"Skywise" wrote in message
. 125.206...
(Ed Cannon) wrote in
:

Troll food...

Here's one way to prove to this idiot that something can go
faster than sound.

All he has to do is stand next to the target downrange from
a high powered rifle being fired.

I'd then like to hear his explanation of how he can hear the
bullet hitting the target next to him BEFORE he hears the
sound of the gun being fired.

Or better, a shell from a large gun (like a HARP, for instance which fires
an 150kg projectile at 12,960kph). I don't think our friend has trouble with
bullets going supersonic. He has decided, based on the max velocities for
various objects, that the maximum speed goes down (regardless of method, or
duration of propulsion, unfortunately for his logic) as mass increases. So,
if I'm reading his mumbling correctly, no object larger than 1kg can break
the sound barrier. I think he may have even given concessions that allow
larger objects to surpass the speed momentarily (his way of allowing for
sonic booms, I gather), but he's claiming that such speeds cannot be
sustained, nor surpassed by very much. When sane people heap examples on
him, he usually vanishes for a while.

The first time I saw him in a NG, he was betting all his money and even his
life, that if someone would board the SST and fly transatlantic, they would
find that their watches would indicate that they had not actually flown
faster than sound. He ties the speed of the SST into the speed of the
rotation of the Earth (another big hole in his logic) and claims that this
somehow proves that the SST can only fly /nearly/ the speed of sound and
then, only in one direction (relative to the speed of the Earth's rotation,
or some nonsense).
--
Stephen
Home Page: stephmon.com
Satellite Hunting: sathunt.com