Fortunately, researchers have identified some hum sources. This success might indicate that the “global hum” is many isolated instances. In Borneo, a sound startled and frightened residents for two days in 2012. Many equated the noises to loud snoring. Quickly investigators discovered the source, a factory performing tests on its boiler system, reports Live Science. Similarly, a hum in Kokomo, Indiana, was identified as a fan and compressor at an industrial site, writes Financial Times. Even stranger, in the 1980s, a hum reported by residents of Sausalito, California, was pinpointed as the mating call of a fish, the plainfin midshipman, according to New Republic.

A more notable instance occurred in 2011. Residents of Windsor, Canada, began to report an intermittent hum, sometimes lasting a few hours at a time. After complaints continued to rise, the government stepped in and funded a study. In 2013, researchers out of Windsor University identified the sound and the source of the problem. The Windsor hum was a 35-hertz airborne sound wave, most likely emanating from the location of a U.S. Steel Plant on Zug Island, just across the U.S.-Canada border. Unfortunately, neither the U.S. government nor U.S. Steel cooperated with the study, so Canadian researchers could not do further investigations. Luckily, in 2020, U.S. Steel closed the plant and the noise ceased, says Discover Magazine. Stories like these suggest that when substantial efforts are put into uncovering a hum’s source, it can be found.

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