Do you ever watch Japanese animation? If so -- or perhaps even if not -- you might have heard of Serial Experiments: Lain .
If you paid attention to the boring geeky part about electronic networks and the atmosphere and brain frequencies, you might have noticed they mention something called the Schumann Resonance. . .
Far from being a figment of the imagination of Japanese animators, the Schumann Resonance is the natural phenomenon that is studied quite a bit. But what's more to ths point, I believe that this phenomenon pretty much qualifies as the World Record for a Scientific Phenomenon With The Most New Age Disinformation Spread About It!
You can consider, from an electrical point of view, the atmosphere between the ground and the ionosphere to be a giant, spherical shaped cavity. Now electromagnetism forms in waves, and when waves travel in a confined space there are always frequencies where the wave is reinforced instead of cancelling itself out.
Consider waves in a bathtub. If you make lots of splashes, they reflect off the walls, and soon cancel out. In the atmosphere you can experience this same phenomenon with shortwave or AM radio. The waves don't go forever but you can get some stations at oddly long distances because the waves reflect off the ionosphere. But if you splash the tub in just the right spot, with the right timing, you can end up with the water almost "rocking". This is the primary resonance of the tub.
The cavity all the way around the earth between the ground and ionosphere, which is about 60 miles up, is planet-sized! The EM resonance in that cavity is thus very long wavelenghth, and very low-frequency. And, since EM waves aren't really water waves, and the atmosphere is contantly excited by lightning and cosmic rays, the entire cavity is full of standing EM waves on the resonant frequencies.
Scientists care because it's studying this sort of thing that was the reason they became scientists in the first place.
Engineers care because they have to take these waves into account when designing various electronic devices.
New Age people care because it occurred to someone that before modern civilization came about, all creatures on the Earth's surface evolved and lived whilst bathed in this radiation. So there must be some spiritual significance to it.
Merchants care, because they sell all sort of devices targeted at the gullible end of the New Age people.
You care, because you have read this far on the page.
and I care, because I used to work on atmospheric phenomena at NASA; and when I type "Schumann Resonance" into Google I get more bullshit than real information. I don't want to wade through it repeatedly. So I put together this page.
These links are mostly random for the moment but they are what I have gleaned from some searching on the web. I will try to organize then in order of relevance and generality.
Many people theorize that by surrounding ourselves by the much higher-frequency EM vibrations introduced by modern civilization (e.g. the 60Hz in a standard American electric powergrid), we are doing our own psychology unknown harms.
Some folks think that we are "winding up" the Schumann Resonance by human activity, and this is a Bad Thing. However consider this: a resonance effect for a standing wave has to do with dimensions - the length of the wave, the size of the finite medium. We can maybe affect the height of the ionosphere in a minute, indirect way, but on a planetary dimension... Well anyhow. Here are some of the writeups on this topic.
Some folks predict a full magnetic pole flip based on a Schumann drift, and a couple even predict the End Of The World.
These sites have a host of science links, but they are subjugated eventually by talk of brain waves and logical leaps to pseudo spirituality.
listing of any links is not an endorsement of these products, no no no.
Since some people think we are doing harselves harms by cutting ourselves off from experiencing the excited Schumann Resonance directly, some merchants have decided to provide these people with the answer to their fears - artificial Schumann-Resonance-Frequency EM field generators.
Some people thing the frequency is significant enough that reproducing it in the audio range is beneficial. Sort of like enabling us to "hear" the EM resonance.
