- Mar 2019
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Live Science
Well this is interesting that they determined the loudest sound possible in water. I wonder if any one can think of any real world applications for this?Scientists have discovered what they believe is the loudest possible underwater sound — a sound so powerful that it can vaporize water on contact.
It's not the sound of a massive underwater earthquake, nor is it the sound of a pistol shrimp snapping its claws louder than a Pink Floyd concert. It is, in fact, the sound of a tiny water jet — about half the width of a human hair — being hit by an even thinner X-ray laser.
You can't actually hear this sound, because it was created in a vacuum chamber. That's probably for the best, considering that, at around 270 decibels, these rumbling pressure waves are even louder than NASA's loudest-ever rocket launch (which measured about 205 decibels). However, you can see the sound's microscopically devastating effects in action, thanks to a series of ultra-slow-motion videos recorded at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, as part of a new study. [Tiny Grandeur: Stunning Photos of the Very Small]
According to Claudiu Stan, a physicist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and one of the study co-authors, these pressure waves likely represent the loudest possible underwater sound. If it were any louder, the sound "would actually boil the liquid," Stan told Live Science — and once the water boils, the sound has no medium to pass through.