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?
In: 58
You can think of it this way: a plane makes noise, and that noise goes in all directions…
When the plane goes *almost* as fast as the noise (read: nearing the speed of sound), the noise in the front can not escape any more, but rather more and more noise is added… this is at its max when the plane is exactly at the speed of sound. This collected noise is basically the “sonic boom”.
Once the plane is faster than the speed of sound, the problem is gone: there is no longer noise collecting, and the boom is over.
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