Sound travels four times faster through ocean water than it does through the air.

In the air, sound moves at about 343 meters per second. In seawater, it jumps up to about 1,500 meters per second. This happens because water is much harder to squash than air, which helps the energy of the sound wave move faster.The speed of sound in the ocean isn't always the same. It changes depending on how salty the water is, how deep you go, and how warm the water is. Scientists found that sound travels best in a special deep-sea layer called the SOFAR channel.In the 1940s, researchers Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel discovered this 'sound tunnel.' In this layer, low-frequency sounds can travel incredible distances without losing much energy. Some sounds, like the deep songs of whales, can travel over 10,000 kilometers across the entire ocean.Humans use this same science for sonar to find shipwrecks or navigate submarines. While water is fast, solid objects are even faster. For example, sound travels through a steel beam at a whopping 5,960 meters per second because the atoms are locked tightly together.