Since the dawn of the first motor vehicle, man has always felt the need to go faster, yet the limit to how fast he could go, without leaving orbit, was thought to be Mach 5, or 5 times the speed of sound. Science has proved that popular misconception wrong though, as a revolutionary new plane design takes the scene.

American scientists have come up with a prototype miniature rocket plane that not only breaks the sound barrier, but can reach speeds of 4.5 km/s, or Mach 14. I know what you’re thinking right now: there’s no way the most aerodynamic shape in the world could account for such a speed, and you’d be 100% right. The thin, triangle-shaped plane doesn’t rely on conventional aerodynamics to reach its top speed. In stead, it uses a technique that would be well at home in any sci-fi movie: a plasma cutter.

Researchers have observed that there’s no way to slice the sound barrier any further after reaching a certain point, so they had to turn to less conventional methods than shaping the aircraft. Here’s where the front-mounted plasma cutter comes in handy, literally slicing a hole through the air, so that the plane encounters much less friction when it moves forward. The result? Far less drag means far less speed wasted trying to overcome it, which gives the plane its amazing speed.

Don’t expect to go around the world in 80 seconds just yet, though, since you’d have quite a difficult time fitting into the 1 meter long and 3 meter wide aircraft. Not only do we have to wait until this new technology will be adapted to larger plane designs, but we have yet to find a way to make the human body withstand such immense speeds. Until scientists learn to pull an inertial dampener out of the sci-fi hat, as they did with the fusion cutter, the speed of sound will remain the barrier which commercial airplanes dare not pass.

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