More On Silent Supersonic Planes

Reverberant writes "Popular Science describes the latest attempt at developing a supersonic plane designed to minimize sonic booms. The article describes some of the history behind the research, and recent attempts at validating the theory. Also note that researcher Ken Plotkin is a frequent contributer to alt.sci.physics.acoustics."

Comments

flying saucers are boomless

[Al Al Cool J]

Years ago, I frequented alt.aliens.visitors, where I had fun shooting holes in the arguments of knee-jerk sceptics who try to debunk thing by stating the first objection that pops into their narrow little minds, no matter how stupid or vacuous.

One common argument used by sceptics is that many UFO reports are not credible because they describe supersonic movement with no sonic boom.

My counter-argument was to imagine a craft designed as a rapidly spinning disk which could absorb air molecules on its leading half (perhaps using some form of nanotech) and then expell the molecules from its trailing half. As it isn't displacing the air, it generates no shockwave and no sonic boom. And if it expelled the molecules at a greater velocity than at which it absorbed them, it would not only suffer no drag, but would generate extra thrust.

By pure coincidence, many reports of UFOs are of rapidly spinning disks.