{"id":1159824,"date":"2026-08-20T19:12:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T19:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1159824\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T19:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T19:12:22","slug":"these-whale-calls-appear-to-break-physics-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1159824\/","title":{"rendered":"These Whale Calls Appear to Break Physics, but the Truth Is Even Weirder"},"content":{"rendered":"

While tracking whale calls near Massachusetts, oceanographer John Spiesberger noticed that the software he was using was clocking speeds for whale calls greater than the speed limit for sound traveling in seawater. Spiesberger, of the University of Pennsylvania, initially thought there was something wrong with his program. After all, if the software wasn\u2019t to blame, it would mean that those whale calls were \u201cbreaking\u201d physics.<\/p>\n

It turns out there wasn\u2019t anything wrong with his coding, nor was there any violation of physics: what he was seeing was even weirder than that. The exceptional speeds seemed to have come from a physical effect caused by the hydrophone receiving not only the direct sound wave but also its echo, reflected against the ocean\u2019s surface. Combined, these signals make it appear as if the whale calls went supersonic, when in reality, the observed phenomenon is an effect of wave interference, an unexpected finding predicted by Einstein\u2019s theory of special relativity.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us don\u2019t hear a whale call and think, \u2018Wow, look at the special theory of relativity in action,\u2019\u201d Spiesberger said, who recently published his findings<\/a> with co-author Eugene Terray, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, in Physical Review E. In a University write-up<\/a> on the research, Spiesberger added that he\u2019d \u201cnever guessed any connection existed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stranger than fiction <\/p>\n

Most physicists will come to the rare agreement that general and special relativity reflect some of Einstein\u2019s best, most consequential observations. Special relativity explains<\/a> the relationship between space, time, mass, and energy (it\u2019s also where the famous E=mc2 equation comes from). In a vacuum, the speed of light is the same for any observer. But this is relative to an observer\u2019s reference frame. For instance, a whale and a human swimming are subjected to the same laws of physics, but because they\u2019re moving at different speeds, the two \u201cframes\u201d experience time and space differently.<\/p>\n

To give a more practical example<\/a>, GPS devices depend on a network of satellites with atomic clocks to precisely keep track of locations. But these satellites whiz around Earth\u2019s orbit at blinding speeds, which means they\u2014\u201crelative\u201d to the time we experience\u2014tick an extra 7 microseconds each day. So, the atomic clocks on satellites must subtract 7 microseconds daily to keep things consistent with the time we experience here on the surface.<\/p>\n

Now back to the whales <\/p>\n

According to Spiesberger, oceanographers depend on hydrophones to track whales. These devices allow scientists to find whales from 62 miles (100 kilometers) away underwater. When the hydrophone picks up far-traveling whale calls, scientists then \u201ccan use them to pinpoint where an animal is by comparing when its sound reaches receivers spread across the seafloor,\u201d Spiesberger explained.<\/p>\n

\"SpiesbergerThe researchers out at sea, using an ocean receiver called a TOSSIT to track whale calls. Credit: University of Pennsylvania <\/p>\n

But the sounds get mixed up when a whale is physically closer to the ocean surface. In the first place, a whale call isn\u2019t a singular, neat wave packet that bounces off the hydrophone\u2019s receiver. This means that the microphone picks up some of the sound, whereas other parts of the sound wave can travel elsewhere and reach the instrument slightly later.<\/p>\n

When this inevitably happens, the two waves can interfere with each other and \u201cadvance the arrival time of the combined signal instead of merely altering its strength,\u201d according to the paper\u2019s accompanying Synopsis column<\/a>. In other words, to the observer, it appears as if the whale calls went supersonic.<\/p>\n

In the eye of the beholder <\/p>\n

But again, that\u2019s only relative to the observer. No physics laws were violated, it turns out, and as Spiesberger explains, what \u201cappears\u201d to speed up isn\u2019t the signal itself, but the \u201cposition of the signal\u2019s strongest peak\u201d that registered in the instrument. That said, the authors noted in the paper that there\u2019s still a need to experimentally verify that what they saw represents a novel instance of special relativity in underwater acoustics.<\/p>\n

As such, the pair concluded its work by describing potential experiments. Spiesberger expressed his intentions to replicate the \u201cacoustic\u201d version of his observations; if that works, it might even be possible to replicate the effect with light instead of sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While tracking whale calls near Massachusetts, oceanographer John Spiesberger noticed that the software he was using was clocking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1159825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3845],"tags":[31272,74,70,244253,16,15,26088],"class_list":["post-1159824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-acoustics","tag-physics","tag-science","tag-special-relativity","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-whales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117129430408947917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1159824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1159825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1159824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1159824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1159824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}