I know it comes from breaking the sound barrier, but why a boom instead of complete silence?
I have the understanding it creates a physical wave too.
Bonus questions: Does the pilot hear it?
Can the same thing be achieved underwater?
Related: I know the speed of sound is faster under water, does any reaction happen theoretically at the air speed of sound underwater?
In: 310
Sound.
When you move through the air, you create a sound. At low speeds, it’s impossible to hear, but at high speeds, it’s much more noticeable. Add in a jet engine making noise, and it’s even louder. When you travel at or above the speed of sound, you create sound waves that travel in the same direction as you, but behind you, meaning that as you continue, you have more and move sound waves stacking up in that wave front behind you. This is a sonic boom.
The pilot cannot hear anything aside from sounds in the plane itself or in front of the plane, not the sonic boom.
This is possible to do in water, but it’s much harder. The speed of sound in water is about 5x that of the speed of sound in air, so you’d have to travel 5x the speed through a medium that has more drag to do it. If you did succeed, you would also be able to see a vacuum bubble behind you, since the water wouldn’t be able to fill that space before you leave it. It also creates an insane amount of heat.
Also, nothing special happens in water at air’s speed of sound.
We can get particles to travel through water faster than light can travel through water, and it creates a light boom which we see as a blue glow called cherenkov radiation. The speed limit in physics is the speed of light in a vacuum, so traveling faster than the speed of light in water is perfectly fine.
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