Where Ultrasounds and UFOs come to meet

Walking home, I noticed a Tesla parking in front of an e.charger. It is still a rare sighting here in Germany. So I slowed down to observe the maneuver. As I walked by, the driver had plugged his car into the charger. That’s when I heard it, I hear this high pitched noise I often hear around cars... or at least some electrical devices.

It’s been years, but never talked about it with anyone. And by the incredulous stare my wife gave me when I asked her if she knew this, I remembered why. This time, I decided to ask the Internet. But what to search for?

“Beeping sound”? No. “Inaudible sound”? No. Something with “car sounds”? No way. It took a few searches to finally nail down the right keywords and find the answer. The trigger word was “high pitched”. And the answer is in fact pretty unimpressive. What I hear are apparently ultrasounds that are at the limit of the audible spectrum. Some people can hear them. Most don’t. Very sensible persons will even get headaches or become nauseous. Others, like me, will get some kind of tinnitus. This explains that. Nothing world shattering, but annoying nonetheless. I seem to hear this most often with older TV-sets on Standby and car-alarms...

But on the way to finding this answer, I lost myself on absurd but so delightful tangents. Those had to do with people rejecting science and believing in UFO abductions. Yep you read that right. I landed on what I later discovered were “paranormal boards”. I read the stories of two persons describing similar symptoms. In both stories, came questions of aliens abductions, intra-cranial implants,  having seen UFO sightings, etc. 🤨

I had the same reaction to it than when I watched the flat-earth documentary on Netflix. A mix of surprise, joy, fascination and disgust. On one side, the envy of discovering more about those people and their (crazy) world views. The disgusted fascination for a group of people clearly rejecting the Science I hold dear. And on the other side, the need to run away as far as I can...

Long story short, this was a delightful 15 min inquiry! May this post serve as a reminder to myself, to google weird shit and adding the word „UFO“ to the query once in a while...

Photo by Artem Kovalev on Unsplash