The so-called “Havana Syndrome” has been one of the topics of controversy between the United States and Cuba for almost a decade, even causing the closure of the Embassy of the North American country on the Island for more than two years.
The symptoms, which began to occur in personnel at the US embassy on the island in 2016, include dizziness, headaches, nausea, loss of coordination and insomnia.
While the US government defends that its officials have been attacked with ultrasonic weapons by the Cuban regime, the latter assures that it is all an invention to portray the country and its government in a bad way, and even justify possible attacks and the continuity of the embargo. economic to the Island.
After years of research in which American scientists have failed to find the causes of the condition, which in some affected people has had permanent consequences, and which has occurred not only in US diplomats, but also in Canada, a new theory emerged. .
The government of Havana echoed a study carried out by scientists Alexander L. Stubbs and Fernando Montealegre, and published by Associated Press in 2019, it is not known if peer-verified, where they claim that the “sonic attack” is actually the chirping of Caribbean crickets.
According to the supposed study, the frequencies of cricket chirping coincide with those reported by measurements by foreign researchers, although it does not provide any basis for why chirping would affect people neurally, and, if so, why only a handful of them and right in the embassy area.
In that sense, a physics professor from Havana, anonymously shared with Cuban Newspaper their impressions of the study, denying that it is possible that crickets’ chirping causes the symptoms described, and denying, to begin with, that the frequencies coincide with those investigated.
The scientist explains that the sum of decibels (dB) is not like the sum of numerical objects, but is logarithmic and requires formulas giving a result much lower than what would be conventional. That is to say, although the crickets analyzed emit 80 dB each, if there were two crickets the sum would not be 160 dB, but only 83 dB.
In that sense, to combine the 120 dB that damaged the diplomats, there would have to be concentrated, exactly inside the embassy or at least under the window of those affected, a total of 10,321 crickets, all singing in unison.
“There would literally have to be thousands of them to reach 120 dB and cause the symptoms and damage that those affected presented. Knowing this, it would remain to verify the existence of 10 thousand crickets inside an office of the American embassy or in a room at the Capri hotel, and then consider these little animals as the cause of the sonic attacks,” he declared.
Until now, the source of the so-called Havana syndrome remains unknown, with the versions of those affected pointing to a single hum that lasted for a few minutes, strengthening the theory of an attack.
For now, at least the option of a natural biological source of sound can be ruled out, especially if said source is local insects.
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