F-35 Fighter Jet Likely Caused Sonic Booms That Rocked New Jersey

New Jersey Sonic Booms Map — Sonic booms were reported over southern New Jersey and along the East Coast to Long Island, New York, on Jan. 28, 2016.

(Image credit: USGS)

The sonic booms that rattled residents of New Jersey up to Long Island, New York, yesterday may have been the result of fighter jet flight tests at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent River, Maryland.

At 1:24 p.m. EST (18:24:05 UTC) about 2 miles (3 kilometers) north-northeast of Hammonton, New Jersey, and 37 miles (60 km) south of Trenton, New Jersey, a sonic boom was detected at nearby seismometers in the ground. At least nine others were picked up in the following hour and a half along the Eastern Seaboard up to Long Island, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

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Potential culprits were ruled out soon after the booms were recorded, with officials at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island in Virginia confirming there weren't any rocket launches or jet flights at the center that could have caused the sonic booms. The Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command both also confirmed no nearby planes operating that may have caused the sonic booms, as reported by ABC News yesterday.

"Aircraft from Naval Test Wing Atlantic were conducting routine flight testing in the Atlantic Test Ranges this afternoon that included activities which may have resulted in sonic booms,” the Navy said in a statement, as reported by the Washington Post. "The test wing is critical to the safe test and evaluation of all types of Navy and Marine Corps aircraft in service and in development and is primarily based out of Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. Other military aircraft, including both Navy and Air Force, also frequently use the ranges for testing and training."

The sonic-boom culprits were likely the F-18 and the F-35C, which were the craft involved in the flight testing, according to the Washington Post. The F-18, also called the F/A-18 Hornet, is a strike fighter used as both an attack aircraft and a fighter that has a max speed of Mach 1.8, or 1.8 times the speed of sound in air. The F-35C, a Joint Strike Fighter warplane designed to operate from the flight decks of aircraft carriers, can reach speeds of Mach 1.6, according to Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor that is developing the fighter jet.

Jeanna Bryner is managing editor of Scientific American. Previously she was editor in chief of Live Science and, prior to that, an editor at Scholastic's Science World magazine. Bryner has an English degree from Salisbury University, a master's degree in biogeochemistry and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland and a graduate science journalism degree from New York University. She has worked as a biologist in Florida, where she monitored wetlands and did field surveys for endangered species, including the gorgeous Florida Scrub Jay. She also received an ocean sciences journalism fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is a firm believer that science is for everyone and that just about everything can be viewed through the lens of science.