![]() This is where fundamental constants are useful. How do we account for all the possible materials in the Universe in order to determine an absolute upper limit on the speed of sound? They're also of interest to materials scientists because sound waves are related to important elastic properties including the ability to resist stress."īy now, you can probably see the problem with constraining the speed of sound. "For example, seismologists use sound waves initiated by earthquakes deep in the Earth interior to understand the nature of seismic events and the properties of Earth composition. "Soundwaves in solids are already hugely important across many scientific fields," said materials scientist Chris Pickard of the University of Cambridge in the UK. We can even use it to understand the interiors of stars. We leverage this property to study the inside of Earth when sound waves from earthquakes travel through it. In a rigid solid, like a diamond, sound can travel even faster. For example, water has more tightly packed particles than air, and that's partially why whales can communicate across such vast distances in the ocean. Hence, the more rigid the medium - the more difficult it is to compress - the faster sound travels. As the wave travels through the medium, that medium's molecules collide with each other, transferring energy as they go. Sound is a mechanical wave, which is caused by a vibration in a medium. Travelling through a medium, like water or an atmosphere, slows it down. ![]() These fields generate a self-perpetuating electromagnetic wave that can travel in a vacuum - and its top speed is around 300,000 kilometres per second. Visible light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, so-named because light waves consist of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. That's about twice the speed of sound travelling through diamond.īoth sound and light travel as waves, but they behave slightly differently. That speed limit, according to the new calculations, is 36 kilometres per second (22 miles per second). It's impossible to measure the speed of sound in every single material in existence, but scientists have now managed to pin down an upper limit based on fundamental constants, the universal parameters by which we understand the physics of the Universe.
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