  We consider self-similar (pseudo-steady) shock reflection at an oblique wall.
There are three parameters: wall corner angle, Mach number, angle of incident
shock. Ever since Ernst Mach discovered the irregular reflection named after
him, it has been an open problem to predict precisely for what parameters the
reflection is regular. Three conflicting proposals, the detachment, sonic and
von Neumann criteria, have been studied extensively without a clear result. We
demonstrate that the sonic criterion is not correct. We consider polytropic
potential flow and prove that there is an open nonempty set of parameters that
admit a global regular reflection with a reflected shock that is
\emph{transonic}. We also provide a clear physical reason: the flow type (sub-
or supersonic) is not decisive; instead the reflected shock type (weak or
strong) determines whether structural perturbations decay towards the
reflection point.
