet has helped rumours spread faster than ever before, and satirical articles are regularly shared as fact on Facebook, but Leventhall believes the idea of the brown noise first originated from a spoof article in New Scientist from over 40 years ago. Beyond that, there's nothing that's really been accepted." There's also a pink noise and some people talk about a red noise, too. He adds: "Scientifically there's something called white noise. "There have been tests on the effect of low frequency noise on people, and I've also done some looking at the effect on task performance and productivity, but the effects aren't very great." "Some kid with a subwoofer might play it up high, but that's just people messing around," he says. "There haven't been any proper scientific tests on brown noise," says Dr Geoff Leventhall, an academic turned noise vibrations consultant who is so invested in low frequency sounds that he's conducted several of his experiments on himself. READ: The Five Times I've (Literally) Shit My Pants It clearly wasn't true, but that didn't stop plenty of people from sharing it as if it was.īut the question remains: is the brown note a real thing, or just a load of shit? More recently, a news story circulated about a DJ in Cornwall who played the brown note to a packed-out club, unleashing hell with a drop no one expected. ![]()
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