Boom boom
Question: Why, when the space shuttle is returning to Earth, do you hear two
separate sonic booms that are a few seconds apart?
Answer: There are two parts to the answer. First, why is there a sonic boom
at all? The speed of sound in some media—air or water, for
example—is the speed at which the molecules comprising the medium are able
to pass along to their neighbours, via collisions, the information that
something is approaching or receding.
When an object moves through such a medium at less than the speed of sound,
the compression wave…
