Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/06/absolutely-spectacular-first-e.html
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…Neat…
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You can do Background Oriented Schlieren if you have a computer and a camera (a phone camera is not quite adequate).
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Chemtrails confirmed.
Nah, seriously, I love stuff like this.
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30 get away from each other? Why aren’t they flying in metric?
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Very mesmerizing pics. Beautiful.
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I’m surprised that the shockwaves are so obtuse. I imagined them forming a sharper cone. Science!
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I don’t get that part either. How fast are the shockwaves supposedly propagating?
EDIT: it occurs to me now that these planes are flying only slightly faster than the speed of sound, and that the shockwaves would form right angles if the planes were flying at precisely √2 × the speed of sound, and 60° angles if the planes were flying at Mach 2.
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The blue one looks like the same plane twice. I mean, it’s NASA, so it’s not. But still.
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Not interferometry, but also gorgeous, and really simple. I did this when I was polishing an 8" telescope mirror when young. You have a tin with a car headlight in it and a pinhole in the side, the mirror, and a razor blade. You darken the room, and when you get your eye in the right place you can see all the deviations from a point focus as though they were solid and lit from the side. I could see my finger-prints where I had touched the glass ten minutes ago and warmed it. I could see air currents.
I also cut my nose on the razor-blade.
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Well, it’s taken a while for me to stop laughing out loud after reading that.
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Great project!
Curse you though, for leading me to Physics Forums. I’m going to lose a chunk of productive time browsing over there.
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Are you kidding? They faked the Moon landings and have been lying to us by saying the Earth is round!
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It strikes me that if you know the altitude (and hence the speed of sound), you should be able to figure out exactly how fast the plane is going based on the angle of the sonic boom cone. The length of the plane might help with the calculation but I don’t think it’s necessary…
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So, just this past Monday, people all across Missouri heard a loud boom or explosion that rattled windows. Reddit, Twitter, Nextdoor and FB all lit up about it. Turns out it was likely a sonic boom caused by a military aircraft Boeing (which has a St. Louis facility) is developing and testing. The company’s statement says they were testing at that time, but does not mention the sonic boom. Anyway, if that’s what it was, it was the first one I’ve ever heard.
Man I love those beautiful T-38s / F-5s. What a graceful looking plane.
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From growing up in Germany in the tail end of the Cold War, I’d say you can usually tell when you hear a sonic boom but then again I suppose most people don’t have them happening about 50 ft over roof-top height…
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This is beautiful and it kind of reminds me of a color field painting by Mark Rothko.
Science FTW!
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It is one of my favorites - a really pretty plane. Long-lived, too! The Air Force has been training on them for 50+ years, and they keep on ticking.
Sobering that cutting-edge flight research is being done with aircraft built at least 47 years ago, though. The youngest T-38 was delivered in 1972.
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