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When US diplomats based in Cuba reported that they had hearing loss as the result of hearing a strange noise, an investigation kicked off. It found that they had been exposed to “health attacks” by some kind of sonic device. Now it is being posited that the device used microwaves.
Those affected reported that the incidents earlier this year involved bursts of painful, highly localised sound at home or in hotel rooms. After-effects included headaches, nausea and hearing loss. Subsequent medical examination suggests that some of the victims have signs of brain damage, which isn’t consistent with a sonic device, and which tends to rule out suggestions of hysteria.
Enter James Lin of the University of Illinois at Chicago, who reports that the localised sounds and corresponding health effects might both be the result of a beam of pulsed