SOFAR channel (deep sound channel)
Canal SOFAR (canal sonoro profundo)
- Date
- 1944-1946 · confidence medium
- Place
- Woods Hole, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel; Leonid Brekhovskikh independently
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A layer of the ocean, at about a thousand metres' depth, where sound is refracted towards the axis and travels thousands of kilometres without fading. It was detected with depth charges set off in the Atlantic.
Brekhovskikh discovered it independently in the USSR (1946), and Ewing's work was classified; dates are approximate.
What it led to
- underwater acoustic surveillance and SOSUS networks
- acoustic thermometry and long-range whale tracking