Have you ever considered how much information sound waves can carry? Of course, this has happened in science fiction, but it has never actually occurred to us.

Recently, scientists demonstrated that sound waves can have mass in their particles.

This also implies that these particles are capable of producing their own gravitational fields.

Researchers attempting to quantify the mass carried by sound waves last year made the discovery, which Angelo Esposito, Rafael Krichevsky and Alberto Nicolis confirmed in their work published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

While sound waves could probably transmit energy, scientists say there has never been any concrete evidence that sound particles can also carry mass.

Nicolis and Riccardo Penco of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia used quantum field theory to find evidence in 2018 that sound waves flowing through superfluid helium could carry a small amount of mass with them.

Physics researchers had discovered that photons would interact with a gravitational field and be forced to carry mass as they passed through the substance.

The study argues that there is evidence to support the idea that similar outcomes can be anticipated for most materials.

They used effective field theory to show how a one-watt sound wave traveling through water for one second could have a mass of about 0.1 milligrams.

The article explains how it was discovered that the mass of a system moving with the waves was only a portion of its total mass.

It is interesting to note that to prove that mass can be transferred by sound waves, scientists used mathematical calculations rather than actual measurements.

Because the mathematics that defines solids and fluids is relatively similar, “we have confidence in the results,” Nicolis says. However, it is still difficult to interpret these conclusions for solids at the microscopic level.

CMU’s Ira Rothstein, a high-energy physicist, said: “This is definitely unexpected.” One would think that conclusions like this in classical physics would be well-known. Hopefully the impact will be assessed quickly.