This article will try to compare and discuss the differences between speed of sound and light. There is a huge significance of these concepts in fields ranging from communication to relativity and even quantum mechanics. They're also of interest to materials scientists because sound waves are related to important elastic properties including the ability to resist stress.Speed of light and speed of sound are two very important aspects of waves discussed under physics. 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. Professor Chris Pickard, Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge, said: "Soundwaves in solids are already hugely important across many scientific fields. Therefore, researchers performed state-of-the-art quantum mechanical calculations to test this prediction and found that the speed of sound in solid atomic hydrogen is close to the theoretical fundamental limit. At those pressures, hydrogen becomes a fascinating metallic solid conducting electricity just like copper and is predicted to be a room temperature superconductor.
However, hydrogen is an atomic solid at very high pressure above 1 million atmospheres only, pressure comparable to those in the core of gas giants like Jupiter. This prediction implies that the sound is the fastest in solid atomic hydrogen. The scientists tested their theoretical prediction on a wide range of materials and addressed one specific prediction of their theory that the speed of sound should decrease with the mass of the atom. However, the new findings suggest that these two fundamental constants can also influence other scientific fields, such as materials science and condensed matter physics, by setting limits to specific material properties such as the speed of sound. Their finely-tuned values govern nuclear reactions such as proton decay and nuclear synthesis in stars and the balance between the two numbers provides a narrow 'habitable zone' where stars and planets can form and life-supporting molecular structures can emerge. These two numbers are already known to play an important role in understanding our Universe. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that predicting the upper limit of the speed of sound is dependent on two dimensionless fundamental constants: the fine structure constant and the proton-to-electron mass ratio. However until now it was not known whether sound waves also have an upper speed limit when travelling through solids or liquids. For example, they move through solids much faster than they would through liquids or gases, which is why you're able to hear an approaching train much faster if you listen to the sound propagating in the rail track rather than through the air.Įinstein's theory of special relativity sets the absolute speed limit at which a wave can travel which is the speed of light, and is equal to about 300,000 km per second.
Sound waves can travel through different mediums, such as air or water, and move at different speeds depending on what they're travelling through. Waves, such as sound or light waves, are disturbances that move energy from one place to another. The result- about 36 km per second-is around twice as fast as the speed of sound in diamond, the hardest known material in the world.
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