By Peter Cochrane, 14 October 2008 08:00
COMMENT
Written and dispatched to silicon.com from the marina at Gocek in Turkey via a free wi-fi service
About an hour ago a lady from Belgium emailed me saying she was worried about the fact she keeps hearing Morse Code in her head without the aid of any radio receiver or other form of electronics.
Scanning the internet I found a large number of pages giving 'hocus pocus and pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo' explanations - and worse, a lot of paranoia from those worried about everything including their own shadow.
So I decided I'd better try and put the record straight. Here is my email reply to the lady:
Dear X,
No need to worry about this as it is a common occurrence and fully understood and explainable. Earwax and moisture on the outside of the ear, and electrolytes in the inner ear are ideal mechanisms for creating a 'rectifying or electro-mechanical action'. This means that the energy from a nearby radio transmitter gets converted into an electrical and/or mechanical signal in your ear. Any mechanical flexing of wax or rectification by the electrolytes will do the trick! And any direct conversion to an electrical current in the acoustic nerves, and ditto, you will hear it.
Another likely mechanism is the electrical signal to mechanical vibration conversion due to metal-based fillings in teeth and the associated moisture and acidity in the mouth. Sound propagation would then go via the jawbone to the ear.
The chemistry is a bit complex as is the electrical/mechanical conversion and can include several signals at once 'heterodyning or interfering' to give you a clear tone. But it is explainable - and you are not going mad. And I sometimes hear similar transmissions too!
Who is the culprit for the transmission? Not many people use Morse Code anymore but radio beacons, embassies and some news agencies do. So listen to the signal and see if it repeats regularly: If yes - then it is undoubtedly some form of beacon. If the Morse code is slow and deliberate it is most likely a human operator. If the Morse is incredibly fast it is most likely a machine. In either case it may be an embassy, the military, a news feed by an agency etc.
One of the last vestiges of a Morse generation is the amateur radio community. Just have a look around your community for unusual antennas on houses and buildings and see what you can find.
I hope this helps you.
Peter
P.S. There are a lot of bogus/misleading websites on this topic that purport to be authoritative but in reality they add nothing to the understanding short of witchcraft and paranoid thinking!
Searching through my writings in the early 1990s I found this rather more succinct explanation:
"We are largely made up of water, electrolytes, salts and sugars, which is an ideal soup for electrical rectification. Or to put it another way, our ears can look like a cats-whisker crystal set. The only problem with this phenomenon is its unreliability; you can never predict when it's going to work, and sometimes it really is an unwanted distraction."
It is interesting that we increasingly live with and rely upon our technology for our survival, and yet the web is full of superstition and unfounded explanations of what we have fully comprehended for decades. During my search I found all manner of discussion groups making a big and mysterious deal about cross-channel interference in analogue TV and radio systems.
The really worrying thing is that the people responsible seem to have lost the ability to search out the truth and would sooner perpetuate errors of understanding, half-truths and what amounts to worse than 'old wives tales'! Even more worrying: our education systems now seem to be almost encouraging this kind of nonsense.
As the number of people in society with deep technical knowledge (of anything) shrinks we may be left with more and more of this stuff dissipating human effort and resources, and goodness knows we can ill-afford such waste!
Comments
There are 9 comments. Join the discussion
1. Paul
My wife's grandmother lived in Solihull, quite near a powerful radio transmitter, and used to be able to pick up the cricket on her bedstead!
2. Richard Percival
Peter, let me recommend "How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World:
A Short History of Modern Delusions" by
Francis Wheen. I am equally horrified by how few people still get a broad education, and can make well-informed judgments for themselves. One result - guests invited to comment on current affairs selected for their fame rather than their competence, and talking heads who celebrate ignorance. Fertile ground for knee-jerk reactions and ill-informed legislation, leading to extremism and finally autocracy. Not a pretty prospect.
3. Karen Challinor
Peter - how many people do you know who start reaching for their mobile phone shortly before it starts to ring or give any other external indication of an incoming call or text message ?
I know several and I've done it myself on more than one occasion and you probably do it yourself
if you put the phone near electronic equipment with a speaker you can hear something remarkably similar to morse just before the phone receives incoming messages
so no I'd agree the Belgian lady isn't mad, she's probably just a bit more sensitive than most to mobile phone traffic and it's likely she lives quite close to a mobile phone relay
4. Peter Cochrane
Paul = This 'non-linearity problem' will always be with us and will tend to crop up in the most unlikely places. Some parts of the mobile network have been bedeviled with strange effects due to rusty nuts and bolts coupled with dissimilar metals/acid rain etc. The really good news is that we are moving away from a world of a few very powerful transmitters to a world of millions of low power units. Hopefully this will see the general problem diminish. Peter
5. misceng
Peter -- Non-linearity has been around for a long time. I visited Westerglen radio transmitter in the 1950's. There the engineer taking us round mentioned complaints from a local farmer that his cows could not rest because the Home Service (now Radio 4) was too loud in his cow shed. It had a corrugated iron roof with rusty bolts.
6. Martin Wright
The really dangerous thing about this is that it allows those in a position of responsibility to pursue their own personal agenda, even though that is at the expense of others.
Our recent "economic boom" was a complete illusion because it mistook debt for wealth, yet most bought into it because that is what they wanted to hear. Even more dangerous is that the same people that brought us the illusory boom followed by the real crash are now calling for lower interest rates and many people are buying it, because they have been repeatedly told that if times are tough then you need lower interest rates, without the slightest understanding as to why that is sometimes true (and why it is sometimes completely the wrong thing to do).
Now I'm not saying that those people who want lower interest rates and the banks to be forced to restore lending to 2007 levels actively want another great depression, rather they are misguided while pursuing their own agenda without understanding the consequences (or more likely are deliberately closing their minds to the possible negative consequences).
No, my point is that at least the internet bloggers are ignorant without an agenda and don't have an election to win.
7. Peter Cochrane
Richard = Thanks for that - I'll order a copy via my Christmas Wish List! Peter
8. Peter Cochrane
MiscEng = Yes indeed it has a long history stretching back to the early days of telegraphy and the start of electronics in 1915....and continues to plague us today in our mobile networks. Peter
9. Peter Cochrane
Martin = Nice one - look out for my next blog on the banking/financial crisis/fiasco - I'm sure you will resonate with it. Peter