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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First off, good on you for being skeptical of this kind of post, most “we don’t know” posts like that are rubbish at best.
The real quick answer to your question is that it’s true-ish, we know part of what is going on.
The wikipedia page on [sonoluminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence) goes into more detail but the TL:DR is we know there are extreme temperatures with in the bubble as it collapses which heat up the gases within, which then causes the light. How that heat is generated is the part that isn’t understood and there are a number of theories as to how but as you can imagine it’s a bit tricky to study.
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