What this is
Protocol 7 plays the Earth's magnetic field as it is right now. Every three minutes it reads NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center: the planetary K index (how disturbed the field is), the solar wind measured at the L1 point a million miles sunward (propagated to Earth), the NOAA storm scale and NOAA's modelled Dst index. Those numbers shape the sound and the picture. A quiet field is a low, steady hum. A storm is louder, rougher and brighter.
The hum pulses at 7.83 Hz, the fundamental of the Schumann resonance: the frequency at which the cavity between the ground and the ionosphere rings, kept going by lightning all over the planet. 7.83 Hz is below hearing, so what you hear is the pulse, not a tone. The voices sit on the Schumann modes (about 7.8, 14, 20, 27 and 33 Hz; the peaks are broad and drift by a fraction of a hertz with the time of day and the season), transposed up by three octaves.
What this station does not do: it does not measure the Schumann resonance itself. ELF receivers are rare and their live data is not published in a usable form, so the resonance here is a constant carrier, and the live part is the geomagnetic field. It does not heal, align or activate anything either. It is a way to listen to the planet with the data that exists.
The ring shows the people listening at this moment, placed at their local hour. Your browser sends a random session id and your time-zone offset, nothing else, and forgets the id when the tab closes. In Serial Experiments Lain, Protocol 7 was to connect everyone through the Earth's resonance, without a device. This is the small, honest version.
Data: NOAA SWPC, public domain. Sound and code: p0stw3b. Not affiliated with NOAA or with the rights holders of the series.