What if you see lightning and hear thunder at the same time?

Sometimes things shouldn't come together.

On a stormy day, you will see a silent flash of lightning appear in the sky and about 4 seconds later, you will hear thunder rumbling, sometimes startling you. Perhaps you already know the cause of this phenomenon, because light travels much faster than sound. Light travels at up to 300,000 km/s, while sound waves travel through the air at a sluggish 0.3 km/s.

But what if the speed of sound in air was a million times faster, to equal the speed of light?

Of course, if that's the case then you'll be able to hear the thunder at the same time as the peak, which seems so grand and perfect, but you really don't want to experience that feeling.

Sound waves are composed of particles, each moving lightly enough to collide with the neighboring particle. That creates regions of higher and lower densities in the sound waves, says George Gollin, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois. He took the example of a spring toy: when it moved, the loops of rope repeatedly bunched together and then popped out again. Sound waves are similar. At slow speeds, that density change is imperceptible. At the speed of light, it's a different story.

Going back to the story of lightning and thunder, if light and sound had the same speed, you would see and hear at the same time, but at that time, you would see a strange shape of lightning. 'In the humid air of a rainstorm, the sound waves pass through and squeeze everything, then expand and greatly reduce the pressure. Because pressure corresponds to temperature, a sudden drop in pressure after thunder causes the moist air to freeze. You'll see lightning behind a dense fog of ice crystals," said Gollin.

The lightning speed of sound will completely change the sound of our world. Our voices will sound very different. When we speak, our vocal cords vibrate to create sound waves of various frequencies, which then deliver them into the larynx. There, waves of the same frequency add together to create a much larger wave - i.e. louder sound. However, not all frequencies add up in the same way. Some sync perfectly, while others interfere with each other, producing smaller waves and quieter sounds.

If sound was traveling faster through the air, it would change the way the waves add together, making some frequencies louder and others quieter. In sound waves, frequency corresponds to pitch, so what you get is a very odd high-pitched voice.

To imagine what our voices sounded like then, think of the voice after inhaling a helium balloon, like Mickey Mouse's voice. That's because sound waves travel just three times faster through helium, says William Robertson, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University. And if the sound wave had the same speed as light, it would travel a million times faster.

The way pronunciation tools work will also change. For example, blown musical instruments (trumpet, flute,.), the sound waves produced by them will increase in speed, which leads to an increase in frequency and leads to an increase in pitch, these blown instruments will produce a sound. The sound is so high that humans cannot hear it. We have to design these instruments to be 1 million times longer so that they can harmonize with violins and cellos. With instruments like the violin and cello, Robertson says that the change in the speed of sound as it travels through the air won't change the speed of sound along a string.

But you also don't have to think too much about the changes when sound travels at the speed of light, because humans would not be able to survive if this happened. Even the soft whistle of a flute can blow away, turning everything around it to shreds.

While light travels in electromagnetic waves, not matter, sound waves are mechanical, consisting of particles colliding with each other. A molecule traveling at the speed of light would have 'nearly infinite energy', says Gollin. It will fly through every particle it encounters, releasing electrons and creating an eruption of matter and antimatter – particles produced in extremely high-speed collisions have opposite properties. with material properties.

'The consequences will be terrible,' Gollin said. Maybe we should be content with the fact that thunder comes after lightning, it wouldn't be great if they both came at the same time.