My car has about 170k on it and it has rear end noise, the conditions are as follows

• Independent of engine RPM
• Noise occurs above 20 mph
• Noise occurs when driving straight, gets louder turning right and dissappears turning left

Is it at all possible for this to be coming from the differential? My thoughts were that this part was not effected by lateral Gs.

 

This is precisely how you test for a bad wheel bearing. In your case, since the noise goes away during left turns when you are loading the RIGHT side of the car, you should suspect the bearing on the left side.

 

One way to test front wheel bearing is as following -
Grab the front tire on the top and rock back and forth (towards you and away from you) really hard. First it will feel like there is no movement... after rocking several cycles, you will hear the noise.

Repeat the same process for the other front tire.