Sonic Boom, Red Bull Stratos (possible?)

[voskyc]

Hello, first topic in this forum, if this is not the correct sub-forum, I apologize in advance.

Well the question is:

Is it possible for Felix Baumgatner, to produce an audible sound from Earth sonic boom?.

Red bull has released what suppose to be that a micro sonic boom from the guy breaking speed barrier.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yZFz6y4UCuo

The thing is that from what I've research it won't be no possible due that:

1) You can not make a sonic boom if you make no sound.
2) The sonic cone that is formed, the wave is not pouting to ground (unlike the jet wave), because he was facing ground.
3) Even if possible it should be so small that it would be no audible from ground.

Well, sorry if it something obvious or the question is not proper formatted according to the forum rules.

Thanks in advance.

 

[mfb]

1) You can not make a sonic boom if you make no sound.

Humans make sounds simply by moving very fast through the air.

2) The sonic cone that is formed, the wave is not pouting to ground (unlike the jet wave), because he was facing ground.

It is a cone, moving down- and sidewards.

3) Even if possible it should be so small that it would be no audible from ground.

Any numbers to show that?

 

[voskyc]

Humans make sounds simply by moving very fast through the air.


It is a cone, moving down- and sidewards.


Any numbers to show that?

Hi, thanks for your answer, I just miss a some question marks, specially the 3) question :-).

So the 3 rd was a question.

The second one, ok, but the waves aren't moving parallel to ground? Should they be in that case audible from ground?,

And the most important, do you think by your knowledge that in fact what we are hearing in that video is a human body in free fall breaking the sound barrier?

Thanks.

 

[mfb]

If they would move parallel to the ground only, you could not hear it on the ground - the supersonic fall was in a height of ~25km.

And the most important, do you think by your knowledge that in fact what we are hearing in that video is a human body in free fall breaking the sound barrier?

I don't know. Maybe. Someone would have to calculate it.

 

[AlephZero]

Whether or not you could hear it on the ground, it doesn't make any sense that Baumgartner could hear his own sonic boom. For example passengers traveling in Concorde didn't hear a boom, because it was left behind them.

It's possible Baumgartner's microphone picked up some aerodynamic buffeting as the airflow around him changed from subsonic to supersonic, and that sounded like a couple of bumps, but that wouldn't actually be the "boom".

 

[voskyc]

Whether or not you could hear it on the ground, it doesn't make any sense that Baumgartner could hear his own sonic boom. For example passengers traveling in Concorde didn't hear a boom, because it was left behind them.

It's possible Baumgartner's microphone picked up some aerodynamic buffeting as the airflow around him changed from subsonic to supersonic, and that sounded like a couple of bumps, but that wouldn't actually be the "boom".

But Baumgartner, didn't fell anything at all (say it by himself).

The video I just linked, was filmed (and audio recorded) from ground "pointing" to Baumgartner in the sky while fallling.

 

[AlephZero]

But Baumgartner, didn't fell anything at all (say it by himself).

The video I just linked, was filmed (and audio recorded) from ground "pointing" to Baumgartner in the sky while fallling.

I didn't realize that. The video has obviously been edited, and the first part was (I assumed) sound from Baumgartner's microphone.

A good check would be the time after the start of the jump when the alleged boom was heard, but the edited video doesn't give that information. The time for the sound to reach the ground level would be of the order of a few minutes (the exact time is messy to calculate because the speed of sound depends on altitude, but it wuuld worth doing if there was something to check it against).

It could have been a boom from a supersonic aircraft observing the jump, not from Baumgartner.

 

[boneh3ad]

There is always going to be some degree of sonic boom coming from a supersonic object. How pronounced it is and who can hear it is a different story. The main issue I see here is that he was falling nearly straight down for the free-fall portion of the jump, so the shock waves would not touch the ground, and if they don't touch the ground, no one on the ground can hear a sonic boom.

The sound heard is a double boom, which is pretty characteristic of low-flying supersonic aircraft. I am not so convinced that a falling person would be of sufficient mass and the right shape to create a double boom. My money is on it either being a doctored video or some nearby supersonic aircraft, which are fairly common in that area of the country.

 

[Zentrails]

There is always going to be some degree of sonic boom coming from a supersonic object. How pronounced it is and who can hear it is a different story. The main issue I see here is that he was falling nearly straight down for the free-fall portion of the jump, so the shock waves would not touch the ground, and if they don't touch the ground, no one on the ground can hear a sonic boom.

The sound heard is a double boom, which is pretty characteristic of low-flying supersonic aircraft. I am not so convinced that a falling person would be of sufficient mass and the right shape to create a double boom. My money is on it either being a doctored video or some nearby supersonic aircraft, which are fairly common in that area of the country.

I think that's correct. He was supersonic, which means there certainly was a pressure shock wave in the front and a negative pressure wave from behind, but was he going straight down, feet first or head first? If so, you'd think that pressure wave would be very small.

If he was falling "flat" like skydivers do when making fancy maneuvers, the pressure wave would be bigger, but the negative pressure wave would not be far behind so the two "booms" would have to be so close together that they would sound like one. Plus it probably would hurt like hell. Imagine if he fell through a hailstorm. LOL

Just guessing, but I assume he fell in a manner that would reduce the pain as much as possible, so that would suggest the minimum possible pressure wave, but at some point he would have had to reduce his speed, otherwise the deceleration upon opening the chutes would probably be too much to survive.

I also wonder about the rapid change in temperature that he must have endured, starting out at extremely low temperatures, then rapidly rising temperatures due to friction. At 800+ MPH that friction must have been intense. The more I think about it, this stunt was a really amazing accomplishment. Beats a barrel over Niagara Falls any day. LOL

Since that meteor hit Russia, I've seen a lot of misinformation about sonic booms out there, the most common ones seems to be:

"The sonic boom is generated by passing though the sound barrier."
True, but misleading, you get a sonic boom after you pass the sound barrier, too.

"Sonic booms are caused by the so called "Mach Cone.""
Wrong, for example if a supersonic bullet passes close by your head you don't hear the sonic boom "crack" - it sounds more like a buzzing noise, because the "Mach Cone" is going by your head. When I was in Nam, if you heard that buzzing noise you ducked real quick because you almost bought it and you probably needed to clean your underwear as well LOL.

If you heard a "crack" that meant the bullet (and the "Mach Cone") missed you by a lot. The "Mach Cone" is a nice geometrical model to help explain sonic booms to laypersons, but that's about it, IMO.

"Only objects traveling at supersonic speeds generate sonic booms or you need a "shock wave" to generate a sonic boom."
Nope, here's an example, place 100 omnidirectional speakers exactly the same distance from a particular spot. A circle of speakers with a diameter of 1 km would work nicely. Send a pulse of white noise to each speaker at the same time. If you're standing in the middle of that circle, you hear a sonic boom. Anywhere else and you don't. Stonehenge has an effect something like that with properly positioned and timed drummers.

Excellent website with video examples showing why sonic booms occur.
http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demo...r/doppler.html

When I show this to someone not especially science literate, I skip all the math and tell them to visualize (soundulize? LOL) that each expanding circle represents a single ring of a bell. In other words, pretend there is a person ringing a bell on the airplane at a steady rate.

Then place your finger on the video anywhere you want and say "ding" every time a circle hits your finger.

In the first example you hear the bell, ding, ding, ding, ding, no matter where you put your finger (except right on the dot, of course) just like you would expect and just what it would sound like on the plane.

In the second, if your finger is directly above or below the dot and to the right, the dings come closer together than in the first example (forget mentioning the frequency change or you'll lose them). If you put your finger to the left, the dings are farther apart than the first example.

Then I tell the person to imagine the airplane going faster and faster - the dings will come closer and closer together, until you get to the point where it no longer sounds like single dings, but rather a continuous noise.

Then I move on to the third picture and repeat - put your finger above or below just to the right of the dot and count the dings - you get a bunch of them all at the same time, after which you hear dings again. Voila! that's a sonic boom - lots of dings all added together to make one loud ding.

The fourth example explains the bullet past the head phenomenon. Place your finger very slightly above or below and to the right of the airplane and you can see that the "Mach Cone" passes by, NOT the added together dings. Place your finger lower or higher and to the right and you then get the sound summation.

Then I explain the double sonic boom by pointing out that the video only shows sound coming from the back of the airplane, when in reality sound is generated simultaneously from the front shock wave AND the rear shock wave and there is a considerable distance between the two sources of sound (The bell ringing analogy no longer works very well) so you have two summed sounds a fraction of a second apart instead of just one.

"The sonic boom comes only from the shock waves"
No, the boom comes from ALL the noise coming from the plane with jet engine noise being the most important besides the shock wave noise. ALL of it contributes to the sonic boom intensity. In fact, if the pilot wants to make a really loud sonic boom, he turns on the afterburners.

 

[Zentrails]

It is a cone, moving down- and sidewards.

It's nowhere near this simple, which is one reason I dislike the "Mach Cone" explanation.

If the guy was falling straight down and there was no wind, then the sonic boom would be moving straight down and wouldn't be especially cone-shaped. There would only be sideways movement if the faller had significant tangential velocity NOT caused by a cross-wind.

That's extremely unlikely though, since at that altitude there must have been very strong wind currents not necessarily consistent in speed and direction with height. Another complication would be passing through thermal layers which would refract the sound.

In real life situations, it is not an easy task to predict when and where a sonic boom from a falling person will hit the ground and you cannot predict it accurately by using a simple cone model.

 

[mfb]

I think this is just a question of definition - if you move a "/" line downwards or sidewards does not make a difference in terms of the position of the new line, if you neglect the ends.
On the other hand, you can hear the boom if you are not in the direct line of the aircraft/person, so energy has to move sidewards to reach you.

Wind on Earth is usually slow compared to the speed of sound. Some deflection/reflection in the air is possible, of course.

 

[Zentrails]

Humans make sounds simply by moving very fast through the air.It is a cone, moving down- and sidewards.Any numbers to show that?

I think this is just a question of definition - if you move a "/" line downwards or sidewards does not make a difference in terms of the position of the new line, if you neglect the ends.
On the other hand, you can hear the boom if you are not in the direct line of the aircraft/person, so energy has to move sidewards to reach you.

Wind on Earth is usually slow compared to the speed of sound. Some deflection/reflection in the air is possible, of course.

All true, however sound always propagates in a spherical pattern, regardless of the speed of the source, (but relative to the velocity and direction of the air media it travels through). If the frame of reference of the observer is not too different from the media and the source is far away, the radius of curvature will be large enough that it is pretty close to a plane wave when the boom hits the ground. (Nice name for a rock song, "when the boom hits the ground" LOL). I'm assuming the source is falling straight down with respect to the observer(s) of course.

Caveats: The intensity can vary considerably around that propagating sphere (like when using a megaphone), of course, and it's debatable whether supersonic shock waves can really be called "sound," (shock waves caused by non-directed high explosives are certainly not "sound" although they do often propagate spherically) Shock waves from supersonic sources (which do not propagate spherically) slow down to the speed of sound rapidly, then become normal sound waves, making the "Mach Cone" a very useful illustrative device. (see the cool link in my post above)

But I think you are referring to the location of the major constructive interference node(s) with time. I don't call that the "Mach Cone," but others do, which is confusing. That node can indeed appear to move sideways in time depending on the way the propagating waves interfere with each other, even if the source is falling straight down, however I think it is likely that a person directly below the falling person and someone say 500 feet away would probably hear the boom at essentially the same time under most conditions. A mile away and that's a different story.

I'm not suggesting that wind causes a lot of deflection/reflection/refraction - rather that it can complicate the interference pattern considerably, weakening and altering the position of the major constructive interference node that is the sonic boom(s), although keep in mind that high altitude winds can sometimes reach nearly 200 mph.

I'm just nit picking, actually. I was a sonar tech in the US Navy, am a musician, and a PhD physicist/chemist, so I love speculating on anything related to sound. I'm not saying I have all the answers - anything incorrect with my logic and I'd appreciate someone correcting me.

On a lighter note, if a sonic boom is generated above a forest, knocking down trees, but with no ears there to hear it, does it make a sound? LOL

 

[Lsos]

Zentrails, I don't mean to hijack the thread but I think this is somewhat related, and you seem knowledgeable.

...the meteor in Russia, I keep hearing people saying that the sonic boom caused all the damage. I'm not coninved that's true (since the thing supposedly exploded with 500kt TNT), but what do you think? Did the sonic boom or the explosion cause the damage? If not the sonic boom, COULD a sonic boom from a meteor casue that much damage? How big or how fast would it have to be?

 

[Zentrails]

Zentrails, I don't mean to hijack the thread but I think this is somewhat related, and you seem knowledgeable.

...the meteor in Russia, I keep hearing people saying that the sonic boom caused all the damage. I'm not coninved that's true (since the thing supposedly exploded with 500kt TNT), but what do you think? Did the sonic boom or the explosion cause the damage? If not the sonic boom, COULD a sonic boom from a meteor casue that much damage? How big or how fast would it have to be?

Doubt it, just look at the Tunguska Event Wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

The estimate is that the explosion might have been as little as 3 Megatons.
quoting Wiki: "the zone of leveled forest occupied an area of some 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi)"

I think a 0.5 Megaton blast would have done far more damage than we saw in Russia the other day (maybe I read that wrong?). And since it was clearly closer to the ground than the Tunguska, it would have made a smaller but much deeper crater, IMO.

I don't think you can knock over a tree with a sonic boom, although there must have been one (two?) and you'd think it would be much more powerful than anything the Red Bull Stratos guy would have made. LOL

i.e. I think the reports of a sonic boom causing most of the damage was wrong as well as the 0.5 Megaton estimate. Makes for a more entertaining TV news report, though.

If they find a meteorite associated with that event, then maybe it was only a sonic boom, and they can certainly break windows, but I think the impact shock wave would have been far more powerful, like an earthquake.

I saw a pic of an iced over lake with a nearly perfectly round hole in it, that some were claiming was caused by the meteor. Seems unlikely that you'd get a nice round hole with no fractures radiating out from it, though, seems doubtful that was meteor caused.

They looked for decades for the Tunguska meteorite and couldn't find anything - which suggests that the air blast alone was powerful enough to register as a Richter 5 earthquake.

It would be interesting if someone analyzes the audio from Russia to see if a much quieter sonic boom occurred before or after that large bang sound. It would probably be after the blast if it were an air-burst, but probably before the blast if the object landed somewhere (although the speed of sound is faster through solids and shock waves can travel much faster than sound in any media, so who knows? I guess it would depend on where you were standing.)

At any rate, even without doing any calculations, it seems intuitive that either an air-burst OR an impact would create a huge shock wave much more powerful than the sonic boom(s) associated with the object.

Another thing to consider is that sonic booms contain a limited band of audio frequencies, usually at the higher end, whereas an explosion shock wave also causes low frequency sound that would probably be a lot more destructive as any rock concert veteran knows. LOL

One thing for sure, as the meteor entered the atmosphere, as soon as it reached a reasonable air density at supersonic speeds, the pressure on the leading edge of the meteor must have been high causing very high temperatures to build up on that leading edge very quickly (there's actually no such thing as "friction"). So, the exact same phenomena that supersonic planes experience (and pilots say they can feel) is what causes meteors to explode mid-air.

For example, supersonic jet engines have special input baffle type devices to slow the incoming air to subsonic speeds, otherwise the turbine blades would quickly disintegrate due to the high, turbulent (non-laminar) pressure.

Comets must be the worst, since they contain so much water. The ancients had good reason to consider comets bad omens!

Is there a thread on air-burst shock waves? If so, we should move this there.

 

[cjl]

Doubt it, just look at the Tunguska Event Wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

The estimate is that the explosion might have been as little as 3 Megatons.
quoting Wiki: "the zone of leveled forest occupied an area of some 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi)"

I think a 0.5 Megaton blast would have done far more damage than we saw in Russia the other day (maybe I read that wrong?). And since it was clearly closer to the ground than the Tunguska, it would have made a smaller but much deeper crater, IMO.

What makes you think it was closer to the ground? It was incredibly high up in the air - estimates I've seen put it at an altitude of 15-25 km at the time of the disintegration, while the estimates for Tunguska put it at 5-10km. A 500 kiloton blast at 15-25 km would probably not do all that much damage, since the energy would be spread out over a huge area.

I don't think you can knock over a tree with a sonic boom, although there must have been one (two?) and you'd think it would be much more powerful than anything the Red Bull Stratos guy would have made. LOL

i.e. I think the reports of a sonic boom causing most of the damage was wrong as well as the 0.5 Megaton estimate. Makes for a more entertaining TV news report, though.

Sure you can knock over a tree with a sonic boom. Sonic boom strength depends on a number of factors, including the size of the object, the geometry of the object, and the speed at which it is traveling. Of course a house-sized blunt object traveling at mach 30 will make a stronger boom than a person going mach 1.1. There's no difference (physically) between a sonic boom and a shock wave, aside from the fact that usually, a sonic boom has dissipated enough by ground level to have an extremely small overpressure. A very large boom, or one generated at low altitude will behave exactly like a shock wave from an explosion.

If they find a meteorite associated with that event, then maybe it was only a sonic boom, and they can certainly break windows, but I think the impact shock wave would have been far more powerful, like an earthquake.

What impact shock wave? It disintegrated in midair, and the pieces were traveling fairly slowly by the time they impacted.

I saw a pic of an iced over lake with a nearly perfectly round hole in it, that some were claiming was caused by the meteor. Seems unlikely that you'd get a nice round hole with no fractures radiating out from it, though, seems doubtful that was meteor caused.

I have no idea what dropping a dump truck sized boulder through several feet of ice at high speed would do, and I suspect this is one of those areas where common sense could be misleading.

They looked for decades for the Tunguska meteorite and couldn't find anything - but the air blast was powerful enough to register as a Richter 5 earthquake.

It would be interesting if someone analyzes the audio from Russia to see if a much quieter sonic boom occurred before or after that large bang sound.

At any rate, even without doing any calculations, it seems intuitive that either an air-burst OR an impact would create a huge shock wave much more powerful than the sonic boom(s).

Another thing to consider is that sonic booms contain a limited band of audio frequencies, usually at the higher end, whereas an explosion shock wave also causes low frequency sound that would probably be a lot more destructive.

A sonic boom is basically an N-shaped pressure wave, which contains a broad range of frequencies (including very low frequencies). I suspect the majority of the energy of the meteor did go into a sonic boom, and when it broke apart, that would greatly increase the cross sectional area, and thus greatly increase the sonic boom strength.

One thing for sure, as the meteor entered the atmosphere, as soon as it reached a reasonable air density at supersonic speeds, the pressure on the leading edge of the meteor must have been high causing very high temperatures to build up on that leading edge very quickly (there's actually no such thing as "friction"). So, the exact same phenomena that supersonic planes experience (and pilots say they can feel) is what causes meteors to explode mid-air.

For example, supersonic jet engines have special input baffle type devices to slow the incoming air to subsonic speeds, otherwise the turbine blades would quickly disintegrate due to the high, turbulent (non-laminar) pressure.

Yes, the heating is due to compression, though this is a bit oversimplified. Also, jet engines use their inlets not because the turbine blades would disintegrate, but rather because the turbine blades are not designed to efficiently compress and recover pressure from supersonic air. The losses would be enormous. The inlets are designed to slow the air down because this increases the efficiency of the engine, as well as because this slowing down provides the first stage of compression of the air (and jet engines want to compress the air as much as possible).

Comets must be the worst, since they contain so much water. The ancients had good reason to consider comets bad omens!

I suspect that they would be prone to breaking apart very high in the atmosphere, which would be less of a hazard than something which penetrates far down towards the ground intact. That's just a guess though.

 

[Zentrails]

What makes you think it was closer to the ground? It was incredibly high up in the air - estimates I've seen put it at an altitude of 15-25 km at the time of the disintegration, while the estimates for Tunguska put it at 5-10km. A 500 kiloton blast at 15-25 km would probably not do all that much damage, since the energy would be spread out over a huge area.



Sure you can knock over a tree with a sonic boom. Sonic boom strength depends on a number of factors, including the size of the object, the geometry of the object, and the speed at which it is traveling. Of course a house-sized blunt object traveling at mach 30 will make a stronger boom than a person going mach 1.1. There's no difference (physically) between a sonic boom and a shock wave, aside from the fact that usually, a sonic boom has dissipated enough by ground level to have an extremely small overpressure. A very large boom, or one generated at low altitude will behave exactly like a shock wave from an explosion.


What impact shock wave? It disintegrated in midair, and the pieces were traveling fairly slowly by the time they impacted.


I have no idea what dropping a dump truck sized boulder through several feet of ice at high speed would do, and I suspect this is one of those areas where common sense could be misleading.


A sonic boom is basically an N-shaped pressure wave, which contains a broad range of frequencies (including very low frequencies). I suspect the majority of the energy of the meteor did go into a sonic boom, and when it broke apart, that would greatly increase the cross sectional area, and thus greatly increase the sonic boom strength.



Yes, the heating is due to compression, though this is a bit oversimplified. Also, jet engines use their inlets not because the turbine blades would disintegrate, but rather because the turbine blades are not designed to efficiently compress and recover pressure from supersonic air. The losses would be enormous. The inlets are designed to slow the air down because this increases the efficiency of the engine, as well as because this slowing down provides the first stage of compression of the air (and jet engines want to compress the air as much as possible).



I suspect that they would be prone to breaking apart very high in the atmosphere, which would be less of a hazard than something which penetrates far down towards the ground intact. That's just a guess though.

Wow, where to begin. You contradict your own arguments repeatedly.

Here's a link to the "meteor lake"
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-asks-stop-space-objects-hitting-earth-213327578.html

That really look like a crater to you? What happened to the recoil? What happened when the object bounced off the bottom? Why is it round since the object certainly had considerable tangential velocity?

A shock wave and a sonic boom are clearly two different things. The first is mostly a single moving pressure front, the second is a constructive interference phenomenon. A supersonic object does create a shock wave but it turns rapidly into a sound wave.

"What impact shock wave?" the one that would occur if the meteor did NOT explode in mid-air. If there were a lot of pieces of debris, you'd think someone would have found one by now, since meteorites are especially easy to find on snow or ice, so that argument hits the dust, literally. LOL

 

[Zentrails]

"MOSCOW (AP) — With a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across the western Siberian sky Friday and exploded with the force of 20 atomic bombs, injuring more than 1,000 people as it blasted out windows and spread panic in a city of 1 million.

While NASA estimated the meteor was only about the size of a bus and weighed an estimated 7,000 tons, the fireball it produced was dramatic. Video shot by startled residents of the city of Chelyabinsk showed its streaming contrails as it arced toward the horizon just after sunrise, looking like something from a world-ending science-fiction movie."

This is apparently where the "400 kt" figure came assuming they meant an "atomic bomb" about the size of the Trinity test.

I love the part where NASA supposedly says the "the meteor was ONLY about the size of a bus and weighed an estimated 7,000 tons" emphasis added.

Oh, and there is no such thing as an "N-wave."

 

[Zentrails]

So, which is it, people?

Did a 7,000 ton object create a sonic boom that caused all the damage, then apparently land somewhere without making even a whimper?

OR was there a gigantic mid-air explosion that caused a huge shock wave with maybe a little sonic boom added to it? You do the math.

You have to be careful what you believe reading news reports.

 

[Zentrails]

Wiki:

"The strongest sonic boom ever recorded was 7,000 Pa (144 psf) and it did not cause injury to the researchers who were exposed to it."

Course the author of that article thinks U and N waves exist.

I did get the frequency band width backwards: "The energy range of sonic boom is concentrated in the 0.1–100 hertz frequency range" It's mostly low frequency not high.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom

It's certainly true that supersonic engines run more efficiently when fed subsonic air, so what?
You can't get less efficient than a turbine engine that self-disintegrates.
That's also why helicopters are limited in how fast they can go - they have to make sure the tips of the blades do not exceed the speed of sound or they start vibrating like hell.
Same thing with turbines.

Should I continue with the debunking?

 

[cjl]

Oh, and there is no such thing as an "N-wave."

Sure there is. It's nothing special - an N-wave is simply a wave where the pressure vs time graph as it passes a given location is in the shape of a capital letter N (a very sharp pressure rise, followed by a linear pressure drop to below ambient, followed by another sharp rise back to ambient at the end of the boom). See this page for more details:

http://www.mcgill.ca/mecheng/staff/sivanadarajah/research

 

[cjl]

That's also why helicopters are limited in how fast they can go - they have to make sure the tips of the blades do not exceed the speed of sound or they start vibrating like hell.
Same thing with turbines.

Nope. Compressors and front fans on jet engines (the turbines are at the back, behind the combustor) routinely operate with the blade speed at above mach 1. This is also unrelated to the reason helicopters are limited in speed - the real reason for most designs is retreating blade stall. As the helicopter goes forward, the effective airspeed of the retreating blade is reduced, until at some point, the required angle of attack for the retreating blade to support the helicopter would cause it to stall.

 

[cjl]

This is apparently where the "400 kt" figure came assuming they meant an "atomic bomb" about the size of the Trinity test.

I love the part where NASA supposedly says the "the meteor was ONLY about the size of a bus and weighed an estimated 7,000 tons" emphasis added.

The 500 kT figure (and 10,000 ton mass estimate) come from NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130215.html

 

[Zentrails]

Sure there is. It's nothing special - an N-wave is simply a wave where the pressure vs time graph as it passes a given location is in the shape of a capital letter N (a very sharp pressure rise, followed by a linear pressure drop to below ambient, followed by another sharp rise back to ambient at the end of the boom). See this page for more details:

http://www.mcgill.ca/mecheng/staff/sivanadarajah/research

It looks like an N but it sure doesn't look like a wave.
Anyway I'll give you that one seeing how it's nothing special.

 

[Zentrails]

The 500 kT figure (and 10,000 ton mass estimate) come from NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130215.html

OK, given that they also said "It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained. "

Where did the 33,000 mph figure come from?
That speed, combined with the high estimated heights causes the most problems with the "sonic boom caused the damage" argument.

 

[Zentrails]

Nope. Compressors and front fans on jet engines (the turbines are at the back, behind the combustor) routinely operate with the blade speed at above mach 1. This is also unrelated to the reason helicopters are limited in speed - the real reason for most designs is retreating blade stall. As the helicopter goes forward, the effective airspeed of the retreating blade is reduced, until at some point, the required angle of attack for the retreating blade to support the helicopter would cause it to stall.

I didn't think there were any compressors that run with the tips of the blades traveling faster than the speed of sound - I thought they would vibrate themselves to pieces due to turbulence. At least they wouldn't make sonic booms!

The engineering is very complex at these extremes though, so I'll give you that one. I suppose you can design them so that supersonic air passing by them doesn't cause that turbulence or something.

I meant to say ONE of the reasons helicopters cannot fly faster than they do is the supersonic tip speed limit. If that weren't a problem then there would be work a rounds to the lift problem - and besides it would not apply to a helicopter moving straight up. No sonic booms there either, but it would be unbearably LOUD.

I guess a better example would be "that's the reason propeller driven airplanes cannot go supersonic.

 

[A.T.]

Did a 7,000 ton object create a sonic boom that caused all the damage, then apparently land somewhere without making even a whimper?

Could it have disintegrated gradually, without a distinct explosion? Is there good footage of the final disintegration phase?

This one shows gradually increasing light and smoke up to a point, than it stops, and only a small part seems left and continues. But maybe this is what an explosion looks like at high speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFGxWVZ7tgo

OR was there a gigantic mid-air explosion that caused a huge shock wave with maybe a little sonic boom added to it?

There are two booms at 0:03 & 0:16 and some minor ones in between in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8

 

[boneh3ad]

I didn't think there were any compressors that run with the tips of the blades traveling faster than the speed of sound - I thought they would vibrate themselves to pieces due to turbulence.

The engineering is very complex at these extremes though, so I'll give you that one. I suppose you can design them so that supersonic air passing by them doesn't cause that turbulence or something.

That just shows that you don't have a good understanding of what turbulence is. Turbulence has nothing to do with being supersonic or subsonic. In fact, high Mach number flows are quite a bit more likely to be laminar than a moderate Mach number flow.

In fact, the engineering in moderately supersonic flows is, in some ways, less complex than in high subsonic flows. The equations governing the flow away from the body are simpler and the effect of body shape on lift is greatly simplified, for example. The only real trick is getting through the transonic regime, and this is pretty trivial when all you are talking about is the tip of a compressor blade since it doesn't have a bunch of fasteners and joints.

At least they wouldn't make sonic booms!

Sure they would if you happened to be standing in the right place that the shock passed by your ear and you had good hearing. Of course, the blades are highly "streamlined" and have very low mass, so the strength of their "boom" would be miniscule anyway. It would probably just be a really tiny pop sound and it would get drowned out in the noise of the engine itself, but it would be there and you could measure it with a pressure sensor if you wanted to. You could easily put a pressure sensor on the surface and fire up the engine and then run something like a proper orthogonal decomposition on the signal and back out the portion that is due to the shock passing frequency, which would just be the rotation rate times the number of blades.

I meant to say ONE of the reasons helicopters cannot fly faster than they do is the supersonic tip speed limit. If that weren't a problem then there would be work a rounds to the lift problem - and besides it would not apply to a helicopter moving straight up. No sonic booms there either, but it would be unbearably LOUD.

These are disjoint phenomena. In fact, take an Apache helicopter for example. Its main rotor has a diameter of 14.63 m and it spins routinely at 292 rpm. Some quick math reveals that this would put the tip of the blades at Mach 1.3 at sea level. In other words, they can and do exceed the speed of sound at the tip.

This has nothing to do with the lift problem, which is related to phenomenon called dynamic stall, not the Mach number at the tips of the blades.

 

[A.T.]

There even was a propeller aircraft designed to run with supersonic propeller tips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhSzReWTgs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YItexQxJS9U

 

[Zentrails]

That just shows that you don't have a good understanding of what turbulence is. Turbulence has nothing to do with being supersonic or subsonic. In fact, high Mach number flows are quite a bit more likely to be laminar than a moderate Mach number flow.

In fact, the engineering in moderately supersonic flows is, in some ways, less complex than in high subsonic flows. The equations governing the flow away from the body are simpler and the effect of body shape on lift is greatly simplified, for example. The only real trick is getting through the transonic regime, and this is pretty trivial when all you are talking about is the tip of a compressor blade since it doesn't have a bunch of fasteners and joints.
Sure they would if you happened to be standing in the right place that the shock passed by your ear and you had good hearing. Of course, the blades are highly "streamlined" and have very low mass, so the strength of their "boom" would be miniscule anyway. It would probably just be a really tiny pop sound and it would get drowned out in the noise of the engine itself, but it would be there and you could measure it with a pressure sensor if you wanted to. You could easily put a pressure sensor on the surface and fire up the engine and then run something like a proper orthogonal decomposition on the signal and back out the portion that is due to the shock passing frequency, which would just be the rotation rate times the number of blades.
These are disjoint phenomena. In fact, take an Apache helicopter for example. Its main rotor has a diameter of 14.63 m and it spins routinely at 292 rpm. Some quick math reveals that this would put the tip of the blades at Mach 1.3 at sea level. In other words, they can and do exceed the speed of sound at the tip.

This has nothing to do with the lift problem, which is related to phenomenon called dynamic stall, not the Mach number at the tips of the blades.

Your first two paragraphs make no sense, how could a supersonic plane make a sonic boom if the leading edge has laminar flow? It's the turbulent (very, very high Reynolds number) flow that makes the shock wave in the first place. Otherwise you just have sound. How can you possibly have a low Reynolds number with supersonic air going past anything, compressor, leading wing edge, helicopter blade, etc?

Good paper with supersonic wind tunnel results:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number

I was wrong about helicopters not making sonic booms - there would probably be a huge one directly in the center of the helicopter! I forgot about that. Very annoying to the pilot, no doubt. LOL

It's impossible for there to be a sonic boom away from the helicopter unless the helicopter itself is traveling faster than the speed of sound, although there would be tiny areas with some constructive interference where the noise would be louder. The shock waves would originate from approximately a 15 m diameter circle using your Apache numbers, instead of from two distinct areas as in the case of a supersonic jet.

There would be a constant but fluctuating sound as the helicopter approaches an observer, exactly the same as a normal helicopter sound except with higher Doppler shifts.

You misunderstood what I said about dynamic stall. It only occurs when the helicopter has tangential velocity. Going straight up, you can't possibly have a stall of this sort. In other words, we agree completely.

Using your Apache numbers, I'm coming up with a tip velocity of 223 m/s, considerably lower than the speed of sound at ground level which is about 340 m/s.

 

[Zentrails]

Could it have disintegrated gradually, without a distinct explosion? Is there good footage of the final disintegration phase?

This one shows gradually increasing light and smoke up to a point, than it stops, and only a small part seems left and continues. But maybe this is what an explosion looks like at high speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFGxWVZ7tgo
There are two booms at 0:03 & 0:16 and some minor ones in between in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8

Thanks for the videos, they are interesting. I've seen videos where the blast and the sound were very close together, hence my assumption that the explosion probably occurred at fairly low altitude. Maybe I am remembering that wrong. It would only take one video like that to prove that the sound was NOT a sonic boom if it really was at high altitude.

If the first sound was a sonic boom and the object was 20 miles up, then it would have taken AT LEAST 10s for the sonic boom sound to reach the observer, depending on where the observer was standing. If this thing was really traveling at 33,000 mph, it would have traveled 800 miles or so in that 10s, assuming it didn't hit the ground first, an impossibility.

Which means that if it DIDN'T explode, it would have hit the ground long before the sonic boom could be heard and the sound from the impact shock wave would probably be heard first, depending of course on if you are close to the impact or far away from it.

Even if it did explode and there was no significant meteorites, the shock wave itself would have caused an impact ground shock wave, so at least one of the sounds has to be from that.

That second video sounds like what I would expect if the thing essentially disintegrated in a mid-air explosion. A very loud shock wave sound arriving first, faster than the speed of sound followed by a sonic boom(s?) traveling at the speed of sound. Any remaining fragments would probably also make sonic booms of their own after the explosion.

If this thing was a meteor with significant iron-nickel content, then surely it was tracked by Russian radar. Has any radar info been released? That would answer the question definitely - speed, altitude, and whether it exploded or not (although the flash of light could only occur from an explosion, IMO)

There's no question that there were sonic booms associated with this event, the only question is how many, how loud, and if there were no explosion, then what caused the bright light flash? It certainly became white hot as a simple black body radiator, but that wouldn't make a flash.

 

[mfb]

If the first sound was a sonic boom and the object was 20 miles up, then it would have taken AT LEAST 10s for the sonic boom sound to reach the observer, depending on where the observer was standing. If this thing was really traveling at 33,000 mph, it would have traveled 800 miles or so in that 10s, assuming it didn't hit the ground first, an impossibility.

I think there is a factor of 10 missing somewhere. 33000mph are about 9 miles per second, or 90 miles in 10 seconds.

 

[Zentrails]

There even was a propeller aircraft designed to run with supersonic propeller tips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhSzReWTgs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YItexQxJS9U

If you listen to the sound track of that first video, it proves my point very nicely - that it is a very bad idea to have compressor tips, propellers, etc. running anywhere near the speed of sound.

I love the part where the narrator claims that the plane propeller tips made "900 sonic booms per minute."
Yeah, that'll work. LOL

It would been interesting if they had actually succeeded in reaching Mach 1 with this monstrosity.

 

[Zentrails]

I think there is a factor of 10 missing somewhere. 33000mph are about 9 miles per second, or 90 miles in 10 seconds.

oops, you're right.
It still would have hit the ground long before the sonic boom, though, assuming it was 20 miles+ up.
It's tangential velocity had to be less than 17,500 mph or it would simply be in low Earth orbit.

 

[boneh3ad]

Your first two paragraphs make no sense, how could a supersonic plane make a sonic boom if the leading edge has laminar flow? It's the turbulent (very, very high Reynolds number) flow that makes the shock wave in the first place. Otherwise you just have sound. How can you possibly have a low Reynolds number with supersonic air going past anything, compressor, leading wing edge, helicopter blade, etc?

Good paper with supersonic wind tunnel results:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number

I will start by saying that Wikipedia does not constitute a "good paper" in that not only is it not peer reviewed, but it also can be edited by anyone regardless of their knowledge on the subject, as I am sure you are aware.

Anyway, my first two paragraphs make perfect sense if you understand what turbulence is, or at least where a shock comes from. In fact, except in very specific cases, shocks have absolutely nothing to do with the boundary layer at all, which is the only thing that the terms laminar and turbulent apply to. As an example, the shock wave that forms in front of a capsule re-entering the atmosphere doesn't even intersect with the surface, instead forming what is called a bow shock. At no point does this bow shock even interact with the boundary layer, so whether it is laminar or turbulent is irrelevant.

Back to shock waves: shocks arise any time the flow needs to make an abrupt change of some sort, typically in pressure (see, for example, a shock tube) or if the flow needs to make reasonably abrupt changes in direction (see, for example, oblique shocks). Shocks represent near-discontinuities in the flow across which the properties (pressure, density, temperature, Mach number) change dramatically. The most common reason for their formation is when an angular object moves through a gas (or gas moves over the object) faster than the speed of sound, the physical situation dictates that the gas experience a discontinuous change in direction. This is true even in inviscid flows (in fact, that is how they are typically treated), meaning that not only do they not depend on the state of the boundary layer, but the terms "laminar", "turbulent" and "boundary layer" don't even have meaning in the context in which shocks are typically discussed.

Turbulence, on the other hand, is the result of tiny fluctuations in the incoming air flow interacting with the surface of the flying object to form small disturbances in the boundary layer which are them subject to instability. Some die out and others grow so large that they break down into turbulence.

Using your Apache numbers, I'm coming up with a tip velocity of 223 m/s, considerably lower than the speed of sound at ground level which is about 340 m/s.

So I will start next by doing a little bit of inserting my foot into my mouth since I apparently just invent the number 2 out of nowhere.

Revolutions per second:
$$292 \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{min}} \times \frac{1\text{ min}}{60\text{ sec}} = 4.8\bar{6} \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{sec}}$$

One revolution covers the distance of one circumference, s, so:
$$s = \pi d = 14.63\pi = 45.96\text{ m}$$
$$4.8\bar{6} \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{sec}} \times \frac{45.96\text{ m}}{\text{rev}} = 223.68\text{ m/s}$$

So yes, you were correct in that the Apache tips don't typically go supersonic. I apparently somewhere inserted a factor of 2? No idea where that came from since there isn't any place for a 2 to naturally occur. I have no explanation for that. I know that 292 rpm is not the maximum rate of spin for the rotor, but I don't have a good source to take this example further. I do know based on NASA documents that there has been quite a bit of work to try and reduce the region of supersonic flow over rotor tips, but that can occur even if the tip itself is still subsonic.

Based on a quick search of several other helicopters, it seems like the trend is for the tips to stay under Mach 0.7 while stationary, which would tend to give it a cushion to push up against but not pass Mach 1 during forward flight. Even at full forward velocity, the Apache would only reach about Mach 0.94, though this is easily enough to have supersonic regions over the blade tips.

I will say, however, that while it doesn't appear that helicopters are designed to allow supersonic tips, that doesn't make it impossible as much as impractical. A properly designed tip could certainly safely pass Mach 1, it is just a matter of whether that buys you anything. I suspect it probably doesn't, but I am not a helicopter guy.

I was wrong about helicopters not making sonic booms - there would probably be a huge one directly in the center of the helicopter! I forgot about that. Very annoying to the pilot, no doubt. LOL

It's impossible for there to be a sonic boom away from the helicopter unless the helicopter itself is traveling faster than the speed of sound, although there would be tiny areas with some constructive interference where the noise would be louder. The shock waves would originate from approximately a 15 m diameter circle using your Apache numbers, instead of from two distinct areas as in the case of a supersonic jet.

I am reasonably certain I never said the rotors would make a noticeable sonic boom if it managed to be supersonic; only that they can and do move supersonically - a fact which I have now retracted as I don't have definitive. The point is, though, that there is no such sonic speed limit inherent in the concept of a helicopter blade. The issue is whether or not modern blades are designed to support that and whether it would confer any kind of benefit.

At any rate, assuming you did have a supersonic tip the only reason there wouldn't be a sonic boom is because of how light and thin the blades are and the fact that they are only barely supersonic. They would still create shock waves emanating from the tip region and, depending on the airfoil design, there could even exist the leading and trailing shocks characteristic of supersonic aircraft. In other words, you could presumably still get the N-wave pattern under certain circumstances. The shocks are just going to be very weak and therefore not have a large sound associated with them. You could probably still put a microphone near the blades and catch what are essentially tiny sonic booms (sonic squeaks?) if you wanted to. The only real trick would be discerning that from the sounds of the ordinary blade passing frequency. It would be easier if it did, in fact, have the N-wave profile.

If you listen to the sound track of that first video, it proves my point very nicely - that it is a very bad idea to have compressor tips, propellers, etc. running anywhere near the speed of sound.

I love the part where the narrator claims that the plane propeller tips made "900 sonic booms per minute."
Yeah, that'll work. LOL

It would been interesting if they had actually succeeded in reaching Mach 1 with this monstrosity.

While I won't comment any more on helicopter blades, as I think I have beaten that to death for now, I will say that, without any shred of doubt, turbofan blades do go supersonic. For example, the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 that powers the Airbus A380 has a fan speed of 3300 RPM and a fan diameter of 2.9 m, which translates to Mach 1.46. In fact, at full power, that puts the entire outer third (radially) of the fan above the speed of sound! The difference between this and the blades on a helicopter is that fan blades in a turbofan are much more rigid and designed specifically to do this.

Going back to the previous example, if you were to put a pressure transducer or a microphone close to the blades and analyze the signal, you absolutely could record many sonic booms. In fact:
$$3300 \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{min}} \times \frac{1\text{ min}}{60 \text{ sec}} \times 24\frac{\text{blades}}{text{rev}} = 1320 \text{ blades/sec}$$
This shows that if you stick your sensor up next to the fan disc, it will record 1320 blade passes per second. Whether each has a sonic boom associated is largely a matter of semantics. It would certainly have a shock emanating from it and that should would register on a microphone in the form of sound. Now, it wouldn't likely have the classic N-wave simply because one of the shocks from each blade would be impinging on the adjacent blade most likely, so you would probably only get the single shock passing. The sound itself would also be incredibly small, especially compared to the rest of the engine noise.

 

[Zentrails]

I will start by saying that Wikipedia does not constitute a "good paper" in that not only is it not peer reviewed, but it also can be edited by anyone regardless of their knowledge on the subject, as I am sure you are aware.

Anyway, my first two paragraphs make perfect sense if you understand what turbulence is, or at least where a shock comes from. In fact, except in very specific cases, shocks have absolutely nothing to do with the boundary layer at all, which is the only thing that the terms laminar and turbulent apply to. As an example, the shock wave that forms in front of a capsule re-entering the atmosphere doesn't even intersect with the surface, instead forming what is called a bow shock. At no point does this bow shock even interact with the boundary layer, so whether it is laminar or turbulent is irrelevant.

Back to shock waves: shocks arise any time the flow needs to make an abrupt change of some sort, typically in pressure (see, for example, a shock tube) or if the flow needs to make reasonably abrupt changes in direction (see, for example, oblique shocks). Shocks represent near-discontinuities in the flow across which the properties (pressure, density, temperature, Mach number) change dramatically. The most common reason for their formation is when an angular object moves through a gas (or gas moves over the object) faster than the speed of sound, the physical situation dictates that the gas experience a discontinuous change in direction. This is true even in inviscid flows (in fact, that is how they are typically treated), meaning that not only do they not depend on the state of the boundary layer, but the terms "laminar", "turbulent" and "boundary layer" don't even have meaning in the context in which shocks are typically discussed.

Turbulence, on the other hand, is the result of tiny fluctuations in the incoming air flow interacting with the surface of the flying object to form small disturbances in the boundary layer which are them subject to instability. Some die out and others grow so large that they break down into turbulence.
So I will start next by doing a little bit of inserting my foot into my mouth since I apparently just invent the number 2 out of nowhere.

Revolutions per second:
$$292 \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{min}} \times \frac{1\text{ min}}{60\text{ sec}} = 4.8\bar{6} \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{sec}}$$

One revolution covers the distance of one circumference, s, so:
$$s = \pi d = 14.63\pi = 45.96\text{ m}$$
$$4.8\bar{6} \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{sec}} \times \frac{45.96\text{ m}}{\text{rev}} = 223.68\text{ m/s}$$

So yes, you were correct in that the Apache tips don't typically go supersonic. I apparently somewhere inserted a factor of 2? No idea where that came from since there isn't any place for a 2 to naturally occur. I have no explanation for that. I know that 292 rpm is not the maximum rate of spin for the rotor, but I don't have a good source to take this example further. I do know based on NASA documents that there has been quite a bit of work to try and reduce the region of supersonic flow over rotor tips, but that can occur even if the tip itself is still subsonic.

Based on a quick search of several other helicopters, it seems like the trend is for the tips to stay under Mach 0.7 while stationary, which would tend to give it a cushion to push up against but not pass Mach 1 during forward flight. Even at full forward velocity, the Apache would only reach about Mach 0.94, though this is easily enough to have supersonic regions over the blade tips.

I will say, however, that while it doesn't appear that helicopters are designed to allow supersonic tips, that doesn't make it impossible as much as impractical. A properly designed tip could certainly safely pass Mach 1, it is just a matter of whether that buys you anything. I suspect it probably doesn't, but I am not a helicopter guy.
I am reasonably certain I never said the rotors would make a noticeable sonic boom if it managed to be supersonic; only that they can and do move supersonically - a fact which I have now retracted as I don't have definitive. The point is, though, that there is no such sonic speed limit inherent in the concept of a helicopter blade. The issue is whether or not modern blades are designed to support that and whether it would confer any kind of benefit.

At any rate, assuming you did have a supersonic tip the only reason there wouldn't be a sonic boom is because of how light and thin the blades are and the fact that they are only barely supersonic. They would still create shock waves emanating from the tip region and, depending on the airfoil design, there could even exist the leading and trailing shocks characteristic of supersonic aircraft. In other words, you could presumably still get the N-wave pattern under certain circumstances. The shocks are just going to be very weak and therefore not have a large sound associated with them. You could probably still put a microphone near the blades and catch what are essentially tiny sonic booms (sonic squeaks?) if you wanted to. The only real trick would be discerning that from the sounds of the ordinary blade passing frequency. It would be easier if it did, in fact, have the N-wave profile.
While I won't comment any more on helicopter blades, as I think I have beaten that to death for now, I will say that, without any shred of doubt, turbofan blades do go supersonic. For example, the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 that powers the Airbus A380 has a fan speed of 3300 RPM and a fan diameter of 2.9 m, which translates to Mach 1.46. In fact, at full power, that puts the entire outer third (radially) of the fan above the speed of sound! The difference between this and the blades on a helicopter is that fan blades in a turbofan are much more rigid and designed specifically to do this.

Going back to the previous example, if you were to put a pressure transducer or a microphone close to the blades and analyze the signal, you absolutely could record many sonic booms. In fact:
$$3300 \frac{\text{rev}}{\text{min}} \times \frac{1\text{ min}}{60 \text{ sec}} \times 24\frac{\text{blades}}{text{rev}} = 1320 \text{ blades/sec}$$
This shows that if you stick your sensor up next to the fan disc, it will record 1320 blade passes per second. Whether each has a sonic boom associated is largely a matter of semantics. It would certainly have a shock emanating from it and that should would register on a microphone in the form of sound. Now, it wouldn't likely have the classic N-wave simply because one of the shocks from each blade would be impinging on the adjacent blade most likely, so you would probably only get the single shock passing. The sound itself would also be incredibly small, especially compared to the rest of the engine noise.

Sorry that link was wrong, here's the correct one:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20080001722_2007039252.pdf

Wiki is a good starting point, but you have to be careful, like you said.

thanks for the very good summary on shock waves.

I don't quite get how "Back to shock waves: shocks arise any time the flow needs to make an abrupt change of some sort, typically in pressure" applies to supersonic planes flying at a constant velocity. Are you saying that there is a continuous abrupt change in pressure?

The point is that at supersonic speeds the sound generated by the plane is much louder than at subsonic speeds and the change in intensity is not linear. It's sound coming from a supersonic source that makes a sonic boom, it really doesn't matter how that sound is produced, N-wave, shock wave, pressure front, whatever you want to call it. I like to simplify it into a "black box" that makes sound. Otherwise the physics goes above my pay grade.

I agree we're just arguing semantics.
IMO, sonic booms are not shock waves, but they are usually, but not always, generated by shock waves as you define them.

I will quibble a little bit with your claim that "the most common reason for their formation is when an angular object moves through a gas" (what do you mean by "angular" object?)

The most common source of shock waves, IMO, is in ultrasonic units, which I use professionally to disperse carbon nanotubes in my research at the University of Pennsylvania physics dept. (thank goodness IED's aren't around as much as a few years ago)

Ironic isn't it? Sound waves (albeit at 50 KHz in my units - bats can probably hear it so technically I can call it sound LOL) can generate shock waves.

In fact you can feel the shock waves in your joints, not a very pleasant feeling, but a nice treatment for my Carpal's Tunnel pain (my sonicators have very large baths and are pretty powerful). Works quite well, my research group also does medical research so we'll probably publish these results before too long, assuming no one reads this thread and beats us to the punch. LOL

We have indeed beaten the helicopter to death. LOL
It was fun, though, wasn't it?
I think someone could invent a supersonic helicopter, but why would you want to?
V/STOL jets fill that niche very nicely, and apparently seven supersonic versions have been prototyped with one actually expected to go into production in a couple years, the F35B

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V/STOL

Hopefully they get the SCRAM jet engines, or something like that, working soon so we don't have to use compressors anymore for supersonic engines (and yes I know that you need to reach high Mach numbers for SCRAM engines to work). Am I correct in remembering that SCRAM jets actually require turbulent supersonic air flow for them to work?