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Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Bobobolm here.

In the same way that ultraviolet light and infrared light exist outside what the human eye

can perceive. Sound waves exist beyond the frequencies of what humans can hear.

When those sound waves are higher frequency than what we can hear, we call them ultrasonic,

and when they're lower frequency, we call them Infrasonic.

Several natural sources, including volcanoes, avalanches, earthquakes, and meteors produce infrasonic waves, also called infrasound.

Animals like elephants and whales may communicate with infrasound, and man-made inventions like wind turbines can generate these sounds too.

Detecting Infrasonic Waves is one of the key ways that governments can monitor for nuclear

bomb tests. That's because Infrasonic waves decay very slowly and when

they're large enough they can wrap around the globe several times before

dissipating. And it turns out that tornadoes can produce unique infrasonic waves even before

tornado genesis, which is when the storm forms, an hour or more before.

Scientists have known about the tornado infersound connection for several decades,

but to learn more about this process and to better understand how humans could harness this information,

a group of scientists is developing a long-distance passive way of listening in on tornadoes.

In doing so, we'd be able to deal with the fact that three-fourths of all current tornado warnings

are false alarms, and thus too often ignored or not

taken seriously. Infrasound could represent another source of data to add to our arsenal.

One Brian Elbeng, an Oklahoma State University mechanical and

aerospace engineering professor said in a press release discussing this

research, by monitoring tornadoes from hundreds of miles away,

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