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Artificial Tornadoes
An anonymous reader writes "This inventor is working on a method of creating artificial tornadoes to generate electricity which he calls the "Atmospheric Vortex Engine". He is claiming that it is possible to create a man-made tornado and use wind turbines to capture the energy from the tornado. On the website there is some video footage of some experimental tornadoes that were generated in a prototype vortex tower in Utah. There seem to be several recent media references to his work including The
Economist and The Guardian.
Sounds like an interesting idea for a renewable energy source, but what happens if one of these tornadoes gets away?"
If they could mount this thing on a trailer and deploy it rapidly to trouble spots around the globe, they could really blow away mischief makers. Imagine for example unleashing a few mini-tornatos on a terrorist training camp or on advancing enemy soldiers.
The U.S. Army could also position them offshore of an annoying country like Venezuela, issue an ultimatum that their leader submit to fair elections, and then just release hundreds of these things onto their coastline. The havoc wreaked will be tremendously out of proportion to the cost of the construction and deployment, and at no danger to our personnel.
It could also be used to clean up an area after a dust storm; the vortex would literally whisk away the particles.
There are probably a lot of other uses but right now I'm only thinking of military ones.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
This would be useful for using against an enemy, even though it is against a few treaties that we have signed.
But we have seen the ABM treaty and no-space weapons treaty go into abeyance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.