If you've been keeping tabs on aviation news as of late, you saw that Boom Supersonic just recently broke the sound barrier with its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft. Oddly enough, no one on the ground heard a thing during its "boomless" cruise.

When the experimental XB-1 aircraft achieved supersonic speeds on a test flight, it did not create a disruptive sonic boom – thanks to a physics phenomenon called the Mach cutoff

Boomless Cruise is based on physics known as the Mach cutoff, in which a sonic boom refracts in the atmosphere and never reaches the ground. This was achieved by breaking the sound barrier at a higher altitude, with the exact speeds varying based on the atmospheric conditions.

Boom Supersonic made history today (Jan. 28) when its XB-1 jet broke the sound barrier for the first time. Boom Supersonic's chief test pilot Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg took off in the company's XB-1 jet from the storied Mojave Air & Space Port in California this morning under mostly clear skies.

Boom Supersonic passed a major milestone last month when its XB-1 prototype became the first civil aircraft to break the sound barrier over the continental US. Less than a month later, Chief Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg has once again surpassed Mach 1 in the experimental plane while flying as high as 36,