I recently had surgery on my ankle and have started walking again. I find when I stretch or move it, it cracks and pops a lot more then it ever did before. This doesn’t cause pain, and sometimes even feels nice, but what makes the noise?
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It (the popping noise) may actually be caused by the formation of the nitrogen gas, not the popping of the bubble:
“In 2015, research showed that bubbles remained in the fluid after cracking, suggesting that the cracking sound was produced when the bubble within the joint was formed, not when it collapsed. In 2018, a team in France created a mathematical simulation of what happens in a joint just before it cracks. The team concluded that the sound is caused by bubbles’ collapse, and bubbles observed in the fluid are the result of a partial collapse. Due to the theoretical basis and lack of physical experimentation, the scientific community is still not fully convinced of this conclusion.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_joints?wprov=sfla1
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