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.

It was around 2005 that Simon Payne started hearing it. A strange, low, rumbling sound that travels through walls and floors and seems to come from everywhere. At first, he was convinced the noise was ...

“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 ...