In addition to flying nearly twice as fast as a commercial aircraft, Aerion developed a patented technology it calls “boomless cruise.” This means AS2 would fly without creating a sonic boom – one of many issues that plagued the supersonic Concorde jets of the past.

“It allow us to fly at supersonic speeds, taking advantage of an atmospheric phenomenology called ‘mach cut-off,’” Vice said. “Although we still create the sonic boom, it actually refracts off a dense layer of the atmosphere called the caustic layer and goes back up.”

CNBC

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My weather for aviators classes never mentioned a "caustic layer" of the atmosphere.

ETA:  Caustics (not the acid/base thing) are a phenomenon of sound or light propagation involving diffraction.  It seems that it is possible for an aircraft traveling only slightly above the speed of sound to have its sonic boom refracted away from the ground due to changing temperature bending the travel path of the sound waves (the speed of sound is dependent upon temperature - the higher the temperature of the fluid, i.e. air, the faster the speed of sound).  This has nothing to do with the design of the aircraft, however, only on the atmospheric conditions.

Mike

Monkeys gonna be fly'in outa lots of asses.

Get both?