Thanks for the answers guys, but I still don’t really understand how sound can go at the speed of light, and IMO I think it took a lot longer than we think.
Don’t believe me? Imagine we have no advanced tech that we have today, and across world voice calls don’t exist. Imagine how fucking difficult it would be to make the sound of your voice go at light speed across Earth.
For example imagine you’re at a park with your friend and across world vc’s don’t exist. You’re speaking to each other through the pipe with the two cups at each end, and you want to invent a way to communicate across the world
The fact they did it is awesome. It sounds impossible. And at the time I have no doubt the majority of the world thought it was impossible. But we always think it’s impossible, until it’s invented.
OP below
I always thought that the sound travels at the speed of light but then it hit me that it’s not light, it’s sound, so I had to post this.
OP above
Edit: It’s technically still sound though right? Just converted into something else.
Just because it’s converted into a different form doesn’t mean it’s not sound. It’s just sound in a different form, or it wouldn’t be sound at the other end.
Who was the first person to convert sound to the speed of light?
Edit2: I still think there’s something you’re not telling me guys 🤔😂
Edit3: to the few haters who downvoted my reply to the comment when I said ‘no shit’ when someone compared this to paper travelling at the speed of light, get a brain. Sound doesn’t weigh anything.
Edit4: u/mitchrsmert fr? If sound has mass how can it travel at the speed of light?
In: 627
The sound does travel at the speed of light.
Kind of.
A microphone (and a speaker) work by converting sound waves into a varying electrical signal, and vice-versa. That electric signal is not exactly “the sound,” but it carries the same data as the original sound wave.
So, if you convert that electric signal back into sound waves, you’ve effectively caused “the sound” to travel at very nearly the speed of light! (You haven’t, not really, but it’s close enough for lay persons.)
At a high level: Sound is converted to digital signals, then carried across the ocean using pulses of light through fiber optic trans-continental cables, so the “information” you hear is traveling at the speed of light. It’s only converted back to sound when you hear it on the phones speaker.
The sound is recorded on your device and turned into a digital signal that is sent through the air and wires at faster than the speed of sound but slower than the speed of light. It is not “instant” but it is fast enough that you don’t really notice the delay most of the time.
It’s not sound. The sound of your voice is converted to digital data which travels (depending on the medium it’s carried by, copper or fiber) more or less at the speed of light. That digital data is decoded on the receiving end and converted back to sound.
The microphone in your phone converts the air vibrations from your voice into electric impulses, which travel close to the speed of light until they reach the earpiece of the receiver where the electric impulses are converted back into air vibrations that your receiver can hear. Therefore the message travels at the speed of sound only between your throat and the microphone, and then from the speaker to your receiver’s eardrum.
You’d be right if you were trying to shout at your friends across the globe but that isn’t how we communicate any more.
Old wired telephones worked by turning the sound waves made by your voice into electrical signals. These signals could then travel much faster than sound. Not 100% on the science here but I think we’re talking near light speed (I’ll let someone smarter correct me).
Wireless technology sort of works the same. Take radio for example.
A guy speaks into a microphone, the sound is converted into electrical signals, these get sent to a radio tower which turns the electric signals into radio waves.
Your radio antenna collects those waves, turns them back into an electric signal and uses that to create sound with a speaker.
The backbone of the internet as far as I know is a mass of fiberoptic cables, which send data as light, so transfering information at near light speed isn’t that unusual at the moment. Same principle as radio but you use light instead of radio waves to move the information.
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First, as others point out you are converting your voice into a digital signal comprised of ones and zeroes. In the case of a cell phone, you do have some delay from non-optical cables, such as copper wires, radio signal, etc.
Once you get to the “main” part of the journey, those digital packets that simulate your voice traverse optical cable and travel at nearly the speed of light. The speed of light is insanely fast, nearly 300 million meters per second.
The circumference of the Earth is about 40 million meters, but typically you don’t traverse more than half of that. So you might have your digital voice travel upwards of 20 million meters. Over optical cables, that journey takes less than 1/10 of a second (less than 100 ms).
So even if you add the latency from non-optical transmission, you’re looking at probably 200-300 ms lag *at most*. Humans typically can’t perceive latencies of 100 ms and even 200-300 is barely perceptible, and in the case of a phone call is probably not noticable.
If you read about can latency when we used satellites for transatlantic communication, you’ll see that they definitely had noticeable latency. Isn’t the internet wonderful?
I just want to comment on ‘instant’ – I regularly have to call Australia from the Vancouver, BC. There is a very significant and annoying delay that makes a proper conversation a bit weird.
You have some misconceptions that when cleared up might explain things for you. No sound is traveling or being sent anywhere. When you make a phone call, your phone turns the sound it picks up from the microphone into an electric signal. That signal gets sent through wires, either as electrons or as light if it’s in a fiber optic cable. Then on the other end, phone of the person who is receiving the call turns that signal back into sound.
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