Objects can be levitated by sound using an apparatus that causes these waves to interfere and combine, creating a 'pressure cage.'

View a collection of sound animations, which depict how a source of sound waves pushes against particles to carry energy away without matter being displaced.

Within an anechoic chamber, all surfaces are covered with specialized materials that prevent wave reflection, helping prevent sound from echoing in the space.

Objects that move faster than the speed of sound—Mach 1—create shockwaves called sonic booms by building up and forcing sound waves to combine as they lag behind the object.

When struck, objects vibrate at unique rates called resonant frequencies, which makes tapping wood sound different from tapping metal, but providing objects with sound at their resonant frequency can cause them to shatter.

Listen to the 'sounds' of the universe with this sonification library, where astronomers have transformed certain astronomical data sets into audio for broader engagement.

Metal plates can be pushed together by empty space—the Casimir effect—because of virtual particles that cannot be observed but are predicted by quantum field theory.

Stonehenge may have functioned as an echo chamber designed to keep ceremonies secret from outsiders.

Listen to the pair of colliding black holes detected by LIGO

The mass of a cell can be measured using hollow, vibrating beams

The three smallest bones in the human body—the malleus, incus, and stapes—amplify the vibrations of sound waves by almost 20 times to help enable hearing.

Through sonoluminescence, concentrated sound waves can produce short, high-intensity flashes of light by rapidly collapsing microscopic bubbles to temperatures up to twice that of the sun's surface.

Las Vegas' Sphere uses software originally designed for German railway stations to deliver high-definition audio to every seat in the venue.

Studying 'sonic' black holes

Ultrasound machines emit and receive high-frequency sound waves to construct images of the body's interior, with differences in the penetrating power of different frequencies allowing medical professionals to identify different structures.

Scientists are learning to guide your dreams using sound and touch.

The bullwhip was the first human-made object to break the sound barrier, producing a small sonic boom heard as a crack when flicked quickly.

If a source of music traveled past someone at twice the speed of sound, assuming sufficiently sensitive hearing and powerful equipment, they would hear the music backward.

A person's voice sounds different when breathing helium, sulfur hexafluoride, or gases other than air because the speed of sound varies with the properties of the material through which it travels.

By igniting flammable gas in a tube filled with holes and playing music into it, the fire will take the shape of the sound waves, enabling the visualization of audio.

Objects can be made invisible through refraction, in which light from behind an object is bent around it, making only the background visible.

High-frequency sound waves have been used to brew espresso with room-temperature water and about one-fourth the energy of a traditional espresso machine, which relies on hot water and pressure.

Explore a visual and auditory guide to wave properties and waveforms to learn how every sound imaginable can be created by combining multiple vibrations of air.

A sound's pitch will seem to change if the listener or the source moves toward or away from the other because motion changes the time it takes each successive sound wave to reach the listener.

Scientific applications of bubbles include logic gates, laser production, and medical imaging

In LIGO's interferometers, light cancels itself out in the absence of gravitational waves

Wave tanks can be used to create and study the impacts of tsunamis by building tension in an underwater object before allowing it to slip and rapidly displace water.

Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems provide motor sounds in electric vehicles

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

Magnetic fields can be visualized using ferrofluids—substances made of magnetic nanoparticles suspended in a carrier fluid.

Some animals possess sensitive hearing to help pinpoint prey and map the world

The physics behind opera singing

Oscillating matter in the early universe left behind patterns detailing cosmic expansion

The wave nature of matter can produce phenomena like negative time and retrocausality

Faraday cages protect enclosed objects by redirecting electrical currents

Solid ground can behave like a liquid during earthquakes, causing objects to sink into or rise up from an otherwise rigid surface.

Light waves can interfere and cancel each other out

Holograms are produced by shining light through recordings of interference patterns

Water can hover and move against gravity when placed on a sufficiently hot surface—a phenomenon known as the Leidenfrost effect.

We hear because soundwaves are converted into electrochemical signals in our ears.

LIGO boosts its signal sensitivity by manipulating quantum uncertainty

Thunderquakes—seismic waves created when lightning strikes the ground—have enabled scientists to image underground environments near Earth's surface by detecting vibrations along subterranean fiber-optic cables.

Gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime that result from the motion of objects—were detected a century after Albert Einstein predicted their existence upon developing his theory of gravity.

Cooling silica nanoparticles lets physicists push the boundary of how large an object can still behave quantum mechanically.

Create flute, saxophone, trumpet, or violin reproductions of any 15-second piece of audio using machine learning.

Sonar, or sound navigation and ranging, uses reflected sound waves to map and detect seafloor features, marine organisms, and other obstacles.

There is no such thing as nothing in physics—even the vacuum of space is full of undetectable particle-antiparticle activity called 'quantum foam.'

Gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—are detected at LIGO by measuring how two lasers traveling down equally distant, perpendicular tunnels interfere with one another.

Quantum tunneling allows particles to pass through classically impenetrable barriers.

Every fundamental particle is a vibration in a field that spans the entire universe, according to quantum field theory.

Visualize quantum field theory, where observable forces like electromagnetism result from energy and momentum being exchanged between universe-sized fields.