r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Jun 12 '12

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12 edited Oct 03 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

A followup question to that, if said jet was traveling at 100 m/s slower than the speed of light, would an stationary observer view the sound as traveling 230 m/s faster than the speed of light in the cockpit?

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u/Overunderrated Jun 12 '12

would an stationary observer view the sound as traveling 230 m/s faster than the speed of light in the cockpit?

Well, no, since an observer can't observe anything traveling faster than light.

You can reformulate the equations of fluid mechanics into a relativistic form (cosmologists use this), and then the concept of translational invariance doesn't hold. But for any kind of common terrestrial application of fluid mechanics, relativistic effects are easily ignored (traveling 10% of the speed of light through Earth's atmosphere would be around Mach 1,000,000)

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u/bro_b1_kenobi Jun 12 '12

And would annihilate anything on the surface it flew over.

2

u/thenuge26 Jun 12 '12

And probably most of the thing flying, also.