acoustics

Scientific Data, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41597-026-08226-8 Large-scale, Stratified, Fully Annotated Acoustic Forest Soundscape Dataset of Avian Vocalizations from Eastern North America

I am new to looking at phonons, especially in relation to their use in coupling to electrons. Phonons can be defined as the treatment of vibrations in a crystal lattice. There can be different types/modes of phonons such as acoustic (longitudinal and transverse), long-wavelength, optical phonons and im sure there are many more. I see for a particle material a phonon has a dispersion $\omega(\vec{…

Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández is 16 years old and has an idea no one else had. She studies at CETIS 78 in Altamira, Tamaulipas, and one day decided to put out a candle without blowing, without water, without anything but sound. She assembled a device with a 12-volt battery, a frequency generator, and a speaker that emits 30 pulses per second. That vibration pushes oxygen away from the flames, a…

This line of research into how insects hear sounds using specialized, microscopic hairs could inspire a new generation of acoustic tools.

Guest post by Dr Pyoung Jik Lee. Close your eyes in an intensive care unit (ICU), and you will hear a strange kind of orchestra: the steady hum of a ventilator, the rhythmic beep of a monitor, footsteps on vinyl flooring, a phone ringing at a nurses’ station, and, somewhere in the background, two clinicians […] The post Why is the ICU so noisy? A global survey of hospital soundscapes appeared fir…

Can a baby’s cry reveal early signs of autism? A new review shows that while certain acoustic patterns and AI tools show promise, there is no definitive evidence yet that autistic infants can be identified solely by crying.

For a standing wave (i.e. a wave pattern created from two oppositely-traveling waves with the same amplitude and frequency), stationary nodes are created at certain positions along the wave with uniform spacing between the nodes depending on the length of the system (e.g. the length of a string controls the spacing of the nodes). A wave can also be the superposition of multiple waves with differe…

I was working on a lesson about converting energy from one form to another for my physics class, and I started to wonder, with the loose analogy between photons and phonons, what sorts of phenomena do they have in common. In particular, I know there is a sonic version of the photoelectric effect. Could there also be a sonic version of either fluorescence or phosphorescence? The closest I can im…

Scientific Data, Published online: 09 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41597-026-08263-3 Applications of broadband echosounders in fisheries and plankton acoustics - a compilation of test datasets

Nature Communications, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77579-w Topological interface states usually rely on explicit symmetry breaking. Here, authors show that spontaneous symmetry breaking at an acoustic metagrating interface generates topological Jackiw-Rebbi states, enabling robust, highly directional sound radiation.

An analysis of sound-making structures on preserved wings reveals the mating calls of ancient Jurassic insects, re-creating part of an ancient soundscape.

Scientists from Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have used an electric field to reverse the handedness of atomic vibrations known as chiral phonons. Chiral phonons link magnetism with atomic motion. The ability to control them opens new possibilities for phonon-based information technologies.

Beneath the Arctic Ocean is an orchestra featuring natural and human composers, from cracking sea ice and whistling beluga whales to humming shipping-vessel engines. Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory heard some of this cacophony when analyzing data from commercial off-the-shelf sensors that they integrated and deployed in 2024 during the U.S. Navy’s Operation Ice Camp […]

The frozen stretch then held a light pulse as a sound wave for three nanoseconds, with a control pulse of 0.205 nanojoules enough to lift the readout three standard deviations clear of the noise, and separately the authors calculate that a cryogenically cooled highly nonlinear fibre would need 150 times more pump power to reach the same storage figure of merit.

When a New Glenn rocket blew apart at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in May, it released ultra-low-frequency sound waves that reached as far as Texas. Researchers estimate that the blast was roughly equivalent to the Chernobyl reactor explosion of 1986.

I’m interested in the link between physics and our own biology specifically related to the brain and its waves. I had a strong visual aura that looked like this and I was wondering if anyone could tell me what’s happening from a physics angle?

The higher the frequency, the more sensitive the ear may be to that frequency in some cases. So, could it be that because the frequency is very low, a difference of just a few tenths of a semitone becomes increasingly difficult to detect? In other words, for certain sound frequencies, even a slight difference in cents can be heard as a difference in Hz.

Anechoic chambers are specialized rooms designed to eliminate sound reflections through acoustic absorbers, allowing precise acoustic measurements under free-field conditions. Essential for standardized sound power assessments, these chambers follow stringent ISO standards. Alternatives like sound intensity methods, acoustic test boxes, and portable arrays offer cost-effective solutions when full…

Recently, I did Melde's Experiment in our lab. To say about the procedure, we had to find the frequency of a electrically vibrating tuning fork (connected to a mass through string over a pulley) as shown, in two modes transverse and longitudinal. Now, if the standing wave in any mode with a wavelength $\lambda$ , wave velocity $v$ , tension in the string be $T$ and mass per unit length of the str…

The ultrasonic system levitates and steers tiny objects from one side in open air.