A sonic boom heard across South Carolina’s Midlands on Thursday set off a round of questions that still did not have an answer on Friday. WIS spoke with experts as people from Columbia and surrounding counties described the blast, while reports also came in from Darlington and Chesterfield counties.
The timing is why the search intensified. The United States Geological Survey reported the sonic boom late Thursday evening, and by Friday the story had shifted from who heard it to what could have made it. Ashwini Karmarker, an assistant professor in the University of South Carolina’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Venkat Narayanaswamy, a professor in North Carolina State University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, were among the experts who offered their views.
Karmarker’s expertise in mechanical engineering put the question in technical terms that many people across the region were already asking in plain language. Narayanaswamy, who works in mechanical and aerospace engineering, brought a second perspective as the boom continued to ripple through a wider area than many expected. The reports stretched beyond Columbia and the surrounding counties and reached communities in Darlington and Chesterfield counties, showing that the sound was not confined to one part of the state.
That wider footprint mattered because it did not match an easy explanation. The USGS had logged the sonic boom, but its cause was still unclear, and no one speaking Friday offered a definitive answer. For residents who heard the blast and for the experts trying to interpret it, the story remained the same by day’s end: something loud crossed the Midlands, but what made it is still unknown.
