Sound

Scientists in Japan have broken new ground when it comes to using sound waves for levitation, by demonstrating for the first time how the technology can be used to lift small polystyrene balls off of a rigid surface.

Nobody likes hearing their neighbors' music or loud conversations. Soundproof wall materials, however, can be quite expensive. Swedish scientists have developed a thinner, less costly alternative, in the form of a spring-loaded sound-damping screw.

A new brain imaging study is claiming misophonia, a condition where certain sounds trigger deeply unpleasant physical responses, could be related to an over-sensitive brain pathway responsible for mirroring behaviors in others.

Although the chest-beating of male gorillas is a common behaviour, its purpose still isn't entirely understood. Now, however, scientists believe it may serve as a means of acoustically indicating the size of the apes' bodies.

A new metastudy conducted in conjunction with the US National Park Service has found that the sounds of nature are not only pleasant, but can have a variety of health benefits – though finding these sounds isn't always easy.

We’ve seen images of Mars for decades, but now NASA has released the first audio clips recorded on the Red Planet. The Perseverance playlist includes sounds of Martian wind, a laser zapping rocks, and the crunch of gravel under the rover’s wheels.

Opening a window may help ventilate a room, but it also lets in a lot of outdoor noise such as that of traffic. A new window could help, as it's said to bring in more fresh air than a conventional open window, while still keeping out unwanted sounds.

Scientists at Germany’s Chemnitz University of Technology have spent years developing compact and discreet speakers that are quite literally paper thin, and the latest breakthrough improves on this technology for a more immersive experience.

Fungus already shows promise as a "green" form of leather and protective packaging. Thanks to new research, it has now also found use in an environmentally-friendly sound-absorbing material.

If you're trying to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitos, it's important to know when and where the biting females of the targeted species are present. An experimental new device could help, by mimicking the insects' hearing apparatus.

A new NASA release has converted astronomy data into sounds, allowing the listener to hear musical compositions derived from the structure of the cosmos. The process takes data points in images such as galaxies or stars, and assigns them sounds.

MIT scientists have developed an acoustic system that acts like an underwater GPS, yet doesn't need batteries to operate. The system is instead powered by modulated audio signals reflected from the environment to provide net-zero energy positioning info.