Mysuru: It was neither an earthquake nor a quarry blast. The loud sound that was heard at around 12.45 pm yesterday was in fact, a ‘Sonic Boom’ created by a Supersonic Jet. Due to the loud sound, rumours spread that there was an earthquake.
Panicked residents, especially from Kuvempunagar, Saraswathipuram, V.V. Puram, Railway Yard, Paduvarahalli, Yadavagiri and Bannimantap, even complained that the vessels in their houses shook and fell off the shelves.
A Sonic Boom is a loud noise created by the ‘shock wave’ produced by a Supersonic Jet that is travelling faster than sound. Normally, for a plane that is going at sub-sonic speeds (lower than that of sound), the sound of the plane is radiated in all directions, but at supersonic speed, it is going faster than the speed of its sound and that’s when ‘Sonic Boom’ occurs.
Speaking to Star of Mysore, Karthik, a resident of the city who is preparing for his Civil Services examinations said that if a plane (a jet) is travelling slower than the speed of sound, then sound waves can propagate ahead of the plane. If the plane breaks the sound barrier and flies faster than the speed of sound, it produces a Sonic Boom when it flies past.
The boom is the “wake” of the plane’s sound waves. The sound waves that would have normally propagated ahead of the plane are combined together so at first you hear nothing, and then you hear the boom they create, he said. Sonic Booms generate large amount of sound energy, sounding like an explosion, he added.
This post was published on February 23, 2018 6:44 pm