“…Sound-speed measurements in shock-compressed materials are particularly sensitive to phase transitions like melting that are difficult to identify from measurements of Hugoniot states. Previous measurements of sound velocities in shocked quartz, quartz rocks (Chhabildas, 1986;Grady et al, 1974Grady et al, , 1975McQueen, 1992;Morgan & Fritz, 1979;Pavlovskii, 1976), and fused silica (Chhabildas & Grady, 1984;McQueen, 1992;Morgan & Fritz, 1979) have been described as "disappointing" (McQueen, 1992) because of the large scatter both within and between the different data sets (see supporting information Figure S1). For example, repeated sound-speed measurements in fused silica shocked to nearly identical stress states resulted in a velocity difference as high as ∼10-20% in the work of McQueen (1992).…”