China claimed this week that it has found a new way to create a supersonic underwater vessel that could go from Shanghai to San Francisco in 100 minutes.
Developed to produce high-speed weaponized torpedos, the military projects employs supercavitation, a technique devised by the Soviets in 1960 that gets around the drag of water by creating a bubble of gas for the object to travel through.
The Chinese approach, however, also uses a “special liquid membrane” that reduces friction at low speeds. This liquid is constantly showered over the object to replenish the membrane as it’s worn off by the water. The technology was developed by a team of scientists at Harbin Institute of Technology's Complex Flow and Heat Transfer Lab.
In theory, the researchers say, a supercavitating vessel could reach the speed of sound underwater, or about 5,800km/h, cutting down the journey time for a transatlantic underwater journey to less than an hour, and for a transpacific journey to about 100 minutes.
However, steering such a vessel would be very difficult and developing an underwater engine capable of high velocity over long distances would be even harder. A powerful underwater rocket engine still has to be developed in order to give the vessel a longer range.
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