What causes the sonic boom when aircraft break the sound barrier?
84345
Think of an airplane as a boat for a moment. You know that a fast-moving boat causes a wake to form behind it. Well, an airplane does this with sound waves. Sound waves propogate ahead of an airplane if it is going slower than the speed of sound. However, if an airplane breaks the sound barrier, the sound waves are pushed together. At first, you hear nothing, and then you hear the sonic boom (the "wake" of the airplane).
381799
When it fell, it still made air vibrations (which could be considered sound depending on the definition you read).\n\nFor example:\n\nSound (Noun):\n"1c: mechanical radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium (as air) and is the objective cause of hearing"\n\nSo, based on this definition, yes it made 'sound'.
1157262
the wind cause the air particles to rub up agaisnt one another, creating friction.  the friction is the noise that you hear.
358369
Quite simply, yes.  I have some authority on this subject, as I used to be an acoustics consultant.\nWhen the eardrums are subject to this kind of assault, they can take a long time to recover after the sound has stopped.  A typical reaction is a ringing in the ears, which take literally take hours to fade away.  During this time, other sounds may not be clear.\nContinued / repeated exposure to excessively loud noise can result in the ears never being able to return to their 'normal' level - i.e. a level of deafness.\nIf people want to show off their cars, they could have some spectacular artwork painted on it.  This is something people could admire, instead of being subjected to ridiculous blasts of unwanted noise that really will produce the risk of deafness for the occupants. <End of rant>
1140623
maybe someone got shot right outside your window while it was raining.. perfect cover\n\nNo, really the different sounds are created by different frequencies and wavelentghs of the vibrations caused by the electricity splitting the air. This can vary from the sonic boom you hear when a F15 crosses Mach 1 .. to the crack noise you hear with a whip. As for the loudness, it is a function of intensity and proximity.. so yea the same lightning will be louder when its closer.. but it could also be a very strong lightning far away.. the way you could tell would be the difference in light and sound... \n\ni hope this helps
843134
Sound can affect the body in many ways.  The most common form is deafness, where the cilia in the ears are flattened and cannot transmit the vibrations to nerves.  The cilia are like hairs and vibrate with the vibrations created by the noise.  The vibrations pass through the air and are picked up by the cilia and passed onto the brain for processing.  This is a simple explanation as explained to me by a doctor.\nNoise, and over pressure from such sources as an explosion, can burst the eardrum.  The eardrum vibrates and excites the cilia,  So if the eardrum is burst or the cilia are flat, deafness occurs.\nHearing ringing noises in the ears is tinnitus and is a hearing defect created by noise and in some cases diseases.\nVery low noise, on the Hertz scale, can cause the body to evacuate it contents, both front and rear end.  Higher frequency noise can cause bleeding internally.  The military have been experimenting with sonic weapons since before the Second World War.\nSubliminal suggestion by playing sounds behind sounds has been banned from advertising.  Suggesting that you buy something while listening to an ad that tells you how much a company pays to a charity would really work in your head.\nOther than that, try sleeping next to a railway line that operates with trains every 5 minutes during the time you should normally be asleep!.  You would be absolutely tired by the end of the week.
396057
Yes.  Sonic booms occur when the air in front of a body moving faster than the speed of sound becomes very compressed and shockwaves cause a loud boom.\n\nA shuttle gliding to Earth is travelling without its engines operating.  Yet, it still produces a sonic boom.  People living near Space Shuttle landing sites will confirm this; and hence answer your question.
956289
Yeah, it will produce a compression wave in the air - which is the definition of sound.  It doesnt matter if someone is there to hear it or not.  A sound is still made.
57901
Exposure to high intensity sound.\naspirin overdose.\nphysical trauma.
263764
1) Echoes are caused because the sound bounces off the surrounding landscape, just like ripples in a pond reflect back from the edge and start going back in the other direction.\n2) Sound comes later than the lightning because sound goes about 700 mph and light goes about 990,000 times faster than that.  So if the lightning is 1 mile away, the light gets to you in a fraction of a second and the thunder arrives after 5 seconds.
394921
Sound does not travel in a vacuum.
1109318
The cause is most likely Methane gas.  A large methane gas bubble could almost instantly sink a cargoliner.  Likewise, a plane's engine will completly shut out if too much methane gets into the engine.  So if a plane flys through a methane bubble they are in trouble.  There is a discovery special about it and more info in this article listed below.
1026481
Energy is neither created nor destroyed.\n\nit simply become another form of energy.\n\nWhile the air is necessary for the sound to travel, (any \nmedium that is made up of molecules will transmit sound, i.e. sound will \nnot travel in a vacuum), it also has inertia.  Thus the sound wave must \n"push" the air molecules into the next molecule and so on. The friction \nbetween the molecules  causes the sound wave to eventually lose its energy, \nand thus its volume or intensity.  All the while this is occuring, other \nobjects, animals and humans are absorbing the energy in the wave until the \noriginal energy is absorbed into other systems in the form of mechanical \nenergy or chemical energy.
551957
because the co2 is pressurized, meaning the molecules have greater kinetic energy even at the same temperature. when the seal is broken, it depressurizes so the kinetic energy of the molecules can equalize, and so lots of co2 molecules rush out, making a whoosh sound because they cause air molecules to vibrate as they move, making sound.
366915
They are doing work with lasers on effecting weather and often people have 'cannons' for hail with the idea that the sound waves will break up the ice. I'm not sure about bombing the storm. Storms are created by a range of factors that would not be all effected by a bomb. The website is complicated but talks about the use of high frequency waves to achieve this. most military applications are to do with clearing fog etc...to allow for a strategic advantage.
104416
It looks like diffusion. \nSound waves are reflected between parallel lines so that the mulitple reflections makes sound waves diffuse from one point to other. This is the best logical explaination i can think of. But additional info on this question can help to explain further.
1124040
The 'diamonds' present in afterburner exhaust from a jet engine are standing shock waves from interaction with the nozzle and the atmosphere as the exhaust gases exit the engine at supersonic speeds.  There is some correlation between the numbers of diamonds seen in the exhaust and the speed of the exhaust gases themselves, but not necessarily the speed of the craft using the engine.  Also they are not absolute, in that each single diamond does not represent a 1 Mach speed gradient.