February 9, 2007

For the Love of God, Make It Stop!

In an effort to determine the worst sound in the world, researchers at the University of Salford, in England, asked more than a million people to listen to 34 audio clips online and then cast their votes. The winner was not the ring of a cellphone (12th), fingernails scraping on a blackboard (16th), nor a dentist's drill (20th). The worst sound, according to Trevor Cox, a professor of acoustics who oversaw the yearlong experiment, is — hold on, we're about to be