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The State Department has not provided further details about the medical condition of the affected staffers. But government officials have suggested anonymously that the diplomats may have been assaulted with some sort of sonic weapon.
Experts in acoustics, however, say that's a theory more appropriate to a James Bond movie.
Sound can cause discomfort and even serious harm, and researchers have explored the idea of sonic weaponry for years. But scientists doubt a hidden ultrasound weapon can explain what happened in Cuba.
"I'd say it's fairly implausible," said Jürgen Altmann, a physicist at the Technische Universität Dortmund in Germany and an expert on acoustics.
Once again, the New York Times gets it wrong. James Bond is not the movie genre they're looking for.
mrpg also brings us this less-critical AP report, What Americans Heard in Cuba Attacks: The Sound.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:50PM
If this was a sonic attack it would be an impressive bit of engineering.
I have been in high noise industrial environments where double ear protection was required and while I have to admit that you do feel as if you have been through the ringer after being in such an environment for an extended period of time, I have never heard of mental impairment injuries being caused by sound.
My experience is that industrial sites in the USA are very concerned about potential injuries, I can't even set foot on most sites for event a walk through without going through some form of safety training that identifies know hazards. While sound energy is a known hazard hearing loss has always been identified as the risk, no safety training I have sat through has ever identified mental impairment as a risk.
I think the worst sound environment I have been in is a 3x1 combined cycle power plant where the steam turbine was down and they were dumping their entire steam flow to the condenser. The amount of thermal energy that was being dissipated in the condenser was mind boggling. Fortunately only a small portion this energy was being turned into sound, but a small portion of ~1000 MW is a lot of energy! After just walking around the plant you felt as if someone had been vigorously shaking you the entire time.
The plant ran that way for ~3 weeks, no one was injured. I am sure that we were all being subjected to a very high level of sound energy across a wide spectrum. If the Cuba incidents are caused by a sonic weapon it must be highly focused and specifically engineered to cause harm.