2018年海洋信息论坛第11期
报告题目：The Acoustic Bubble
报告人：Timothy Leighton 教授
时间：
地点：水声楼315会议室
报告人简介：
Timothy Leighton 是英国南安普敦大学声与振动研究所的教授，研究方向为超声波及水下声学。他是英国皇家学会，皇家工程学院和医学科学院三个国家研究院的院士。他1985年毕业于英国剑桥大学，获得双文学硕士学位（物理与理论物理），并于1988年在同所大学修得博士学位。已获国际奖8项，发明奖6项。2006年帕特森奖章给他的颁奖词是：“Timothy Leighton在多个领域内都作出巨大贡献，是目前世界上四个领域内公认的带头人”。在2017年，皇家学会宣布授予他皇家学会克利福德帕特森奖章，并称赞“他做了许多声学基础研究并可应用在许多领域，包括抗菌药物耐药性，地雷探测，胎儿检测，救灾，气候变化和海洋生物”。他主持了一个研究小组，是NAMRIP（抗菌药物耐药性和感染预防网络）的创始主席和HEFUA（空气中超声健康效应组织）的创始主席。他也是许多政府和国际机构的顾问。
报告摘要：
Bubbles couple to sound fields to an extraordinary extent, generating and scattering sound, and changing the chemical, physical and biological environments around them when excited to pulsate by an appropriate sound field. This paper opens with the way that the sound emitted by bubbles, when they are injected into the ocean by breaking waves, helps track the >1 billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon that transfers between atmosphere and ocean annually. However, compared to carbon dioxide, atmospheric methane has at least 20 times the ability, per molecule, to generate ‘greenhouse’ warming. Worldwide there is more than twice the amount of carbon trapped in the seabed in the form of methane hydrate than the amount of carbon worldwide in all other known conventional fossil fuels. Acoustics can track the release of bubbles of seabed methane as this hydrate dissociates in response to increasing ocean temperatures, an effect cited by some as a possible climate apocalypse.
However the ones with most experience of directing sound fields at bubbly ocean water in order to exploit the interaction between underwater sound and bubbles, are marine mammals. Having evolved over tens of millions of years to cope with the underwater acoustic environment, the hypothesis is that cetaceans may have developed techniques from which we could learn. This paper outlines some of the possible interactions, focusing on the use of bubble nets by whales and dolphins to trap prey, and exploring the challenges and opportunities that whales and dolphins face when blowing bubble nets to obtain food.