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xratedcheese t1_iztkwuz wrote

So if a submarine could reach the speed of sound in water (something like twice as fast?) there would be a sonic boom in the water?

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Game_Minds t1_izu6llu wrote

It's normally called something else in dense/incompressible fluids like water, i.e. cavitation

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zekromNLR t1_j007zm4 wrote

The speed of sound in water is nearly five times as fast as in air, about 1500 m/s. An object moving that fast through water would experience a dynamic pressure of about 1.1 GPa, compared to about 70 kPa for something moving at the speed of sound through sea-level air - in other words, not really possible outside of extreme scenarios like meteorite impacts.

But yes, there would be a sonic boom. You can with a fast enough impact even have a sonic boom in solid materials.

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