I’ve never really understood how something travelling faster than teh speed of sound causes a sonic boom.
Secondary, like when man first broker the sound barrier, did the scientists *know* a sonic boom would occur, or was it a surprise and they all were like “WTF was that, did we just break something”?
Thirdly, is a sonic boom guaranteed when something breaks the sound barrier, or do they sometimes not happen?
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On top of everything else here, the idea of sound being a “barrier” has nothing to do with it being thought of as a “physical” barrier to be broken, but rather a technological and engineering challenge.
Planes are reliant on fluid flow patterns to actually fly (and control their own flight), but fluid flow starts to get weird when you get into the transonic regime (i.e. 80% the speed of sound or above), all of which presents a problem for controlling the plane as well as getting air into the engines (hence why a lot of the early attempts at breaking the sound barrier used rocket engines; it simplifies the problem because you don’t need to get air into the engines).
However, the issue of strange physics near the sound barrier was already known, and had been documented pretty extensively in WW2 when planes were becoming powerful enough to get near the sound barrier in dives, particularly the American P-38 Lightning. So breaking the sound barrier wasn’t done blindly or on accident.
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