Blake Scholl

And then there's a distinction with booms that doesn't occur with wakes, which is they curve as they move.

And they do that because there's a temperature gradient in the atmosphere.

Of course, it's cold up high and it's warmer down low.

That temperature gradient creates a speed of sound gradient.

The speed of sound is higher the warmer it is, lower the cooler it is.

Okay.

refraction happens.

Whenever a wave moves through something where its speed changes, it turns in the direction of lower speed.

So imagine you're driving your car and your inside wheels are moving slower than your outside wheels.

You're going to turn towards the inside.

So when light refracts, that's why.

When sound refracts, that's why.

And so the sonic boom, which is this sort of compressed air band that comes off the airplane when it's flying supersonic,

makes, you know, it turns as it goes through the sky.

And so if it comes off the airplane at a sufficiently shallow angle and the airplane is sufficiently high, you've got this gigantic U in the sky.

And if the bottom of the U never touches the ground, nobody hears any boom.

Gotcha.

And so this is the easy solution for sonic boom.

For 50 years, people have talked about it like it's this boogeyman.

That's going to require decades of R&D.