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Mysterious Sound Waves Can Destroy Rockets
Ponca City, We love you writes "Scientists believe that powerful and unstable sound waves, created by energy supplied by the combustion process, were the cause of rocket failures in several US and Russian rockets. They have also observed these mysterious oscillations in other propulsion and power-generating systems such as missiles and gas turbines. Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a liquid rocket engine simulator and imaging techniques to help demystify the cause of these explosive sound waves and bring scientists a little closer to being able to understand and prevent them. The team was able to clearly demonstrate that the phenomenon manifests itself in the form of spinning acoustic waves that gain destructive power as they rotate around the rocket's combustion chamber at a rate of 5,000 revolutions per second. Researchers developed a low-pressure combustor to simulate larger rocket engines then used a very-high-speed camera with fiber optic probes to observe the formation and behavior of excited spinning sound waves within the engine. 'This is a very troublesome phenomenon in rockets,' said Professor Ben Zinn. 'These spinning acoustic oscillations destroy engines without anyone fully understanding how these waves are formed. Visualizing this phenomenon brings us a step closer to understanding it.'"
It makes rocket scientists crap their pants!
This means rocket science is once again hard. You may now resume saying "Well, this isn't rocket science" until they solve this.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
and the subject line for this article has finally convinced me that cowboy neal is in fact art bell.
Is that a rocket in your pocket? Finally I could satisfy a woman! :(
I wonder if they'd be interested in analyzing the smoking ruins of at least 5 toilet bowls I have personally destroyed with mysterious oscillating rocket powered sound waves.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
When analyzing the acoustic oscillations scientists discovered something quite striking. The sine wave was exactly identical to the master recording of Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time".
Ever watch the movie Dune?
Moha deeb.... rocket go boom
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
If you record them and play them backwards they will install Vista on your computer.
Dr No will fish them out of the water and pass the rockets on to SMERSH....I don't like the sound of that!
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Come on, an expert on rocket fuel technology named Professor Ben Zinn?
*Blank stare* - "These go to eleven."
Light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately.
Heavy Metal can destroy even rockets now.
Looks like an audio engineering issue. While not being a rocket engineer myself, I assume the combustion chamber is somewhat symmetrical. It is likely acting as a resonance chamber and increasing the amplitude of the soundwave to the point of physical damage. I shattered the rear window in my '96 Camaro twice with a 1200W Fosgate and a single 10" bazooka tube. Tell NASA to crack the window when they turn up the bass!
So THAT'S how the Doctor's screwdriver works...