If you found yourself sitting on your porch or had a window open last night and you lived in Dublin city, there's a good chance you got a free Killers gig for your trouble.
The Las Vegas pop-rock outfit played the RDS last night and, if Twitter is anything to go by, the music went out right across the city. Going by tweets and reactions, it appears the music even reached as far as Rathfarnham in one instance. So, was it possible that the Killers were actually that loud or is there something else?
Very sound of The Killers to put a set on in the RDS that I can listen to in Churchtown. Savage Waterboys cover of Whole of the moon just there!
— Mike Ross (@MikeRoss03) June 26, 2018
The cat won't come in until the Killers finish their encore. He wasn't even alive when Hot Fuss came out. He's never seen a lifestyle sports ad
— Tarot Gamer (@ceebels) June 26, 2018
I live in town and I can hear The Killers so clearly (inside my flat with the window closed, I might add) that I’m actually singing along.
Wrap it the feck up Brandon, some of us have 5am alarms.
— Karin Carthy (@KarinCarthy) June 26, 2018
I heard this from my stoop in Dublin City Centre last night. Thanks for the free gig @thekillers ! https://t.co/uDlki75aUJ
— Miriam Burke (@The_MiriamBurke) June 27, 2018
Our guess? Sound travels faster in hotter temperatures. If the temperature is -1 degrees celsius, the speed of sound can be roughly calculated to 330.4 m/s. At 21 degrees celsius - which it likely was last night - the speed of sound goes to 343.6 m/s.
Not only that, there's also temperature inversion to consider. Normally, the air closer to the ground is warmer than the air higher up. This means that the sound speed near the ground is faster than the sound speed in the air above, which causes sound to bend upward and carry further.
In other words, the sound is moving faster and travelling further - all thanks to the heat.
Science, bitch.