Eli5: What is the sound barrier?
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It’s the speed of sound
it’s called that because aircraft experience a lot of drag when going next to that speed, and so it was thought it’s like a barrier you can’t pass, a maximum speed
It’s said that when an aircraft passes the speed of sound it makes a sonic boom and that’s the “barrier” “breaking” which might be another origin for the term except that’s not really how it works, a sonic boom is created whenever an object faster than sound moves through the air, the sound kinda bunches all up because it’s slower than the object and when it all comes in it at once, it sounds like an boom, it’s not an actual explosion, it just sounds like one
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