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posted by FatPhil on Thursday October 19 2017, @01:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the hawkwind-fans dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday October 19 2017, @04:29PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 19 2017, @04:29PM (#584640) Journal

    I have my doubts that the sound provided is the actual sound, since the first time I heard the story it was referred to as a reconstruction of the sound. I suspect that there's a bunch of weasel words in the provided version that are getting stripped out in the news stories.

    Of course, that's not the only possibility. The feds could just be lying. The reported sound could be present as camouflage for some other attack. Etc. But I find the "sonic attack" theory quite difficult to swallow.

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