What is a sonic boom?

Sonic booms can be caused by fighter jets (Picture: Getty Images)

Hundreds of people from Leicester to Oxford have been shaken by the sound of a ‘sonic boom’ believed to be down to piercingly fast fighter jets.

Startled residents across south and east England reported their houses rattling from the noise of the mysterious ‘explosion’ – with many taking to Twiiter to ask what might have been behind the noise.

But what is a sonic boom, and how is it caused?

Here’s what you need to know…

What is a sonic boom?

A sonic boom is a sound associated with shock waves, created by an object travelling through the air faster than the speed of sound (741mph).

This sounds like an explosion to the human ear – as a significant amount of energy is created by a sonic boom, it is very loud for those who hear it.

The noise can sound very similar to an explosion (Picture: Getty Images)

When a plane makes a sonic boom, the sound you hear depends on the distance between the person hearing it, and the aircraft itself – if the person is close to the craft they hear a sound like a firework.

A sonic boom only lasts less than a second and the intensity and width of its path depends on the size of the aircraft – for a fighter jet for instance it would only be about 0.1 seconds.

Depending on the craft’s altitude, sonic booms reach the ground two to 60 seconds after flyover – but not all booms are heard at ground level, and the temperature, humidity and atmospheric pollution can all impact how a sonic boom sounds on the ground.

Where was the sonic boom heard?

The boom was heard across south and east England – from Leicester to as far away as Oxford – at around 12.10pm on March 4.

People leapt onto Twitter to ask a stream of panicked questions: ‘What happened?’, ‘Did you anyone else hear that?’ and even ‘Aircraft or meteor?’

While Facebook community groups for people in Rugby, Witney, Daventry, Bicester and beyond all asked the same thing: ‘Sonic boom?’

While the cause has not officially been confirmed, plane spotters citing data from FlightRadar24, an aircraft monitoring website, suggested the sound was down to Royal Air Force (RAF) jets zooming above.

Aviation Highlights believe it was an RAF Typhoon that intercepted a plane that had suffered radio failure, which then landed at an airfield in Epping.

‘RAF Typhoons scrambled to intercept this Dash 8 aircraft which experienced radio failure and was heading to London,’ Aviation Highlights tweeted.

‘The fighters were reportedly supersonic on their way south from RAF Coningsby.’

It’s not the first time a sonic boom has been heard across the country.

March 2021 saw two occurrences, with a large explosion above South West England with speculation that it may have been a sonic boom, as well as people in Liverpool waking up to a big ‘bang’ noise just days earlier.

Earlier that year, people in Cornwall reported their houses ‘shook’ after a sonic boom caused by an RAF aircraft last month, on February 10.