system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Do solids and liquids have a sound barrier? If so, what happens when you break it?

is it the same thing as just striking the material in question? would a sonic boom in steel, for example, mean it would explode into shards?
gpt
To generate a sonic boom, you need to have an object travelling through a medium faster than that medium's speed of sound. The boom is the collecting of sound waves into a conical shape along the leading edge of the object.

In the general case, a plane is travelling through air. The air has a speed of sound at a given temperature and pressure.

The speed of sound in water is much faster than air, and the viscosity of water makes it very hard to attain the necessary velocity.

The speed of sound in metal is even faster than water. The trouble with generating a sonic boom in metal is getting an object to travel THROUGH metal.