The ocean is getting louder, and marine life is paying the price. From offshore wind farms to subsea mining, human activity is cranking up underwater noise pollution—and current solutions are falling short. But a team of researchers in Italy is betting on an unconventional fix: mechanical metamaterials. These aren’t your average materials. They’re engineered structures that defy conventional physics, bending, absorbing, or even blocking waves in ways that traditional materials can’t. The POSEIDON project, funded by the European Research Council, is tackling the root of the problem: the way sound behaves underwater. Waves travel five times farther in water than in air, and the fluid’s density makes conventional barriers bulky and ineffective. The goal? Replace meter-thick noise barriers with metamaterials just centimeters thick, without sacrificing performance. “The challenge is to control deformation and wave propagation in ways that traditional materials simply can’t,” says Professor Marco Miniaci, leading the research at Politecnico di Torino. Miniaci’s team is engineering materials whose properties come not from what they’re made of, but how they’re structured. Think honeycombs, lattices, or even spirals—geometries that can absorb vibrations, dampen sound, or even bend in unexpected ways. The implications go beyond just noise reduction. The DREAM project, an extension of POSEIDON, will apply these principles to seismic wave attenuation and energy harvesting from wave motion. If successful, this could revolutionize how we manage noise pollution, seismic risks, and renewable energy extraction—all while keeping marine ecosystems safer. The ocean is a noisy place, but with metamaterials, we might finally have a way to turn down the volume.
Metamaterials Could Silence the Ocean’s Rising Noise Pollution
