How SMS rumour spread faster than bush fire
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
12 September 2010
There was an SMS circulating last week advising people not to answer calls from certain telephone numbers. According to this message, these numbers were transmitting high frequency, ultrasonic sound signals which could cause brain haemorrhage and death. Well, as Martin Wyatt, my maths teacher would have put it, this is “complete, utter, absolute, diabolical nonsense!”
There is no truth whatsoever in that message for two main reasons: first, the loudspeaker of the telephone earpiece cannot vibrate in the ultrasonic range of frequencies, and secondly, ultrasonic vibrations are harmless to the human body.
What are ultrasonic waves any way? They are sound waves with frequencies above 20,000 cycles per second (Hertz or Hz, in short). A person with perfect ears can hear between 20Hz and 20,000Hz.
This SMS spread faster than dry bush fire and it is easy to see why. If every person who received it passed it on to two others the progression would form a tree as follows.
In the first level, there is one person, A, who has the SMS in his phone. He then sends it to two people, B and C, who are one level below A. After that, B sends it to D and E, while C forwards it to F and G. So far, with only three levels in the tree, seven people (A through to G) have seen the message. Indeed, the third level has four people who get the message almost at the same time.
Following that progressions, 512 people will get this SMS at the tenth level of the tree bringing the total of all those who have seen the message to over 1,000. Continuing to the 20th level makes over one million people! And at that point, something must be done to stop it from spreading any farther and causing panic.
Now assuming that it takes about three minutes for the people to forward the message to their friends, it is easy to see how the one million mark will be reached in just one hour – 20 levels multiplied by three minutes per level gives 60 minutes.
I guess, this was probably the point at which the media houses also got the SMS, and they went on air to report that this was a hoax. But for some strange reason, many people refuse to accept the truth, consequently, they edited the original message by adding the statement that “it was reported on the 4pm TV news”…therefore it must be true!
Thank fully, after senior government officers came on the 7pm news to dispel the rumour, all calmed down and the messages died off. The moral here is that we must be careful of what we forward to our friends. It is very easy to cause panic on a very large scale.
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