When a drummer hits a drum, the surface vibrates and creates sound—a signal we recognize as music. But once those vibrations stop, the signal disappears. Now imagine a drumhead that’s incredibly thin, only about 10 millimeters wide, and covered in tiny triangular holes. Scientists have created exactly that, and it does something extraordinary.
Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, working with teams from the University of Konstanz and ETH Zurich, discovered that vibrations can travel through this miniature membrane with barely any energy loss. In fact, the vibrations move more cleanly than signals in even the most advanced electronic circuits. This breakthrough, recently published in Nature, opens up new possibilities for how we transmit sound and information, especially in the race toward powerful new quantum technologies.
Phonons – Sound Signals or Vibrations That Spread Through a Solid Material.
