Adding noise to your sleep routine may sound counterintuitive, but many people swear by wrapping themselves in a blanket of sound to get a better night of rest. You’ve probably heard of white noise.

A mysterious, low-frequency noise has settled over the small town of Omagh in Northern Ireland, and is keeping people awake. It’s called “The Hum,” and reports of this phenomenon have been popping up ...

“Noise” is a fuzzy word—a noisy one, in the statistical sense. Its meanings run the gamut from the negative to the positive, from the overpowering to the mysterious, from anarchy to sublimity. The ...