What is faster light or sound

The speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound in air. In other words, light travels thousand miles in 1 second, while sound takes almost 5 seconds to travel 1 mile. Follow-up on this answer. Related Questions. Still Curious? What are speeds of sound and of light. Robertson and his colleagues transmitted sound pulses from the sound card through a loop made from PVC plumbing pipe and connectors from a hardware store.

This loop split up and then recombined the tiny waves making up each pulse. This led to a curious result. When looking at a pulse that entered and then exited the pipe, before the peak of the entering pulse even got into the pipe, the peak of the exiting pulse had already left the pipe.

If the velocities of each of the waves making up a sound pulse in this setup are taken together, the "group velocity" of the pulse exceeded c. Past research has proven it possible to transmit electrical and even light pulses with group velocities exceeding c. Robertson explained this faster-than-light acoustic effect is likely commonplace but imperceptible. For example: "When a sound source is located near a hard wall, some sound reaches the listener directly from the source whereas some sound travels the longer path that bounces the sound off the wall.

The sounds recombine at the listener," Robertson said. Topics Astronomy and space Atomic and molecular Biophysics and bioengineering Condensed matter Culture, history and society Environment and energy Instrumentation and measurement Materials Mathematics and computation Medical physics Optics and photonics Particle and nuclear Quantum.

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Registration complete. Transport properties Research update Sound breaks the light barrier 12 Jan Want to read more?