YouTuber discovers aircraft noise trick that can geolocate videos to within 100M

Posted by pain_perdu 1 day ago

Comments

Ive seen other videos where they listen for the electrical grid hum. I think on a practical level this is far more achievable than spotting plane noises.

Comment by Orygn 1 day ago

Grid hum is more of a when than a where though. The whole grid runs at the same frequency, so matching the hum against logged grid data tells you when it was recorded and maybe which grid you're on. In the US that's basically East, West, or Texas, since Texas does its own thing. Not exactly 100m.

Comment by MiroslavPokorny 20 hours ago

My understanding is that local factors like local load and trnsformers and other infrastructure introduce variations in the hum. There are no precise boundaries, but variation exists everywhere.

Comment by Orygn 14 hours ago

Fair, I undersold that. There's a Maryland paper where the fast wiggles in the hum match less the farther apart two recorders are, enough to narrow down a spot inside one grid. That was with clean recordings straight off the power line and a few reference recorders running at the same time though. Getting it out of normal audio or video they list as still unsolved.