this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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How far does that actually travel, and how does that compare to other bad stuff that has been around longer, like refineries or power substations or whatever?
So, you may have noticed that 5 GHz Wi-Fi has smaller coverage area than 2.4 GHz.
It works that way all the way down to infrasound, which is <20 Hz, and natural examples would be whale communications (thousands of kilometers) or volcano eruptions (infrasound wave from Krakatoa eruption lapped around entire globe multiple times).
As for human factors - basically any big industrial tech object is gonna be the source of ultrasound. So it's kind of safe to assume that infrasound from data centers may be "heard" from at least several kilometers away. Dunno how it compares to refineries and power substations - but they're also source of that.
At night I could hear a train idle from a kilometer away through town easily. That was still in the audible range, not infrasound, and also it was literally just the engine idling, not the train being driven - not super loud even if standing next to it. A bit louder than a car.
data centres have been around for decades as well, I believe it's the new hyper scaler data centres that possibly have this infrasound thingo
But that's nothing related to a google trend graph of dizziness and data centres, that's as the OP says, random
These are great:
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Spurious shmurious! The causation here is clear: eating butter generates wind farms. Eat more butter to save the planet everyone! It's undeniable science!
Dammit people would you stop commenting on Technology Connections videos? I can't afford it!
When datacenters are being powered by unregulated natural gas generators then it has a massive impact
Where I live there's a refinery, about ten years ago they changed the burners on the tall torches for a new kind that burn apparently cleaner but they make a lot more noise. It is 6km away with no direct line of sight, the low pitch rumble makes some of the windows in my house rattle.
https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo?is=V2TgYgy6_cqwgCYC
A very informative video
https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo
Same link without the tracking parameter.
I’m a big Benn Jordan fan but he missed the mark on this one. See this detailed rebuttal. Sniping between the author and Jordan on Blue Sky aside, he makes a lot of good points about how the research does not show negative health impacts related to infrasound.