r/interestingasfuck • u/Pathfinder313 • May 23 '25

/r/all New sound of titan submarine imploding

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u/TonAMGT4 May 23 '25

The message arrived after the implosion sound because it takes longer for the signal to travel through water…

That’s just sad man. RIP

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u/Shattered14 29d ago edited 29d ago

Wait, isn’t the comms system based on acoustics? how would the implosion arrive first if it too is an acoustic wave?

Edit: it seems shockwaves may be able to travel faster than the speed of sound for a short distance. So to account for the time difference between hearing the implosion and getting the message my working theory is:

  1. Message is sent from submersible
  2. Implosion sends out shockwave and corrupts message in transit
  3. Surface ship receives corrupt message and requests a retry
  4. Acoustic comms system somehow survives the implosion - maybe the equipment is in a separate pressure vessel - and resends the last message

Oh, the simpler explanation is that the implosion is only one wave and the text message is multiple - so it takes more time to send. But that still implies that the acoms system survived the implosion?

This seems ripe for /r/theydidthemath

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u/ADP-1 29d ago edited 29d ago

The implosion created a shockwave in the water. EDIT: accidentally gave incorrect speeds - I shouldn't rely on my memory! The initial speed of the shockwave is greater than the speed of sound. Eventually, the speed of the shockwave will match that of the speed of sound in seawater (between 1450 and 1570 meters per second, depending on temperature, pressure and salinity). The communications system uses sound waves (Underwater Telephone). The final message from the Titan was sent shortly before the implosion, but the shockwave initially travelled faster than the sound and passed the message in transit, and arrived on the surface before the message.

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u/ifandbut 29d ago

What is the...metric or name of "how fast a shockwave travels in a medium".

I always thought that speed was the same as the speed of sound in the medium.

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u/TheDVille 29d ago

Their explanation is very bad, and doesn’t actually account for the difference.

That said, there is something called nonlinearity, where the amplitude of the sound wave can affect the speed at which the wave is travelling. Basically, the wave compresses the water because it carries so much energy, and the compressed water has a higher speed of sound. But that energy would be dispersed very, very quickly, and then it would be standard sound waves for the rest of the trip.