Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
NASA captures unprecedented images of supersonic shockwaves
When an aircraft crosses that threshold—around 1,225 kilometers (760 miles) per hour at sea level—it produces waves from the pressure it puts on the air around it, which merge to cause the ear-splitting sound.
In an intricate maneuver by "rock star" pilots at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, two supersonic T-38 jets flew just 30 feet (nine meters) apart below another plane waiting to photograph them with an advanced, high-speed camera, the agency said.
The rendezvous—at an altitude of around 30,000 feet—yielded mesmerizing images of the shockwaves emanating from both planes.
With one jet flying just behind the other, "the shocks are going to be shaped differently", said Neal Smith of AerospaceComputing Inc, an engineering firm that works with NASA, in a post on the agency's website.
"This data is really going to help us advance our understanding of how these shocks interact."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @06:16PM
Hate to be a bother, but can we stop including clickbaity links to sections of a website where all you get is an endless stream of slightly related articles?
Does anyone really consciously click on https://phys.org/tags/sea+level/ [phys.org] or https://phys.org/tags/plane/ [phys.org] or https://phys.org/tags/high-speed+camera/ [phys.org] ???
Come the fuck on. I don't care about sea level, planes or high speed cameras. I wanna see the pictures this article is alluding to right from the source (nasa.gov). But oddly, that link wasn't included.