There Is New Evidence That Sound Does Carry A Lot Of - Alternative View

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There Is New Evidence That Sound Does Carry A Lot Of - Alternative View
There Is New Evidence That Sound Does Carry A Lot Of - Alternative View

Video: There Is New Evidence That Sound Does Carry A Lot Of - Alternative View

Video: There Is New Evidence That Sound Does Carry A Lot Of - Alternative View
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A trio of Columbia University scientists have found new evidence that sound waves carry mass. In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Angelo Esposito, Rafael Krichevsky, and Alberto Nicolis described the use of effective field theory techniques to validate the team's findings last year when they tried to measure the mass carried by sound waves.

Sound carries mass. Why is it important?

For many years, physicists were convinced that sound waves carried energy, but there was no evidence that they also carried mass. There seemed to be no reason to believe that they would generate a gravitational field. That changed last year as Nicolis and fellow physicist Riccardo Penco unearthed evidence suggesting that conventional wisdom may be wrong. They used quantum field theory to show that sound waves traveling in superfluid helium carry a small amount of mass with them. More specifically, they found that phonons interacted with the gravitational field in such a way that they were forced to carry away mass as they moved through the medium. In the new work, the scientists reported that similar results are true for most materials.

Using effective field theory, they showed that a one-watt sound wave that travels in water for a second transfers a mass of approximately 0.1 milligram. They also note that this mass was part of the total mass of the system, which moved with the wave, as it moved from one place to another.

It's important to note that the researchers didn't actually measure the mass carried by the sound wave - they used mathematics to prove that this was happening. In the case of real measurements, they suggested experiments that could be done with sound waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate of very cold atoms - such a setup should show enough mass to be transferred to be measured. They also note that the best approach might be to measure the mass carried by sound waves that travel through the Earth as part of an earthquake. Such sound can carry billions of kilograms of mass, which will be visible on devices that measure the gravitational field.

Ilya Khel