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Engineers Invent Acoustic Equivalent of One-Way Glass
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Up until now, acoustic waves traveling between two points in space always exhibited a basic symmetry summed up with the phrase, 'if you can hear, you can also be heard.' Not anymore; Tia Ghose reports at Live Science that a team at UT Austin has created a 'nonreciprocal acoustic circulator,' the first step that could lead to the sound equivalent of a one-way mirror. All waves — whether visible light, sound, radio or otherwise — have a physical property known as time reversal symmetry — a wave sent one way can always be sent back. For radio waves, researchers figured out how to break this rule using magnetic materials that set electrons spinning in one direction. The resulting radio waves detect the difference in the material in one direction versus the other, preventing reverse transmission. To accomplish the feat with sound waves, the team created a cavity loaded with tiny CPU fans that spin the air with a specific velocity. The air is spinning in one direction, so the flow of air 'feels' different to the wave in one direction versus the other, preventing backward transmission. As a result, sound waves can go in, but they can't go the other way. The result is one-directional sound. With such a device, people can hear someone talking, but they themselves cannot be heard. The findings will likely lead to many useful applications, says Sebastien Guenneau. 'I would be surprised if sound industries do not pick up this idea. This could have great applications in sound insulation of motorways, music studios, submarines and airplanes.'"
We need more links on TFS...
Can we put one between us and marketing. We don't have to hear their bad ideas to tell them they won't work for practical reasons.
When can I order my "Cone of Silence"? I can't wait to be finally able use my shoe phone in public knowing my conversation will be secure and private!
but apparently it can't hear me.
(sticks fingers in ears and yells 'I can't hear you')
You can create the same effect with a microphone and a speaker behind a sound proof wall. Still pretty cool.
Music studios yes, but why would airplanes want to transmit sound from inside to outside, or vice-versa? Same with motorways. You definitely want to block traffic noise from adjacent buildings, but why would you care that folks in the cars can hear whats coming from the buildings? Just block it all.
We already have one-way sound and sound-cancelling devices, they're called amplifiers and sound-cancelling algorithms.
Congress has prior art.
Remember the old commercials for the roach motels? The roaches check in but they can't check out.
Now I can party on the whole Night withouth annoying the neighbors
...might become much easier to design.
On the other hand, not sure how this will help with airplanes, where the entire cabin is simply "rumbling" including whatever one-way surface
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
...true one-way mirrors do not and can not exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
My cell phone has been doing this for years.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I understand they have lights designed to get your attention, but sound I would assume is also a key factor.
I wonder if this will bring more attention to the emergency vehicle warning technologies that are in their infancy right now.
Granted this is all built on the assumption this proposed one-way sound technology bears any fruit.
"With such a device, people can hear someone talking, but they themselves cannot be heard."
Pretty sure I accidentally invented this for my wife.
We have that in the midwest already
its called the wind
also useful for generating power
Imagine that -- an actual working Cone of Silence, like the one from the Get Smart TV series.
By Google Support
heyyyyyyyy ooooh
the team created a cavity loaded with tiny CPU fans
And I was hoping I could use this to reduce fan noise in my computer.
seems like it only affects sound or wave functions in a specific frequency as determined by the speed of the air movement or electron migration rates or whatnot. Might not be very effective for general sound insulation unless it's fixed frequency, o (or else you'd hear the generated harmonics). Not too different than active noise cancellation.
> "This could have great applications in sound insulation of motorways"
Last I checked, the screams of children within neighborhoods protected by motorway sound barriers were not a major nuisance or safety hazard for motorists.
Or are we just brainstorming ideas without any thought behind them?
A one way sound barrier makes sense if you have an application where you actually need sound to go through in one direction. If you don't, then a wall is a better and almost certainly cheaper solution.
I don't see how this explanation is breaking the symmetry. Accoustic waves don'e have circular polarication and are axially symmetric.
Your example sort of proves the point, one should be able to make a silent CPU fan where the sounds go in but don't come out if this is true.
Here's my guess about what is REALLY going on here. if you phase delay two separated fans such that the sound that went through the open part of the first fan, reaches the the second fan just as the open part of it is inline with the dound direction it passes through. It would not work in the backwards direction. then layer on that the fact that air column is moving in one direction.
But I' don't see the symmetry breaking for a compression or rarefraction wave happening like it does in the E&M case.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So, "Engineers invent acoustic equivalent to something that doesn't exist". Does that mean they didn't actually invent anything at all?
* one-way glass is a misnomer for semi-silvered glass. It only seems "one way" if one side is much more brightly illuminated than the other, so that the 50% of light reflected back to the bright side drowns out the 50% of light that makes it through from the dark side.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
All waves — whether visible light, sound, radio or otherwise — have a physical property known as time reversal symmetry — a wave sent one way can always be sent back.
No, not all waves. Kaon and B-meson waves violate time reversal symmetry. We have known about this for almost 20 years since the first CPLEAR paper on the evidence of this and the more recent papers from Babar have confirmed it beyond any reasonable doubt. I'm always amazed how such a fundamental result as the laws of physics defining a direction of time (even when you take account of phase space/entropy effects) seems to be forgotten by many physicists.
The gizmo they're describing is for acoustic transmission along a single axis. i.e. you have a pipe between points A and B, and A can hear B but B can't hear A.
You can do the same with impedance changes if A and B are in different mediums. The impedance difference due to the density change causes asymmetrical transmission to reflection ratios (bottom two animations). Consequently, if you're underwater in a swimming pool, you can hear all the noise from people talking in the air. But if you're outside the water, you can't hear sound originating in the water. (You can hear it a little, but nowhere near as well as sound from the air transmitted into the water.)
You can also do it with refraction changes if sound is allowed to propagate along two or more axes. The ocean creates a natural acoustic waveguide this way. If you're in the middle of the waveguide, you can easily hear things at the edge of the waveguide. Sound from the thing at the edge of the waveguide spreads radially, and consequently about half of it captured by the waveguide. Whereas sound from the middle of the waveguide reaches that point at the edge only at a very specific angle. Consequently the listener inside the waveguide gets greater amplification. (A conceptually easier example is a megaphone if you use it to try to communicate with someone standing far away. If you speak through it, all your acoustic energy is directed in one direction, before it reaches the end of the megaphone and is allowed to spread radially. Most of it continues in the direction you pointed the megaphone. If you listen through it though, the acoustic energy from the other person spreads radially first, then the tiny bit captured by the broad end of the megaphone is concentrated. Consequently the megaphone is much more effective as a speaking amplifier than it is as a listening amplifier.)
I don't think any of these methods allow for a perfect "one-way mirror" though, where someone at A can hear B, but B cannot hear anything from A.. I can see the device in TFA getting close. It uses moving air to guide sound one way - move the air faster than the speed of sound and in theory it can't go backwards. But I have to think there will be some sound transmission back along the stationary frame used to contain the moving air (not to mention in their device the air is moving in a circle).
How many times have you asked a user to do something, but they end up doing something completely different?
Obviously, they can't hear you because of the CPU fans...
I need this for my wife. She can hear me, I can't hear her!
This has the potential to save many marriages!
Oh, my bad...this is /.
What was I thinking? *scurries back to basement
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Kind of like an acoustic diode.
I'm not really sure what use it is other than some things that are are really esoteric, or done easier and cheaper by other means.
Still, who knows what somebody will eventually think to do with this, just look at what a couple of centuries has done with electricity.
My bathroom fan already does this! If I'm standing in the bathroom talking, my wife can hear me from another room. If she talks, however, I can't hear her at all.
I guess they just built a higher resolution version of my bathroom?
NT
Only a matter of time until they throw this on a drone so the spy/CI can talk to the people at home while they "spray" commands to him from the sky.
try and tell me that our species isn't neurotic...
This would be a great tool to get a schizophrenic to go out and pull a false flag for the CIA to push somebody's agenda.
Of course you can eliminate all sounds, duh. You just have to make sure the fans are blowing supersonic air. Sound can't travel upstream supersonically.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I've read Professor R.V. Jones "The Wizard War" (originally published in Britain as "Most Secret War"), and this reminds me very much of the story of the electronic warfare between England and Germany in WWII. This device reminds me very much of the cavity magnetron oscillator, sort of an "acoustic-frequency "magnetron"", not the best descriptor perhaps, but that's what immediately comes to my mind.
Any application I can think of for this can already be better served by the amazing technology of microphones and speakers plus sound absorbent materials. You know, like we already use in interogation rooms etc..
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Really drowns out the reverse transmission, doesn't it? Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Spent All My Mod Points
you mean those devices that use magnetic ferrite as energy potential?
i'm 15 yrs old dating a 12 yr old grrl. i'm allowed to decide the evenings activity, we are going to listen to a radio mystery from the 1940's as an experiment in psychology (i'm Mach more than Jung). i set more than several candles of various highs and lows on a table between mother/father and myself/daughter. i light the candles turn off all other light sources and say to here mother can you see us, she reply's no, i inform her it works both ways, lets listen. upon the conclusion she( the mother ask's) did i like the story, my response i was preoccupied and much of it i did not hear but don't be concerned i would never do anything wrong, you and him are a marriage were there moments when you did not hear anything ? she confesses yes. i read all the comments as more than a courtesy. don't get too caught up in theoretical as it does not require any productivity and none is produced. i have recently been conducting experiments with deer that are able to hear me through their feet. acoustics is vibration and there exist other sensory organs besides ears that are able to detect it. the study is flawed like so many others (some of you have posted comments that will see this 'mirrored' in your comment) can an owl hear it ? can tech hear it ? the study is not worthless based on productivity but based on did we learn from it. slayerwulfe cave
There were a lot more bones next door than just buddy's..
I don't understand. Is it like speaking into a strong wind or is it that the noise of the little screaming fans drowns out the target noise.
Either way, this doesn't really seem like a real break through or discovery.
I am unable to think of any problem of this that would not be solved by a good both ways sound blocker along with microphone-speaker combo
There's another well-known effect in which sound propagates asymmetrically - up- and down-wind at ground level. Viscosity effects produce a wind speed gradient (wind shear), with air nearest the ground travelling slowest. The result is that sound waves travelling downwind are refracted downwards (making them easier to hear), and waves travelling upwind are refracted upwards (making them harder to hear). If the wind's at your back, you can be quite close to a noise source yet unable to hear it - whereas someone much further away on the other side of the source, with the wind in their face, can hear it quite clearly.