Slashdot Mirror
Preempting Hailstone Formation To Protect Cars
Makarand writes "Nissan has become the first automaker in the United States to start using
a device that suppresses hail formation to protect its fleet of new vehicles
from hailstorm damage. The device is a cannon capable of shooting sonic waves upto
50,000 feet in the air to keep hailstones from forming. The
device comes with its own weather radar and activates when it detects
conditions favorable for hail formation. The device can provide
hailstorm protection in an area with one-mile radius by firing
sonic waves every five seconds."
What is not mentioned in the article is that this sonic cannon was sold to Nissan by Toyota, who knew that the technology is useless against the latest fleet of Goa'uld motherships.
Is it April 1st already?
Now they just need sharks with frikkin' radar beams.
I have bad karma....
Open source is heavenly, Microsoft is the devil, SCO is going to hell
Is that 120 db pulse every 5 seconds really going to do anything to a giant thundercloud, which for one probably buffers the sound. Also, is 120 db really that loud compared to the localized sound from a single lightning strike?
Sounds to me like these guys got taken. It's pretty hard to prove that you prevented hail, just as it is hard to prove that you created rain.
...for passing airliners?
50,000ft is a lot higher than most commercial airliners fly at.
Sonic cannons that can shoot down hailstones? Sounds very cool, but do we really need that in a car anyway?
They found the device to be effective against hail, but couldn't figure out the recent surge in bat dropping related damage.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
When can I pick one up..
These fine people from "ke-bek"
Sponge!
It reminds me of Knight Rider.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
...instead of having hail fall on your car, 747s do.
I'd personally like to thank Nissan for coming up with yet another way to fck up the natural processes on this planet. Hate to infringe upon Nissan's bottom line but hail, like all weather, happens for a reason.
Maybe next Cadillac will come out with a devise that will make sure within a one mile radius the sky is always clear at night, so people can enjoy their moonroofs.
Precip. patterns? Things that need water to live? Bah!
SecondPageMedia - Wha
This is common practice around my area (Christchurch, New Zealand) to protect pip fruit and grape crops from hail damage. I'm frankly surprised this is news.
Let me post this (ganked from another site):
[blockquote]Basically, the anti-hail cannon uses
acetylene to shoot cations into the
atmosphere at sonic speed, which creates
shock waves that interfere with the
crystallization of ice, thereby resulting in
rain or sheet, but not hail. It covers a
circular area of about 0.3 mile radius,
roughly 200 acres.[/blockquote]
This sounds like a bunch of baloney to me. "Shoots cations" is as ridiculous as when you hear hippies talking about "bad ions" and "good ions" with respect to some stupid lava lamp.
was known as a roof.
Sure it will protect cars from hail, but what about all the falling pigeons?
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
When I first read this, I thought it was a little device that went on the roof of your car and disrupted hail. That would have been soooo cool.
Upstairs Dog, Downstairs People.
In related news, Timothy has posted 10 latest news consecutively! Yay Timothy! :) I think you have the device that surpresses Taco from posting ;)
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Any idea what the environmental impact is from these things?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
They forgot to mention that Nissan's high frequency sound doesn't disrupt the hailstone process, it just tells the hailstones not to hit Nissan cars!
Customer Rep. Exec: Apparently consumers are complaining about hail damage to their cars.
CEO: Hail damage?
Head Engineer: Great, just great. The biggest problem that people want to complain about, we have no solution for. Hell, we were never even told that this was a problem!
CEO: Ok, ok. Look, we have to think. Does anybody have an idea as to how we handle this?
Guile: Sonic boom!
And so, Col. Guile's post-Street Fighter career, previously up in the air, was solidified.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Apparently you don't want to live nearby (see the bottom of the story).
This sounds like it's worse than living next to an airport.
The sound at ground zero is about 120 decibels, or about the same as a tornado warning siren. Workers are installing fences around two of the machines in the 140-acre parking lot at Nissan and filling the fences with hay in an effort to reduce the sound level.
That's a joke, right? Maybe they should have installed them in an insulated bunker 1 mile underground.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Related:
r ology/Weather_Modification/
. php
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Earth_Sciences/Meteo
http://www.weathermod.com/projects/hail/argentina
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/wxmod.html
In New Zealand, horticulturalists have used this technology for at least 5 or 10 years now. In the region I live in, hail storms often ruin the large apple crops which were once our main industry.
Some horticulturalists have even been known to fly helicopters above their crops over night to stop frost from forming.
unfortunately, there's no glass in any of the cars anymore.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
.....Welcome our new Japanese Overlords
Remember, a truly wise man never plays leapfrom with a unicorn
Actually, every car I've seen in operation did produce sonic waves (also known as sound). But until now I thought it was because of normal operation, not to prevent hail. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
First reading of the article gave the impression that Nissan's new cars would be equipped with some kind of sound raygun which could be used for far more interesting things than blocking hailstones. Hey, aim that raygun at Ms Jone's house, watch the windows shatter. Cops coming? A little blast of decibels and their cars explode. Not to mention their eardrums and maybe even heads. Ugh.
But no, we're not going to see commercialized versions of the famous Somalian 'technicals', pick-ups with anti-aircraft guns mounted in the back.
Instead it's some kind of 'Highlander 2' plot in which giant rays are going to be beamed into the sky in order to prevent catastrophe raining down.
So, I have three questions.
(a) does anyone actually believe it's possible to stop hailstones forming in the heart of giant thunderclouds whose energies are hugely more than anything we can produce.
(b) what happened to the 'roof'? A simple, yet efficient way of stopping hailstones.
(c) who sold Nissan this thing? I'm looking for a good salesman for my company.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Just putting a roof over them?
Yeah but will it protect against blue ice falling from airliners?
This thing is dangerous technology just ripe for the sort of application which brings about massive disparity in the way people perceive technology.
Hang on tight everyone. The next 10 years are going to get rough.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Historically, planes used dry ice and flares to seed clouds and therefore prevent hail. This approach seems too loud for people around these machines. Aren't huge shockwaves like this thing produces the reason why jets are forbidden to fly over most land at supersonic speeds? Why is this ok?
Just wondering, what effects do these sonic waves have on birds that are flying up there? 50K feet with 1-mile radius is a pretty damn big area...
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
Whats wrong with making car pannels from polycarbonate or some other plastic that is essentially impervious to hailstones, costs pennies and whats more negates rust and pannelbeaters except in total reconstruction.... some cars today do to some extent, but it's usually minor, eg. Nissan Xtrail has plastic front fenders.
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
These guys have seriously been had. Anyone that knows anything about atmospheric physics can tell you that most atmospheric models neglect sound waves, and for a very good reason--because they are insignificant when compared with other phenomena present in the atmosphere, such as...surprise...wind. Anything on the scale of a severe thunderstorm strong enough to produce golf-ball sized hail or larger will have vertical air motions in excess of 40-50 m/s (100mph). Combine this with the tremendous amount of turbulence associated with such violent vertical motions, and a few piddly sound waves don't stand a chance.
Furthermore, hailstones of the size they're concerned with usually form miles from the location they actually fall in, and are held aloft for substantial periods of time--sometimes longer than an hour. Eventually, however, the updraft in the storm will weaken or reposition itself, and when it does, look out below. So even assuming this device could prevent hail from forming within a 1-mile radius of itself, your stuff is still gonna get the crap beat out of it anyway.
Whether the guy that sold them on this was a meteorologist or not, this sort of crockery is what gives meteorologists a bad name.
Don't get me wrong. We got one of those car parks in the dock area here and it is huge but it wouldn't need to be a complex roof and its success would be 100%. Also stops sunlight and seagull shit and acid rain.
So nice story, didn't know this was even possible but Nissan probably got had. Will be intresting to hear what their neighbours will have to say about it. Noise polution in a 5 mile area? Never be allowed over here. Here people complain they can hear the trains in the house they bought that is next the rail track.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
so, is this thing anywhere near the recent bird kill in china? http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml? type=topNews&storyID=453358§ion=news
10,000 birds fall from sky for unknown reasons in china.
almost 3 years ago. I guess we now know what happened to Hailstorm.
RTFM: this is designed to protect the car park of thousands of new cars, to stop them getting dented predelivery. They're not mounting sonic cannon on the roof of each vehicle, although if it was an option I *would* buy it!
.. we can look forward to Samantha Carter, Tokra Barbie and that chick who played Morrigan draped semi-clad over the bonnets of the cars at a motor show.
I don't mean to be a spoilsport, but ... why don't they just build a roof?
*looks puzzled*
Beams, schmeams. What I'd really pay good money for would be a Batman The Movie style car shield. One click on the remote and shakakakakakakakkaka - instant anti-hailstone, anti-car thief and anti-keying shield.
"Laser Beams" you frikin' idiot....
SILENCE!!! Your insolence will not be tolerated!
I have a device fitted to my house to prevent damage from hailstones. I call it a roof. It's silent, consumes no power, and also protects against rain, snow, intense sun, falling birds, and a whole host of other things...
This sentence no verb.
And if you stand on the roof correctly prevents/corrects kidney stones too!
"In other news, the plug was pulled on the project after a few early-adopters noticed huge numbers of dead birds falling from the sky and smashing the otherwise pristine vehicles."
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
... drive nearby sandworms to a frenzy and provoke them to attack the vehicle, swallowing it whole?
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
Their new hail protection system has saved them millions of dollars in damage to cars.
However, they system's "sonic boom" has broken millions of dollars in windows.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
It is Canada' Fault
wtf is he doing? is this some football-related activitiy that just looks like he's jacking off?
Back in the 1970's I was able to buy a hail damaged new Falcon for $750. Ford was dumping them because the cost to repair the damage would be more than the car was worth. I thought it was a super deal.
It had dozens of quarter sized dimples, and ran really fast. I'm not sure, but it might have benefited from some kind of golf ball wind resistance effect.
When I visited Batlow (the apple capital of NSW) over 14 years ago, they had sonic cannons for hail protection at the time. So yeah, slashdot, "news from the 1980s revisited". I hear that these new fangled phones that don't use wires are coming onto the market too (yup, I saw a homeless beggar using one at the weekend), so maybe slashdot will be reporting on that too? :-)
Hi.
This thing is 120dB,
Jets are closer to 200dB.
Someone better tell the fucking jets to stop being so loud or they'll explode!
Can I use your post as scientific evidence when everybody laughs at me?
Also, all the birds in the area die spontaneously when lightning strikes. You know, that thing that can rattle your windows from over ten miles away? The thing that exceeds 300dB at ground zero?
Fucktard.
...especially since hail is never associated with thunderstorms.
I think I would get very scared, from these "attacks", and I'd surely try to mobilize all my bird friends, follow the car, and when the owner steps out, well, shit on his head....
This reminds me of the German antipersonnel sonic cannon developed during WWII.
Apparently, this one required a targetted infantryman to remain in place for more than half a minute, but the idea is probably similar.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
This ws done years ago. My '85 Fiero GT proudly boats a complete plastic body skin. This was reintroduced by Saturn, they claimed it was a revolutionary idea. Hah. I think they were trying to get away from the bad press the Fiero got. I have heard no car burns quite like a Fiero, however I don't know about Saturns. I believe they use a difrent plastic. Also the roofs are steel if I remember correctly. And for those that think this means the car is lighter, not so. You need to see a Fiero without the skins on. They are not light cars. The other advantage is rust. I think that works against car companies. They like their new disposable cars. They want you to trade in your car before you pay it off. Everyone makes money but you.
I agree completely. Reading about this system made me marvel at the salesmanship involved. You'd think anyone past high school would recognize such obvious pseudoscience, but I guess the saying about fools being born every minute is a great truism. People don't realize how rare hail damage is, statistically, and so they can be led to believe that systems like this work, when it's just very likely that hail hasn't fallen on that 100-acre plot of land in the last three years because, well, hail wasn't going to fall there in the first place.
Unless Nissan got a better deal, even the company's guarantee is worthless, viz.:
So, even if hundreds of acres of cars are hail-damaged while the system is in use (after the 20-minute warmup period), the company is only liable for the cost of the "hail suppression system", minus $5000! However, you have to pay, either directly or via a service contract, for an annual inspection to keep the 3-year warrranty in force--price undisclosed.
The only way this makes any economic sense for Nissan is if they got the system for free, so that the shyster company can use them as a showcase customer, for the publicity value. Even then, you'd think the public embarassment at being associated with such a scam would be intolerable.
The whole thing reminds me of the story about the guy jumping up and down in the middle of the street, blowing a whistle. Someone walks up and says,
"Why are you blowing the whistle?"
"To scare the elephants away."
"Elephants? There are no elephants around here!"
"See? It's working!"
That said, I'm really curious if it even works. Of course it works!! Here's a little fun with science you can make yourself that proves how this works. What you need: 1 peice of paper. 1 speaker, connected to a stereo. some music. Start by ripping the paper into little shreds and balling them up into tiny little balls. Next, take all the little balls and mash them together into one big ball. Now if you have decent speakers you can just set the paperball mass on top of the cabinet. For those wussy computer speakers, I recomend turning it on it's side and placing the ball directly in the cone. Now crank up your volume and watch what happens to those little balls. They start dancing around and the bigger ball falls apart! See! Now imagine that on a smaller scale, say ice crystal size. That is exactly what is happening to the hail when it gets sonically blasted.
I hear this same analogy can also be demonstrated with a jackhammer and some concrete blocks.
Holy Shit. Crowd-control, anyone?
...
Well I've seen better
There are already commercial sonic crowd control weapons. The idea being to overload the sensory systems of the targets more than to injure them. I think a special human-targetted frequency is used instead of relying on huge amplitude (although, they're probably pretty loud too). Kind-of along the lines of flash-bangs, but only aural (although, depending upon the frequency, more than the ears could be affected). I have no idea if they're used frequently yet. Only slighty more evil than the chemical deterrence systems commonly employed already. I have no idea if there is long-term hearing loss related to being the target (the human ear "disconnects" for a while when exposed to sudden loud sounds, so that would likely minimize any damage).
I personally think it would be super, super danagerous for a society to deploy these sorts of 'mind-fuck' technologies on its populace.
...
So you go to an event to protest, and all over town you start hearing voices in your head telling you that "dictator X is a nice guy"
Sheesh. We're on thin ice. Give these tools to the neo-cons who have no problem with using brainwashing techniques to justify their mission, and we're all fucked...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Astonishingly, the article is more informative than the comments of people who didn't read the article. Imagine that.
The device protects the parking lot at the plant. It's not something that will be installed on your next Altima.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
I own a Nissan, and monitor a couple of online communities.
In those communities, concensus is: Nissan's paint sucks. Hail hacks it, minor road debris hacks it. In my experience, my car has more chips after two years of ownership (bought new) than several previous cars I owned.
Are they using ray guns to protect their low investment in paint?
Hail that damages the sheet metal is pretty big. Paint-only-damaging hail is smaller. Any way round it, I think their ray-gun is a hack.
...a Weapon of Meteorological Destruction? Great troll though. You mean this is serious?
Yeah, but can they install Linux on it yet?
next, weather machine. Now that Saddam has been ousted, what evil villain will take on the project?
Wouldn't a fucking roof be cheaper -- and more intelligent? They need to screw up local weather patterns as well? Have they done environmental studies for collateral effects?
Jesus.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
I've seen a guy here on tv in belgium that uses it for years already to protect his apple orchard... Apparantly it IS very effective...
Now if only they could make a cannon that could get rid of those pesky bike couriers who lean on your car.
All they really needed was a freakin' tarp.
I think the real question everyone wants to know is "Will it keep Major League Baseball from spying on me?"
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
Jets are closer to 200dB.
not quite: Jet engine at 3m : 140dB
Seems you're off by a factor 1 million.
Still, it seems pretty unlikely to affect, let alone damage, an aircraft.
Also, I doubt lightning is THAT loud. Where did you get that number?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
They have a photo of just that on their website (bottom right of the page).
Daimler (now Daimler-Chrysler) the maker of Mercedes cars and the like, does some hailstorm protection as well. But they use the "traditional" method of using planes to spray silver iodide into or over the top of the clouds which reduces or prevents the build-up of large hail stones.
See here for more info about this method.
In Other News, Nissan Of North America executives are mysteriously taken away in black vans for possession of "WMD's", after an US Air Force AWACS plane was almost downed after flying over the Nissan plant.
There were no comments from Nissan, but the U.S. Government cannot confirm nor deny any Nissan executives may or may not be held at what may or may not be a base in the country that may or may not be known as "Cuba"
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Back in the sixties, I developed a weather-changing machine which was, in essence, a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser". Using these "lasers", we punch a hole in the protective layer around the world which we call the "ozone layer". Slowly but surely, ultra-violet rays would pour in, increasing the risk of skin cancer. That is, unless, the world pays us a hefty ransom?
This thing is going to piss off every elephant in the neighborhood! On top of that, Nissan will have to start worrying about ruptured birds crashing into their cars. "We don't understand it! Whales have been beaching themselves all over the lot!"
1. Bat-dropping damage
2. Droppig-bat dagamge
I guess #2 would be an option if this sonic cannon packs enough of a punch. However, the real threat to both vehicles and mankind seems to come from dropping-stork damage.
Call me crazy but isnt this just an extension of Reich's work with cloudbusters? Granted its a little more technical than pipes pointed in the air but it sure seems awful familiar to me. Heres hoping the techs responsible for this one dont get wilhelm's excellent retirement plan...
Now what I'd really like to see is one of these toys as part of an options package.
Road rage? Someone cut you off? ZOT! BWAM! 120 decibels to the kisser!
They could sell it as a device to counter snowballs dropped on your roof by idiot kids on highway overpasses. Nail the little bastards while you're at it as well...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I for one am looking forward to this one. I can't wait to see the law of unintended consequences smack us for this one..
to just install sheet metal roofing over the ground where the cars are parked?
A military version is in development:
;-)
Picture of this baby.
Type: Advanced Battle Tank
Armament: Sonic Amplifier
Speed: 44 km/h (tracked)
Armor: Medium
Crew: 2
Developed by Hailstop and General Motors, this enhanced tank utilizes sound waves technology to fire a powerful blast of sonic energy at its target. The high energy frequencies break down the molecular structure of affected victims.
--
Dune II
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Wow, it's Red Alert 2! It's all coming true!
"WARNING! Weather control device detected!"
"WARNING! Catastrophic lightning storm created!"
Read Pynchon.
Also, I doubt lightning is THAT loud. Where did you get that number?
Comparison of Various Noise Sources in the Ocean:
Lightning Strike on Water Surface
260 dB (approximately) (1)
From: Hill, R.D. 1985. Investigation of lightning strikes to water surface. JASA 78(6):2096-2099.
An estimated conversion from dB under water to dB in air is to subtract 62 dB, so that would come out as about 200 dB.
It's usually moderated "Interesting" or "Informative"
This would be much better than the Airzooka toy. Not only could you mess up someone's hair from across the room, you could probably stop their heart as well.
The device is called a "hail cannon" and they have been in operation in (at least) southeastern Ohio for decades. I saw one during a bicycle ride there last fall and one of the locals explained what it was. Next...
Daimler also have hail protection for their large car park of brand new Mercedes cars at Sindelfingen (by Stuttgart), but they don't use sonic booms. They have two Cessna pilots on standby, who will fly up and ionise the clouds or something like that, which stops the hail from forming. It seems to work well, too.
-- Steve
They found out that the way to solve the Collatz problem was to prevent the hailstone sequence from happening in the first place!!
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
The article didn't mention this, but last year at their Smyrna, TN plant (where the Pathfinder, Xterra, Altima and Maxima are made) they had 10,000 cars in inventory destroyed in a hail storm. That's a lot of dough (10,000 x $20,000 to $30,000). The vehicles they make at this plant in Canton are even more expensive.
The fighter would probably appear to be a deep cave opening to a bat, rather than give the impression that the hangar is completely empty. They probably all flew into it at top speed expecting to find a great place to live.
Over 100,000 sold at $25 each! Guaranteed to prevent lightning from striking your head!
If product does not work as advertised, return for a full refund.
(Disclaimer: In cases of product failure, we are liable for no more than... oh... does $1000 sound good? Sure. One grand it is. We've sold lots already.)
Been using sigs for 20 years. Nothing funny left to say.
wish they'd make sumthin to vaporise bird-droppings b4 they adorn the roof of my car :(
darned sticky things!!!
"Hailstones are formed and begin with a piece of dust in the clouds," he explains. "There is a lot of activity going on, and what we do is to de-ionize that activity in the clouds and keep those dust particles from collecting moisture out of the clouds in turn reacting and forming what we know as a hailstone."
I'm a professor of meteorology. If one of my students had written that drivel I would have flunked 'em!
The microphysics of clouds is very complex. I'd really like to know what mechanism they really are trying to stifle here. Here is a bit on how hail forms. First, some background:
In a rapidly growing cumulonimbus (thunderstorm) cloud, you have a strong updraft (air rising rapidly). This air is contains humid air, which condenses to form liquid cloud droplets as it cools (rising air expands and cools - basic thermodynamics). It is indeed true that cloud droplets condense upon pieces of dust/salt/gunk in the atmosphere, but ionization has very very little to do with it. Many of these so-called condensation nuclei are not ionized. Water will condense upon just about anything if cooled enough.
Eventually this rising, cloudy air reaches heights where temperatures are well below freezing - say -20 degrees C. Water actually does not have to freeze when it is below 0 degrees C, and in fact what leads to lots of hail is the fact that there is an abundance of supercooled (below freezing liquid) cloud droplets in this cloud.
Eventually some ice crystals form, either spontaneously (supercooled cloud droplets freeze at about -40 degrees C - this is called homogeneous nucleation of ice), or because they come in contact with an ice nucleus (something that has a similar crystal structure to water ice). These ice crystals fall and co-mingle with the supercooled cloud droplets. Due to the difference in saturation vapor pressures over ice and water at a given temperature, these ice crystals grow and grow at the expense of the cloud droplets without actually making physical contact!
Now the stage is set for hail. There is an abundance of supercooled cloud droplets, which freeze upon contact with ice crystals. Contact is made, and graupel is formed. Graupel is kind of an intermediate form of ice between snow and hail. The updraft of the storm keeps everything going, and in fact can suspend heavy hail particles for a while before they either become so heavy they fall through the updraft, or they are tossed horizontally to a part of the storm where they fall to the ground. The largest hailstones form with the strongest updrafts because the hail can acrete lots and lots of supercooled water (hail will melt and refreeze also as it rises and falls within the cloud).
Again, I simply cannot fathom what process they are trying to stifle with these sound waves. Hail suppression research has focused mainly on seeding clouds with silver iodide. Silver iodide is a powdery substance which has an ice crystal shape very similar to that of water ice. Overseeding a cloud with AgI, so the theory goes, will convert all that supercooled cloud water into small ice crystals, scavenging all the liquid so there won't be any "lucky" graupel particles growing to the size of hail stones.
The Russians claimed some success with this process during the cold war (launching AgI laced rockets into clouds) but frankly I think they were overstating their success. Hail suppression work reached its peak in the 70's but because of the lack of any real statistical success, funding for this kind of work has pretty much dried up.
Anyway, a sucker is born every minute.
Leigh Orf
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
This is not really that new. There is an apple orchard near my grandparents farm that has a sound cannon to prevent hail damage to the apples. I've seen it operate a couple of times. You can actually watch the sound waves ripple through the rain/hail in the sky. We use to always speculate whether or not it really works...apparently he thinks it does
The only real difference here is the application and the radar (the farmer would manually turn it on)
birds, planes?
How about no, Scott.
http://www.batcon.org/discover/congress.html
I hope you never wash your clothes again, thus killing dozens of dust mites.
I didn't read the article, but can someone tell me where I mount this thing? on the roof right? Controls on the dash under the radio?
...or do we not consider them anything but debris these days?
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
...when you're being attacked by an Aleutian terrorist armed with obsidian blades.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
The technology is solid and has been proven. The cost ratio is better to go with a sound generator.
Now, all we need is something to disrupt tornadoes...
"30 people went deaf during the manufacturing of this car. Enjoy!"
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
Realistically, there is no way to prove that this system does anything at all. Weather pofiles are fickle things.
However, I have a much more relevant question. This device is supposed to have a supersonic flow leaving the nozzel. OK, I can see how that would be. Let's look at another supersonic nozzel we are all familiar with: Rocket Engines.
How far behind the Rocket Engine do the gasses go before they dissipate? Maybe a couple thousand feet? Clearly they're much more powerful than this anti-hail device. And this device is supposed to blast ionized air tens of thousands of feet in a mere few minutes? I smell something fishy here. Even if the ionized air trick works --the delivery system looks bogus to me.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
In addition, the sonic cannon was found to be quite effective in crashing passenger jets cruising well within range overhead at only 30,000 feet. The paint chips falling at high speed were found to be damaging to the car's clear coating and the falling passengers often created dangerous delays during the morning commute. Fortunately, the technology was sold before these findings became public.
Artificial rain making operations may have caused a storm that nearly wiped out an English village in 1952.
I dunno guys this sounds kinda scary. I would be kinda apprehensive of the Nissan dealer down the street owning one of these. Wouldn't you?
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Is it me, or does this thing sound like something the guys on Junkyard Wars or MythBusters would build?
*Junkyard Wars Mode*
Today's challenge is going to be all about Changin' the weather! We've assembled two teams of the finest... well, they do make cars and such... People on the planet to build:
A Hail Prevention/Detection device!
Our two teams have just 10 hours to build a device that can do something that mankind has been trying to do for centuries--do something about the weather, instead of just talking about it!
*MythBusters Mode*
Announcer: Tonight on Mythbusters... See if the old saying "I hope your face sticks like that" is entirely possible--using LN2! And later on, Adam and Jamie build something to deal with that pesky weather.
*** Later On ***
Adam: Jimmy--
Jimmy: Yes Adam?
Adam: Have you ever talked about the weather?
Jimmy: Yea, on a couple of my more 'memorable' dates...
Adam: well, wouldn't it be something if we could do something about the weather, instead of just talk about it?
Jimmy: It might be... who knows--I might have been to get into that guy--I mean, girl's pants if I could have stopped the sun from shining, so he couldn't have seen me...
Adam: I'm not talking about no namby-pamby rain here... I'm talking about HAILSTONES here, baby!
Jimmy: Oh god... not another Sonic-Cannon, Adam. We've built 35 of them already--and we've only been on the air for 20 episodes...
Hahahahahaha. That is funny.
For those afraid of tubgirl, this is nothing disgusting.
It's a male cheerleader enthusiastically rining a bell. The angle of the camera makes it look like he's jacking off. It's hillarious.
Dear god, mods! interesting? Informative?! Try Funny!
Anyone else think of the cloudbusting machine from Kate Bush's music video of this song?
+1 interesting so far... sir, my hat is off to you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seriously this sounds like a bad idea, think of all the ill will you generate! Anyway I wonder if it is impossible to use an amplitude reversed wave to shield horizontal propagation of the boom, like sound-cancelling earphones. Then remembered the U.S. supposedly experimented with sonic weapons but (supposedly) gave up because it propagated in all directions and backfired on the troops. (Of course robots or air drops could deliver them so this could be apocryphal). I'd be surprised if neighbors couldn't sue to get them to stop these explosions, unless they are really in the boonies.
This is not a very good solution. It only protects cars in the devices' vicinity. But once you buy the car what's to protect it then? A real solution would be one that protected the car at all times. More resilient glass and body panels. And paint that can withstand hail strikes. I guess that car makers don't really care what happens once you've bought the car.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
out for a leisurely flight in the middle of a hailstorm.
Even if this could work ( which I seriously doubt ), is there any thought given to the ramifications of messing with natural processes?
while *we* may have no use for them, they are part of nature, and do play a part in what goes on.
Once we start screwing with the 'way of things', we are just asking for troubles we cant even foresee as of yet.
And not I'm not a 'tree hugger', I just worry about the caviler attitude, ' well if we don't like it, today, we will just change nature to suit us'....
Just look at the great dustbowl in the Midwest US if you don't think our seemingly unimportant actions can have drastic effects decades later...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I suppose this will drive neighborhood pooches nuts every time it fires up. This could be a Good Thing if you're not keen on dogs leaving liquid donations on your tires or fender during hailstorms.
;-)
I know! Let's dub the thing the 'W.C. Field(s) Generator!'
I think I'll go take my meds now...
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Sounds like Nissan is making too much money!
Last year, Nissan incurred hail damage to tens of thousands of new vehicles waiting for transport outside of their plant in (I think) Tennessee. The entire inventory was auctioned off to dealers are rock bottom prices (even for wholesale). I would expect that the dealers fixed up the hail damage and subsequently sold the cars. However, it meant a loss of millions of dollars of revenue to Nissan USA.
This device is a small and worthwhile investment, even if there is only one hailstorm in the next decade.
... the costs is as follows:
1) set me up in the penthouse suite of the tallest, poshest hotel in the area requiring hail protection. (This increases the proximity to the offending clouds); and
2) for a week provide me with the areas most attractive virgins who will be sacrificed to my sexual desires. (Sacrificing virgins is a time honoured way of effecting positive change in one's environment.)
Theoretically plausible (in a New Age/Noble Savage sort of way), environmentally neutral, low noise levels, and relatively inexpensive (compared to the cost of say a 140 acre roof).
In any case, I think it's worth trying at least once or twice. Let me know, Nissan.
So if this works, instead of my car getting hail damage, it'll just get a Mr. Misty headache?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
1) Why would the system need to include "a steel shelter structure"?
2) Could someone evaluate the logic in this statement, "Supersonic bangs have no effects on animals."?
I'm sure aiming giant ultra-sonic boom-boxes up at the sky SOUNDED like a good idea to someone, but I suspect every bird and bat in the area will be pretty unhappy.
OTOH, maybe the UFO's that pass overhead will come down and buy something.
All of the birds in my neighborhood will get rid of have their kidney stones!
Sounds good to me. Man does way too much damage around here as it is.
Now we are off into space, to spread the devastation around a bit.
And no, i still dont buy that the devices work, regardless of what some propaganda says. Lots of useless products sell.. Great marketing can do wonders. can even make you buy a rock and call it a 'pet'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd hate to be there when the aliens come to retaliate for us firing our "primitive" sonic cannon at them. I don't think those cars are insured against alien invasion.
Wine, music and cinema are the three great creations of humanity. -T'Ian Han
And yes, they do actually work quite well.
My cousin had one (got it for free somewhere) and we were taking turns knocking ornaments off the christmass tree with it this past december, from a different room.
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
> Jesus
I thought that was your sig, not some vulgar uttering as part of your comment. Cuz, this is exactly what I was thinking - sonic booms into the heavens? What would Jesus say. "Wouldn't a fucking roof be cheaper..." uh-oh... don't want to piss off The Big Guy!
...falling bats, confused, dropping out of the sky and damaging cars.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
So the plan is to fire disruptive sonic blasts 50,000 feet into the air in a one-mile arc? I can't even begin to imagine the turbulence this will cause...
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
... does it blow up birds like the anti-tornado mircowave satellite does?
I used to be a sonar operator.
This effect is known as cavitation - it occurs because of a drop in pressure causing sea water to boil at sea temperature in the low pressure parts of the sound wave. It also occurs in front of ship's propellers, and is one way for submarines to detect surface vessels ("popping" sounds). Our frigate's propellers started cavitating at about 12 knots' speed.
Submarines have propellers especially designed to avoid this, as their operation is based on stealth.
The sound pressure from an active sonar dome can exceed 200 db due to the high density of water, and can kill divers in the vicinity of the vessel. A fellow operator inadvertently turned on the sonar while in harbour, killed some fish (luckily no divers were in the water at the time), and was relocated instantly.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Then "Well maybe..."
Then "Wouldn't be ironic if the cannon shattered all the windshields and they had to total the cars due to water damage."
Now to RTFA...
Eric
[The subject line is a reference to the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, in which the U.S. government publicly announces the existence of the said machine, and all the wonderful benefits it will have, when in fact it is a weapon which can only cause destruction within the U.S.]
I took all speakers I could lay my hands on and put them on the roof of my house and then turned up the volume. It got pretty loud. And guess what... no hail for as long as the device worked and as long as I could hold off the neighbors and the police with me trusty shot gun.
But test prove that if make lots of noise it will not hail. I plan on doing a longer-term study as soon as I get out. I am currently seeking funding and manpower to defend the project from the police and nasty neighbors.
120db at 50,000 feet is going to do nothing - the sound pressure from the engines will probably be a few orders of magnitude higher.
You didn't RTFA anway - if you had, you'd know that it's one installation, to protect the nissan factory lot from hailstorms, not a sonic cannon in every car (well, some stereo systems put out way more than 120db...).
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
So what are they going to do about the resulting guts from exploding seagulls/crows/birds flying above?
A huge (glass) greenhouse for growing hydroponic tomatos near me (central Nebraska) has one of those annoying things. Whenever conditions are favorable for hail, the thing goes off, sounds like someone shooting a large shotgun every five seconds, which goes on for hour after hour. I can't think of anything more annoying. Everybody in town hates the thing, and in fact some redneck types (We are in Nebraska after all) think it's great fun to shoot their (real) shotguns in the air when this is going on, as the greenhouse blasts provide great cover.
Perhaps metal shielding on a conveyor system to be pulled over would be much better to deal with. Maybe more expensive, but this is fucking ridiculous.
Has anyone studied the effects of Agl on, say, people below?
I was in CO last year for a snowboarding trip. They were experiencing a drought and so were seeding clouds every day. Coincidentally, the local guy who supplied oxygen for people who had contracted HAPE said his business was more than doubled from previous years.
I know, I know, coincidence does not prove a cause, but was just wondering if Agl was spread in such quantities in daily cloud seeding that it could be inhaled by people and cause problems.
As (2) other slashdotters have posted, systems such as the one used by Nissan have been used for years to protect crops. I live in an area with hundreds of acres of peach trees, and I can see one of those cannons from my office window as I type. Just because many of you haven't heard of 'em, doesn't mean they don't work. It's incredibly old tech! Get away from the screens and walk around under the daystar guys! ;-)
Not sure if this thing actually does, but it sounds to me like this cannon would cost quite a bit of coin. Perhaps it would be cheaper to cover the lot with a tent-like canvas roof? Hail would roll off leaving the cars undammaged. Requires no fancy technology, no electricity, and keeps the cars clean and dry.
...Remember the episode when Bart lined up the 20 or so string of megaphones together at the police station?
# fuser -v
#
This is "cat-ions", i.e., ionized cats, not "cations". If you shoot millions of ionized cats into the stratosphere, it does prevent hail storms from forming (but you do have to contend with falling cats).
This sounds like the kind of technology that Disaster Area could make use of.
Just figure a way of modulating it, plug it into the preamp, and let loose!
They use it to pre-empt the formation of cars that don't suck :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Maybe they can use a 20hz tone and just accidentally aim it at the nearby Honda facility. :)
Brown noise, anyone?
That's why my pc is used. And I try to build what I need, when possible.
I agree that a true luddite, or Amish wouldn't even go that far, but to live that sort of life isn't practical in this day and age. ( nothing else the taxman will come to collect your property ).
But it doesn't mean you cant live responsibly and minimize your impact on the earth... And I don't feel that trying to modify weather ( be it successful or not ) qualifies as 'low impact'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I LIKE IT
Disproving good hard science takes a bit longer. Not just because of the effort involved, but because of the inertia of supposedly rational scientific thinkers -- just ask Barry Marshall:
If this has been in use since the 1980s, and if it has prevented the formation of hail as it claims, then the evidence should be available for people to see. And if that evidence shows that it does, in fact, prevent hail formation, then there's obviously something working.
Given the number of years this has been in service in New Zealand and the like, it should be possible to find evidence of it working or not working -- through the absence or presence of hail in the general region where the device is used, along with the absence or presence of hail in the local area immediately near where the device is (with some accounting for the effect of wind blowing hail one way or the other).
Not all things that work in ways that science doesn't understand are pseudoscience, and not all commonly-accepted scientific principles are not. The "hard" part of hard science is where we constantly re-evaluate our own view of how things work.
In short, give this a chance. I can understand people being fooled in the short run, but since people have used things like this since the 80's, they must keep using 'em for some reason. Maybe they don't work and the folks just want to get their money's worth! But until you go to the source of the data and examine it critically, how can you know, regardless of how good your understanding of current science is?
This is a little troubling. Suppose it works -- I am not an environmental scientist -- but isn't weather necessary? Most "disasters" have some serious ecological import. Floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and earthquakes all serve ecological purposes. Wildfires, in particular, clean out underbrush in forests. Decades of putting out small wildfires as soon as they sparked resulted in serious buildup of underbrush (=fuel). Eventually we had huge fires that more much more difficult to contain. Should we want people to prevent hail? What ecological purpose does hail serve? I really don't know, I'm asking here.
The UN organization WMO says:
"In recent years anti-hail activities using cannons to produce loud noises have re-emerged. There is neither a scientific basis nor a credible hypothesis to support such activities."
at http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/wmo_statem_wm.html
Where I grew up these were used to protect fruit trees.
Wait a minute... they used the gas canons (very loud boom) to scare birds away. They used rockets to spray crystals into the clouds to prevent hail.
I wonder if anyone pointed a canon upward??
I wonder what happens when a rocket falls on a car..
I wonder if many birds were hit by rockets..
-- All your bass are below two Hz
I have no opinion whatsoever on if this works or not. But I am thoroughly convinced that this thing would suck to live within a few miles of.
Seriously, isn't this why we keep those environmentalist whack jobs around? To protest stuff like this? 120 decibles? Damn... I wonder if it presents a cancer risk....
I want one, what an efficient way to piss off the neighbors.
These type of devices have a long history: .introduced. .for the 1986-7 season. Certainly not a recent invention
an antique hail gun in Switzerland
(Australia)to combat hail. One such device was the 'hail gun', originating in France .
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
But perhaps a low-tech solution might be more sensible? As a victim of automobile hail damage, it would be great to have a preventative. A carport would do the job nicely.
Those car damage examples are a recurring feature in this area, although none spring to mind just recently.
Some company once marketed an inflatable car roof protector, similar to an air-mattress! It was ONLY meant to be attached to stationary vehicles.
Storms in the last month have caused dwelling window breakages through hail action.
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"