Talk:Transonic

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ar8rn, Epitz.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:40, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 10:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Black holes
The article says that all flow around a black hole is transonic. This seems counterintuitive, so I looked into the cited sources and a few others by the same author. Most are written in more math than English, so it's very difficult for me to parse through, but from what I gather there are regions of transonic flow which occur between subsonic and supersonic flow, but the entire flow in the accretion disc is not transonic. According to Chakrabarti (Accretion and Winds around Galactic an Extragalactic Black Holes), "For black-hole accretion, the flow passes through the [event] horizon with the velocity of light, and therefore it must remain supersonic."

The first confusing thing I see is that we should explain how we can even define the speed of sound in the vacuum of space (where no one can hear you scream), and how that speed is very dependent upon temperature and, to a lesser degree, pressure. I kind of get it myself, but have yet to see anything that gives an actual speed. These are just defined as areas of shockwave formation. And, although the presence of a shockwave indicates a transition from sub to supersonic (or visa-versa), this does not take into account that both the object and the flow may be both moving well beyond supersonic speeds, relative to some third reference point, and the shockwave is only transonic relative to the two interacting with each other. (There's no way to determine the absolute speed of a celestial body, because there is no truly stationary reference-frame by which to compare it.) A clear example in English would help.

The flow in the disc is very complex too, apparently, as both angular velocity and radial velocity can be drastically different in different parts of the disc. Pressure can be very high in some areas and almost nonexistent in others (the closest thing possible to total vacuum) and viscous forces generate lots of heat through torque and shear (not to mention turbulence and convection). The inner part spins much faster than the outer part, radiating energy outwards (because matter can only enter the horizon after losing enough of its energy). This is as best as I can interpret it, but someone who really understands the math really should be the one the clarify this section and put it into layman's terms. If anyone feels up to the task it would be appreciated. Zaereth (talk) 00:57, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Sources?
I’ve noticed there is a general lack of citations in the first two sections of this article, are the links missing or does more information & citations need to be added? Ar8rn (talk) 17:55, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

3/5/21 Edits
Major change to the first two paragraphs-- condensed & cited. I specifically removed a lot of the numbers because they don't exactly pertain to the definition of transonic flow and clutter up the intro a lot, though I left 343 m/s for reference and linked to the supersonic and speed of sound articles. I also corrected the Mach number range per reference 1. I'm not sure what significance the "no wind" phrase holds other than trying to clarify between relative speed and absolute speed, but either way the new definition should take that into account. Ar8rn (talk) 17:38, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Added sentences briefly describing the history of transonic airflow. Also moved sentences up from the 3rd paragraph up to the part I added. Small changes to the sentences to make the paragraph have a better flow. I also added citations to all the sentences in the second paragraph.Epitz (talk) 17:50, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

4/9/21 Edits
I am adding section diving into the history of transonic airflow and aircraft changes. I still need to add more sources to the paragraphs and detail about the aircraft design changes. Epitz (talk) 16:36, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Added history of math section. Still needs some TLC when it comes to sources and explanations of concepts/jargon, which will come later. Ar8rn (talk) 16:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Edits 4/16
I made small edits in the wording, added in more citations, and changed the structure of the discovering transonic airflow and changes in aircraft sections.Epitz (talk) 16:34, 16 April 2021 (UTC)