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Sonoluminescence

Cavitation hots up

Gas inside collapsing bubbles can become very hot and, as a result, emit light. It turns out that temperatures of more than 15,000 kelvin can be reached — as hot as the surface of a bright star.

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Figure 1: Bubble sonoluminescence — bubbles are driven by sound waves to emit light.
Figure 2: Indirect evidence for the temperature reached inside a collapsing bubble.

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Lohse, D. Cavitation hots up. Nature 434, 33–34 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/434033a

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