You might be forgiven for thinking our understanding of classical physics had reached its peak in the four centuries since Isaac Newton devised his eponymous laws of motion. But surprising new research shows there are still secrets waiting to be found, hidden in plain sight—or, at least in this case, within earshot.
In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, a group of scientists has theorized that sound waves possess mass, meaning sounds would be directly affected by gravity. They suggest phonons, particlelike collective excitations responsible for transporting sound waves across a medium, might exhibit a tiny amount of mass in a gravitational field. “You would expect classical physics results like this one to have been known for a long time by now,” says Angelo Esposito from Columbia University, the lead author on the paper. “It’s something we stumbled upon almost by chance.”
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