These photos have always been thrilling to me, how they detail a realm of sound being pierced. As if the object was within a giant dew drop, piercing out of it.
What I find remarkable, is the way it’s expressed visually--as a disk--a portal. Even in the helicopter photo below too--a disk.
There’s an old saying As above, So Below. You have to think that if a modern jet can pierce one realm, then other things and other realms must surely be part of the equation. This disk shape (which also sometimes appears as a donut, ball, or cone), the Prandtl-Glauert singularity, is still not completely understood.
Sonic Boom: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Speed of sound: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Prandtl–Glauert singularity: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
According to wikipedia this disk, or donut, or cone shape "...is the point at which a sudden drop in air pressure occurs, and is generally accepted as the cause of the visible condensation cloud that often surrounds an aircraft traveling at transonic speeds, though there remains some debate."
Maybe physicists are missing something by not seeing the event as an object piercing one realm into another.
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