3 ms·

I remember reading about them catching jet streams now and then, a few years ago approaching super sonic speeds. It's incredible.

sambroner 7y ago
Wow. Presumably they were no where near passing the sound barrier relative to the jet stream, but that is wild. I couldn't find it with my choice of google words, any idea where you found it?
featheredGoose 7y ago
That definitely doesn't ring true, in the conventional sense of the concept of "breaking the sound barrier" which would inflict aerodynamic buffeting on the geese. There are three or four principles that stand in the way of such an idea. First, just look at the geese compared to falcons, eagles and hawks. Geese are not classed as serious bird of prey, and don't dive at hundreds of miles an hour to attack their food. They aren't built for that. They run marathons. Second, watch geese fly, and it's obvious they aren't very fast. Certainly they are not breaking 100 miles an hour regularly. Third, inside a column of moving air, flying with a good tailwind, they'll catch a bonus to speed. Ground speed. Not air speed. Even if their progress across the ground is drastically improved by riding an air current, and they do well to exploit the natural assist, what they're doing is not "super sonic" in any sense, literal or figurative. Subsonic speeds at sea level are usually 600 to 700 miles an hour. If their wind current is a moving column of air, there's no way they're going faster than even 300 miles an hour, ground speed. Ground speed, meaning that inside the air current, they're still flying at goose speed, but briskly jogging toward "the front of the train" to maximize apparent speed. So they aren't overcoming aerodynamic drag. There's no way a goose is flying faster than 200 miles an hour in a hard vertical dive at the ground. There's no way, even in a dive, that a tail wind is adding more than 400 miles an hour to provide the goose with bonuses that put them near 700 miles an hour. This is plainly wrong information.

sambroner 7y ago

Wow. Presumably they were no where near passing the sound barrier relative to the jet stream, but that is wild. I couldn't find it with my choice of google words, any idea where you found it?

featheredGoose 7y ago

That definitely doesn't ring true, in the conventional sense of the concept of "breaking the sound barrier" which would inflict aerodynamic buffeting on the geese. There are three or four principles that stand in the way of such an idea. First, just look at the geese compared to falcons, eagles and hawks. Geese are not classed as serious bird of prey, and don't dive at hundreds of miles an hour to attack their food. They aren't built for that. They run marathons. Second, watch geese fly, and it's obvious they aren't very fast. Certainly they are not breaking 100 miles an hour regularly. Third, inside a column of moving air, flying with a good tailwind, they'll catch a bonus to speed. Ground speed. Not air speed. Even if their progress across the ground is drastically improved by riding an air current, and they do well to exploit the natural assist, what they're doing is not "super sonic" in any sense, literal or figurative. Subsonic speeds at sea level are usually 600 to 700 miles an hour. If their wind current is a moving column of air, there's no way they're going faster than even 300 miles an hour, ground speed. Ground speed, meaning that inside the air current, they're still flying at goose speed, but briskly jogging toward "the front of the train" to maximize apparent speed. So they aren't overcoming aerodynamic drag. There's no way a goose is flying faster than 200 miles an hour in a hard vertical dive at the ground. There's no way, even in a dive, that a tail wind is adding more than 400 miles an hour to provide the goose with bonuses that put them near 700 miles an hour. This is plainly wrong information.