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visual effect of breaking the sound barrier?

entwined
in Other Sciences

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A friend sent me this picture, along with several others of the same thing.

 

It was said that the photo was taken at the instant of breaking the sound barrier.

 

I did not know that breaking the sound barrier was accompanied by this sort of visual effect.

 

I thought one of you guys or gals could explain it to me?

 

ShowLetter.jpg

it's water. i don't remember exactly why it happens, though.

 

Isn't it because of the sudden pressure drop that results as the barrier is broken or something like that?

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

Thanks blike, looks cool! You can even see the shape of the expanding pressure wave... would love to see that myself sometime :)

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

Ryan: it is a very very cool thing to see. loud too.

 

Yea I bet it would be loud, apparently it can shatter glass in windows and stuff like that too. Pretty neat :)

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

There's currently big developments being made into reducing sonic boom, and hopefully removing it...

 

 

Did you say "removing" it.How is it supposed to happen.Removing a sonic boom....hmn....neat,but,how exactly is it supposed to be done?

I was at "youtube" (don't judge me)

watching videos of planes breaking the sound barrier and I was wondering what this was also.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNoeuRKvcUk&search=sonic%20boom

 

What surprised me was that the planes seemed as if they weren't really travelling at 1000 kph.

 

Out of all the videos of sonic booms I think this was the only convincing one:

 

And maybe the concorde one too.

But what do I know. Judge for yourselves.

I wonder what the visual/audio effects would be of something breaking the light barrier?

I don't believe you could remove a sonic boom... not unless you had a supersonic aircraft that was completely silent. But my question is this. Why would you want to? Sonic booms are just so cool. My dad always talked about when he was a kid living near a military target range hearing sonic booms all day. That made me so jealous. Only once in my life did I ever hear one, and it happened when President Bush's escort broke the sound barrier over my house. All I can say is it was AWESOME! lol

Noise regulations. The Concorde already had problems with restrictions forcing it to fly mostly over the ocean, so quieting a supersonic aircraft could be a big bonus. Wouldn't you be irritated if the midnight express flew over your house every night at Mach 2 and rattled the windows?

It's not possible so the question doesn't have any physical answers...

 

Forgetting about Cherenkov radiation are we? :) Of course, c isn't broken by the object/particle, just the speed of light in a medium.

 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation for more information.

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