2024-03-08 03:42:19
Some planes heading from the US to Europe have been recording record speeds lately. For example, passengers on the Washington-London route arrived at their final destination 45 minutes earlier. This is due to the jet streams over the Atlantic, which made some Boeings fly even faster than the speed of sound. But the shorter flight time takes its toll – people on board may experience stronger turbulence.
Several airliners have broken the speed of sound. They were helped by the jet flow of air | Video: Aktuálně.cz/Reuters/NASA
Winds at high altitudes over the mid-Atlantic helped the planes to exceed a speed of 1,287 kilometers per hour, writes the American newspaper The Washington Post. At the same time, airliners usually fly at a speed of around 956 kilometers per hour. The wind alone reached 426 kilometers per hour in the Washington area at the time. According to the U.S. National Weather Service, winds over the U.S. capital have exceeded this speed only once, in 2002.
Airplanes gained speed thanks to the so-called jet stream (English jet stream, note red.), which results from the contrast between cold, dense air at the poles and warm, thinner air in the tropics, combined with the Earth’s rotation. According to experts, the accelerating winds are also influenced by global warming – the wind is faster due to changes in air density in the earth’s atmosphere.
Thus, machines flying from west to east can benefit from the jet stream, which can even “surf in the wind”. This not only shortens the flight time, but also burns less fuel and reduces carbon emissions. According to a study by the American University of Reading, transatlantic flights could even use up to 16% less fuel if they made better use of fast-moving winds.
Passengers may enjoy flying faster, but higher wind speeds cause stronger updrafts and downdrafts, resulting in severe turbulence.
“Turbulence occurs when there is a large change in wind speed combined with high altitude. When layers of air move at different speeds, the air at the interface of these layers begins to mix. This mixing of air builds up into a rotating vortex that we feel as turbulence in an airplane,” explained Osamu Miyawaki, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado told Britain’s DailyMail.
A Virgin Atlantic flight from Washington to London landed 45 minutes ahead of schedule on the second-to-last weekend in February thanks to faster winds. A United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey arrived in Lisbon 20 minutes earlier. Both Boeings thus reached a speed of around 1,300 kilometers per hour, narrowly surpassing the speed of sound, which reaches 1,234 kilometers per hour.
Although the planes flew faster than the speed of sound, technically they did not break the sound barrier, reports The Washington Post. “The plane is anchored in winds of about 200 miles per hour, so it’s flying with the wind. So it’s not really going faster than 800 miles per hour by itself given the environment it’s in,” explained WFLA Tampa Bay meteorologist Jeff Berardelli on the X social network.
The only two airliners to break the speed of sound so far were the Anglo-French Concorde and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144. Concorde ended after 27 years of service, following a crash in 2003 that killed all passengers and crew. Tupolev faced great problems from the beginning and its operation ended after three years.
Probably a bug in the Matrix. The “strange” video of the plane upset everyone who does not understand physics (video with article here)
A video of a remarkable real-life optical illusion has gone viral on social media. | Video: Reddit/StrangeEarth