Research in the fast lane. Our guest today launched projectiles faster than Mach 5 as they study hypersonic speeds. That's thousands of miles per hour. Their work could one day revolutionize air travel. Plus, a geophysicist unexpectedly finds inspiration in earthquakes, why he says they are just one step in the long walk shaping Earth.

That's ahead in breakthroughs.

And ask us anything.

A listener question takes us on a sunbeams journey.

That's all coming up on this episode of Technology Today.

We live with technology, science, engineering, and the results of innovative research every day.

Now let's understand it better.

You're listening to the Technology Today podcast presented by Southwest Research Institute.

Hello and welcome to technology today.

I'm Lisa Benia.

A breakthrough story that just might shake up your view of nature. And in today's Ask Us Anything, our expert discusses how sunlight reaches Earth. But first, we're flying into this new year and new decade at hypersonic speeds. Our guests today are Dr. Nicholas Music, an SWRI engineer, and Dr. James

Walker, director of SWRI's Engineering Dynamics Department. They test fire objects at hypersonic

speeds, exposing materials to extreme heat, and in the process making discoveries that could one day change

how we travel and how quickly we reach our destination. Thanks for being here, James and Nick.

Thank you for having us. Well, so let's start with a definition of hypersonic. We are talking about

unreal speeds here. So how fast are we talking? Well, hypersonics is typically or roughly defined as

anything moving faster than five times the speed of sound. So the speed of sound is defined as

mock one. So you'll hear us say mock a lot. But mock one is how fast a sound wave moves. And

anything moving at hypersonic velocities

is moving at least five times faster than that.

But we're really interested in speeds

from Mach 5 all the way up to, let's say, Mach 30.

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