system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What's the science behind white noise?
gpt
White noise is just a sound (or signal) that has an equal intensity of all frequencies.

Because the brain tends to ignore things that don't change (the feeling of a wool sweater once you're used to it, the friction of your skin on on object, a sound, staring at one thing for too long, etc...) white noise can become soothing.

How? If silence is the absence of frequencies, then white noise is easily "converted" to silence in your brain since it doesn't change and includes an equal spread of frequencies. So you get noise without the noise.

This un-noise blocks out actual noise (crickets, someone snoring in the next room, creaking house, tinnitus) without being annoying itself.