Can Infrasonic Waves Kill You?

Can Infrasonic Waves Kill You? Introduction Have you ever experienced nausea, paranoia, and the feeling of being watched? If so, you might be under the effects of infrasound. Infrasound is any sound lower than 20 Hz (Hertz). Infrasound can be created by man-made objects or nature. It can be created by nature from things like severe weather, surf, lee waves, avalanches, earthquakes, volcanoes, bolides, waterfalls, lightning, calving of icebergs, upper-atmospheric lightning, and auroras and it can be created by human made objects like sonic booms, explosions, machinery, wind turbines, and subwoofers. Infrasound can be used as many things like a weapon, an early warning of natural disasters, or it can be used to locate things. Elephants, whales, giraffes, rhinoceros, alligators, and okapis also use infrasonic waves to communicate. (Wikipedia, 2012), (Trueghost, n.d.) An example of infrasound as a weapon is that in World War I it was used to locate things such as artillery, which facilitated soldiers to know what to do because they knew the location of the enemys weapons not allowing the enemy to do a surprise attack. Another example is that it is used to locate tornadoes minutes before they touch down. Another example in which infrasound is used is that migrating birds use infrasound when they migrate. They sense infrasound from turbulent airflows as a navigational aid or GPS. (Wikipedia, 2012) A very frequently asked question is Can infrasonic waves kill you? The answer to this question is yes but dont worry because not all frequencies of infrasound can really hurt you. This lethal frequency lies in 7 Hz. It is believed that 7 Hz is lethal because it matches the frequencies of your brain and organs. This match of frequencies can cause serious damage to your body or even death. Nausea, nervousness, cold, paranoia, depression, and blurred moments in peripheral vision are some common feeling that can be caused by infrasound. (Wikipedia, 2012), (Lowertheboom, n.d.) In this experiment our research question is Can humans sense infrasound? Our hypothesis for this project is that if we take at least four test subjects (two male and two female) and put sounds less than 20 hertz then, we will be able to know if humans can sense infrasound because of our results. Through our research we found that when people are exposed to infrasound they end up feeling uncomfortable. That makes us think that even though humans do not necessarily hear infrasound they can sense it. (Lowertheboom, n.d.) Natural disasters such as earthquakes can produce infrasound. If we could sense or feel the infrasound waves we would be able to predict or protect ourselves from a natural disaster without the need of modern technology. Also if this experiment goes the way we expect, humans would be able to use it in their favor. We will also help people to prevent infrasonic waves so that people wont harm themselves. (Serendip, 2012) We predict that all of our human subjects will sense infrasound. We think that all of our human subjects will sense infrasound because with our research we have seen that when people are exposed to infrasound they have side effects.The most common side effect will probably be headache and nausea.Some of the human results can vary because of age or gender of the subject. We hypothesize that the younger test subjects will be able to sense infrasound better because of theirage.