Supersonic Jets Get a Boost as FAA Issues Rule to Spur Tests

New regulations for testing the next generation of ultra-fast jets were finalized by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, an attempt to streamline the development of supersonic flight. From a report: The FAA on Wednesday announced the regulations as several companies work on developing prototypes of aircraft capable of flying faster than the speed of sound, it said in a press release….

America Creates a 770-Mile Corridor for Testing Supersonic Aircraft Up to Mach 3

America’s Federal Aviation Agency signed an agreement with the state of Kansas’s department of transportation to establish a 770-nautical mile Kansas Supersonic Transportation Corridor for testing aircraft up to Mach 3, reports Aviation International News:
The agreement would provide a critical testing site for the emerging group of supersonic aircraft as civil supersonic flight remains banned over land. Flight testing for models…

Duck! Meteor! Oh, Maybe Don’t Bother – This Time…

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) is a professional geologist, and asks: Did anyone feel a sudden wind through their hair at about 17:19+00:00 on Monday, particularly in the mid Pacific? No? Good. Nobody else did. Nobody noticed the asteroid whizzing past just above the Earth’s atmosphere (for certain values of “above” including “not very far” and “373km above ground”). That’s the closest…

Doctor Who’s Sonic Pioneers Will Turn the Internet Into a Giant Musical Instrument

“The Radiophonic Workshop has always broken new sonic ground, from the Doctor Who theme to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now they’re at it again — this time using the internet as a musical instrument,” reports the Guardian. “The band includes composers from the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which created soundtracks for most BBC shows from the 60s to the…

Is it possible to hear meteors?

Can you hear a meteor as it streaks overhead? Some people have reported hearing meteors with a sizzling sound like bacon frying. Scientists now say you can, and explain how it happens. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/whoosh-can-you-hear-a-meteor-streak-past…

LIDAR over Antarctica

A laser shoots into the sky to study the atmosphere at Concordia research station in Antarctica. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/lidar-antarctica-aug202-image…

Fireball produces sonic boom over Japan

A space rock created quite the spectacle when it lit up the night sky above Japan’s Kanto region recently. The phenomenon, which caught the attention … Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/337987/fireball-produces-sonic-boom-over-japan…

On Facebook and YouTube, Classical Musicians Are Getting Blocked or Muted

Michael Andor Brodeur, writing for The Washington Post: As covid-19 forces more and more classical musicians and organizations to shift operations to the Internet, they’re having to contend with an entirely different but equally faceless adversary: copyright bots. Or, more accurately, content identification algorithms dispatched across social media to scan content and detect illegal use of copyrighted recordings. You’ve encountered these…

Sonic The Hedgehog Surpasses Detective Pikachu To Become Highest-Grossing Video Game Movie

Sonic the Hedgehog’s latest weekend total allowed it to surpass Detective Pikachu and become the highest-grossing video game movie ever in the US. TheRichest reports: Sonic has now amassed $145.8 million domestically, while Detective Pikachu managed $144.1 million by the end of its run. Sonic has definitely taken a hit as it only brought in $2.58 million last weekend to limp…

‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ Has Biggest-Ever Opening For a Video Game Adaptation

An anonymous reader quotes The Wrap: “Sonic the Hedgehog” is giving Paramount its best box office news in over a year, with a currently 3-day opening weekend of $55 million to become the best opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation… The delayed release of this film prompted by an intense rejection of Sonic’s initial design is turning out to…