eli5: I saw a post on instagram saying “Sonoluminescence – If you collapse an underwater bubble with a soundwave, light is produced, and nobody knows why” is this true?
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I’m going to focus more on the “nobody knows why” bit for readers coming here.
Any time someone makes this claim, its good to be skeptical. In many cases, maybe even most, these are used as a sort of stawman argument: making up a claim in order to undermine an argument for someone else. I see this all the time in evolutionary biology where people trot out a similar argument (no one knows how such a complex structure evolved, therefore it is proof of intelligent design. In reality, we absolutely do know how the favourite straw-men evolved, and can trace it back billions of years ^/rant). On another note, things like this are also prime sources of disinformation to be wary of.
The reality is that, in most cases, we either do understand something, or at least have a good idea of the principles behind it. In the cases we don’t know, though, it doesn’t mean that something should be inferred (such as an unusual biological system being proof of god’s existence). Sometimes “I don’t know” is just as valid an answer on its own. That said, researchers will also probably be pretty annoyed at not knowing something about their field and already be figuring out ways to get that knowledge, so I’d also trust an expert opinion if they say “we think we’re looking at [X]”.
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