Tom
An Old Friend
What is the Taos Hum?
What is the Taos Hum?
A variety of theories have been offered as an explanation, ranging from the mundane to the fantastic, the psychological to the paranormal. Stoned hippies, secret government mind control experiments, underground UFO bases and everything in between have been blamed.
The hum seems to have first been reported in the early 1990s.
Sensitive equipment was set up in the homes of several of the "hearers," measuring sounds and vibrations but after extensive testing nothing unusual was detected.
The research revealed, however, that there was not a single identifiable Taos Hum but instead several different ones that people reported; some describe it as whir, hum or buzz. The fact that not everyone heard the same thing was puzzling, and suggests that they may have been reporting subjective experiences instead of objective sounds.
Many researchers suggest that the answer to the Taos Hum mystery may be found in the inner world of personal experience instead of the outer world of factories and heavy equipment. What does your tongue taste like? What does your nose smell like? What does your ear sound like?
Even though we don't notice it, our ears sometimes create their own noises. And because the sounds are subtle (and because most people are constantly surrounded by sound, whether it's music, television, video games, or just a typical noisy city life) we don't hear them until it's very quiet or we are listening carefully. This phenomenon, called spontaneous otoacoustic emissions, is different than auditory disorders such as tinnitus, which causes a ringing in the ears.
As always in science, "unexplained" does not mean "unexplainable." Countless things about the world around us were initially mysterious and unexplained (from the causes of germ-borne disease to the nature of lightning), but were eventually explained through research and science. It's possible that the Taos Hum is real, and its true origins remain unknown, and it's also possible that the hum only exists in the minds and ears of those who report it.