News0 min ago
Earth
With the Earth travelling near to 65,000mph why is there no sonic bang?
Answers
Best Answer
No best answer has yet been selected by rov1200. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.
-- answer removed --
I think that I'm right in saying that, a jet pilot doesn't hear a sonic bang that his plane creates, because he is travelling at the same speed as the thing [plane] that creates the bang. It's observers [on the ground] who are not travelling at the same speed as the plane who hear the bang. So, you'd have to be standing somewhere out there in space to have a chance of hearing a bang as the earth passed by. But you wouldn't hear it because you'd be in a vacuum. Logic, innit?
No sound in a vacuum. Remember the scene in the film 2001 where the astronaut fires the emergency bolts on the space-pod, and is blasted into the the spaceship airlock through the vacuum of space - without his helmet? As he is flung into the chamber, he hits the emergency pressurisation lever. At first, it being a vacuum, we hear no sound, but gradually, the hiss of the gas is heard as the chamber fills with air, until it becomes a roar as the air pressure builds to normal. Technical excellence!
So you've heard this bang, have you, beso? What is the medium for the transmission of the sound? Your "robust microphone" might be rattled by being hit by ejected material, which would give a signal on a recording device attached to it, but, as there would be a vacuum around it, there would be and could be no sound.