Content Design and Writing
Insinger de Beaufort
The Space Between
Annual Review
for Aquarium Writers
Design by Dietwee
SUBSONIC-SUPERSONIC
Transonic velocity occurs between mach-0.8 and mach-1.2.
At these speeds some parts of the airflow over an aircraft become supersonic, while other parts remain subsonic. This discrepancy creates a sudden variation in airflow density, which was responsible for several accidents in the 1930s and 1940s.
At that time, some mathematicians hypothesised a ‘sound barrier’. At mach-1, they said, air turbulence reaches infinity as stacked-up sound waves become an impenetrable wall.
In 1947, Chuck Yeager’s mach-1 busting test flight in the X-1 jet proved that no such barrier exists (although the terminology persists).
THE THING ABOUT MONSTERS
They frighten us. Frankenstein’s inexpertly sewn, animated corpse; leering, bloody-fanged vampires; hairy-palmed werewolves – a ghastly appearance is a prerequisite.
They don’t fit. Monsters are violent fusions: the half-bull, half-man minotaur; the griffin, half-lion, half-eagle; the part-man, part-insect, part-machine that is David Cronenberg’s Fly.
You can’t get rid of them. The monster in the film Alien was “one tough son-of-a-bitch”. Both the Hydra and the Green Knight could survive decapitation. Dracula lived on for centuries.
That's the way it is with monsters. You can run away, you can fight or you can try to understand them, but you can never ignore them.