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
When you move through air you displace it, and a “wave” is created which sounds like “boom”.
[Here it is for water](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Fjordn_surface_wave_boat.jpg/1200px-Fjordn_surface_wave_boat.jpg); if you were standing on shore you would only “hear” this when the waves reached you. The water would have relatively small waves (it would be relatively “quiet”) and then suddenly that big wake would reach you and it would sound like thunder rumbling.
And [here it is for air](https://history.nasa.gov/SP-60/i-5-1.jpg), and that is a photograph NOT a drawing. Speed of waves (sound) in air is different than in water, but you can see that the same principle applies.
The [sonic boom](https://res.cloudinary.com/dk-find-out/image/upload/q_80,w_1920,f_auto/A-iStock_000017498245Large_pxojdi.jpg) happens when the object is AT the speed of sound, the waves “collect” instead of being able to disperse fast enough. This creates pressures and turbulence on the airplane, which is why airplanes try to go THROUGH the speed of sound asap, either go faster or go slower, and not maintain that speed.
As far as whether they expected it, [here’s the description of the first flight](https://www.space.com/16709-breaking-the-sound-barrier.html) that achieved it, and as you can see it was called the “sound barrier” in 1935 (long before they attempted it), implying that it was a barrier that could not be passed. For the flight in 1947, they went close a number of times and experienced huge turbulence, plus the plane was built to withstand 18 g’s, so as sturdy as they could make it, so I would say yeah they expected it.
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