Etud, I was commenting on Machinbird's question, which I interpreted (and I welcome his correction) as:
"If an event produces sonic waves at the rear of an airplane, the sonic waves will be transmitted to microphones on the flight deck. If they propagate through air, we roughly know the speed of the wave. If they propogate through an aluminum or composite skin, they will move faster. Assuming they make it into a flight deck microphone, that information now has to get through all the wiring to the recorders in the back, does it not?"
Of course we could debate the propagation rate of waves though a standard atmosphere or other materials caused by various stimuli, but AuraFlyer has convinced me not to discuss such things in this forum. I agree with his/her advice.
So all I was saying is that time interval is longer than the time it would take to sever the return wiring; but severing the wiring might in and of itself produce an electric impulse which would register and be saved in the last milliseconds of the solid state memory.
To postulate beyond that is above my pay grade.
