Word: shurcliff
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...months ago, a Harvard physicist named William Shurcliff organized a few friends into the Citizens' League Against the Sonic Boom. The group's members--all nine of them--had the unlikely goal of stopping the development and production of the most mammoth project in commercial aviation history, the multi-billion dollar supersonic transport...
...Shurcliff, although absolutely convinced of the value of his cause, was new to public relations and unsure of his group's image. A scientist standing in the way of apparent progress? He was cautious in dealing with the press, and spent long evenings preparing press releases after a day's work at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, where he is Senior Research Associate...
...press has been kind to Shurcliff and the Citizens' League. In fact, in those six months, a national advertising campaign and overwhelmingly favorable publicity have brought the League a membership of 1250 people from 39 states and has made what then seemed an almost ludicrous goal look remotely attainable...
...boom itself is an extremely loud noise. Shurcliff describes it as making every house along the boom path seem "next door to a jet airport"--only worse. The sound of an arriving jet (all commercial jets fly below the speed of sound) builds up gradually, so at the peak of the noise there is no element of surprise. But a sonic boom provides no warning, and Shurcliff thinks that it is the boom's startling effect, even more than the noise itself, which makes it intolerable...
...boom was as loud as a real one, the volunteers knew the boom would occur within five seconds after they pushed the button. Even among the fully-prepared subjects, almost half showed a marked increase in heart-beat as a result of the boom. NASA has never admitted to Shurcliff that the experiment's lack of surprise and the heartbeat findings might invalidate the conclusion that people can adapt to the noise...