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Energy-Beaming Space Collector To Also Alter Weather?
Recently we covered California utility company PG&E's ambitious deal with upstart Solaren to beam energy to earth from a space-based solar collector. What we didn't know is Solaren's patent also covers the alteration of weather elements with that very same system. "By heating up the upper and middle levels of an infant hurricane, they say they could disrupt the flows of air that power the enormous storms. Air warmed by tropical waters flows up through a hurricane and is vented through the eye into the upper atmosphere. Theoretically, you could heat up the top of the storm and lower the pressure differential between layers, resulting in a weaker storm. "
We might be giving a company the power to change our weather? Not sure how I feel about this..
The end is near.
That's gonna need to be an *awfully* big collector to harvest enough energy to make the slightest difference to a hurricane...
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Really, how do you insure this endeavor? A private company even attempting such a thing on the smallest of storms becomes incredibly liable.
But it goes further than that. If you can heat a store how can you assure people that it is safe to start streaming power to earth?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
with this technology you have a sound basis for a middling james bond movie cum car commercial involving halle berry, icelandic henchman, and rogue north korean generals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Another_Day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, because co-operatively we are doing a great job of maintaining and looking after the current weather patterns.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
Someday we're going to actually have to learn how to manipulate the weather on demand. It's right in the patent HAARP is based on, fer chrissake (hence the tag of course.) Honestly I think it's something we can get a handle on, with the understanding that inputs always have outputs. What we really need is a way to take heat energy out of the atmosphere, because we already have easy ways to put it in. Then again, if you bought into the chemtrail thing you could assume that was their way of producing localized cooling :)
Speaking of chemtrails, what's the explanation for the "contrails" cutting off as the plane continues to climb? Anyone? It's not covered in the FAA's brochure on contrail formation that they brought out to try to kill the chemtrail conspiracy theory.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If ever a story deserved that tag, this is it.
Download: every time a pacific storm is brewing, they have to shut of power to California to deal with the storm...
Upside: the rolling brownouts in California over the last few years where not accidents, they where training!
Even if the technology doesn't work out patenting the basic idea costs them comparatively little. Given how much money they are investing in this and the possible massive benefits filing the patent seems like the right move even if it is unlikely to work.
Didn't Cobra already do this in like 1985?
I'm guessing it would be disastrous for an airplane to fly in the "beam", no?
Storm Killer by Benjamin Blue
Why beam power all the way from orbit? Wouldn't an army of sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads be more effective? :p
It's a chemical laser but in solid, not gaseous, form. Put simply, in deference to you, Kent, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite. As soon as we apply a field, we couple to a state, it is radiatively coupled to the ground state. I figure we can extract at least ten to the twenty-first photons per cubic centimeter which will give one kilojoule per cubic centimeter at 600 nanometers, or, one megajoule per liter.
But what would you use that for?
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
How can they patent this? I believe Lex Luthor beat them to the punch. (As have others, I am sure.)
Now, we'd better start hoarding coffee beans...
I recently read an article on "geoengineering"; apparently it's gaining traction and was discussed in one of Obama's cabinet meetings as global warming emergency brake. It appears that this is real: we really could mess with our atm. cheaply and quickly. What I find most interesting about the whole concept, besides whatcouldpossiblygowrong, is what people like Pete Geddes of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) say against it:
Let's say we came up with a way to scrub carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that works and is cheap. That would mean we could go on emitting carbon. The environmentalists' reaction, I think, would be, 'No, that's unacceptable, because what we really have to be doing is reducing our fossil fuels and use of energy.' That's just ridiculous. People would lose all sorts of faith in environmentalism.
The government can't save you.
How much energy do you think it would take to have any sort of meaningful effect on a hurricane we're actually worried about? I mean, how much energy would it take to reduce Katrina to Kat? I'm more concerned about the possible corruption of this technology... Real Genius^10. If this thing can really reduce the power level of a hurricane, what's to stop it from being used to vaporize human targets or entire CITIES from space. Missle defense system? Check. Giant energy beam defense system? I don't think we're there yet...
This would also result in all your electronics to stop working indefinitely should you find yourself in the middle of the beam. Goldeye anyone?
I'm guessing it would be disastrous for an airplane to fly in the "beam", no?
Ah, since apparently a commercial airliner can be brought down with an iPod Click Wheel being used during takeoff or landing, I'd give your query a resounding yes...
Apparently, the power plant would be completed in 2020, have an expected output of 1600 megawatts, last for 50 years, and cost only $28 Million.
Personally, I think that while our Coal Plants are dirty, they should last well up until 2050, when Fusion Power is expected to showcase.
No, no, no, no, no. Hurricanes are driven by the warm air released from condensation in their centers. This causes low pressure at that location, leading to swirling motions and inflow at low altitude.
Adding more heat at the center of the hurricane will make the hurricane *STRONGER*. It doesn't matter what altitude you add the heat.
Keep your orbital death ray away from my weather until you've taken a basic meteorology course, morons.
By heating up the upper and middle levels of an infant hurricane, they say they could disrupt the flows of air that power the enormous storms.
So what happens if you heat the lower layers? Sorry, just my evil genius side coming out.
If Will Wright doesn't get credit for this one, I don't know what to believe anymore.
I don't want to be within 200 miles of their aim point. Being anywhere near their beam is like being in a huge microwave oven. It will surely cook your insides.
If their beam drifts due to excessive pointing error, watch out. Somebody is going to get baked. Probably a whole town.
How may miles radius do they have to empty of people to even get an earth reception station built for the power transmission? How do they clear the ocean target area of shipping if they were to try this on a storm?
These guys are nuts!
So this whole beam power from space thing will also add to the Global Warming problem instead of being one of the possible fixes!
What could possibly go wrong?
I suppose this secondary patent was found next to the company's patent for an orbital death beam, not that they're all related in any way...
Electric Light Orchestra and Alan Parsons Project, with some OMD (Orchestral Manoevers in the Dark)....LOL!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Isn't Cali in the midst of a friggin' drought? Instead of stopping Hurricanes (traditionally an Atlantic Ocean problem) why don't they try and get some rain in California and leave us on the East Coast to our Hurricanes!
We have been for as long as we've existed. It's called leaving it the fuck alone. I like nature's varying weather just fine. The last thing we need is to start manufacturing that too.
If you don't like hurricanes, then you shouldn't build a fucking city right in the middle of an area that is known to have them.
It gives off pilot killer rays.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
No, The beams are microwave beams with a little more power density than the midday sun. If you walked into them you would not likely know they were there for a while.
They are not the water heating microwaves either, they are the tuned so as not to interact with water or atmosphere kind. You might induce a current in an aluminum shell airplane, but I would guess static forces with air flow might build up even more charge.
So now we can finally protect our Tiberium Fields?
AnimePapers.org: Anime Wallpapers Handled With Care
If any James Bond movie is to be referenced here, than it is either Die Anther Day or Diamonds Are Forever.
A solar-powered microwave-beaming satellite is a device for continuous use.
GoldenEye is a single-use grenade. A very large, nuclear and EMP one though.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm not sure what worries more, the fact that its possible that we might have the technology to do this in the next decade or that we would consider using it..
Wow, that's the most awesome troll I've ever seen. I'm saving it so I can replace Global Warming with other things to produce my own awesome trolls. Bastile of Lies, of course, will be unaltered.
For example:
Maybe the Vegetarian idiots could use it to initiate a Cow Melt-off to concoct more evidence to support their Vegetarian Lies.
Hey Veg Tool, if a space based solar platform directing the Suns energy into the cows can change weather and ultimately the climate, then guess what / Tool...
That giant Hamburger Helper known as the SUN which is currently on a friendly standing with us is more relevant than ever and the more you ignore or deny, the more you get burned.
Too bad Veg Tools, including so called "science" and especially the politcal anus of this new religion, Vegetarianism, should get a fucking clue, shut the fuck up until you have definitive proof and especially this, take your tax schemes and shove them!
Do this and we may not storm your Bastile of Lies, then again, it may be needed to purge you fools from any position of power.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Don't tell them that. It'll be much more fun that way.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
a kid burn ants with a magnifiying glass? Better get some SPF-200000 bitches.
How about focusing the giant death beam outwards towards incoming asteroids. I think we as humans can deal with hurricanes pretty well already.
any movie starring denise richards as a nuclear physicist has to be scraping the bottom of the barrel
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can buy insurance for anything for the right price. I'll sell insurance for your highly questionable global weather changing machine.
Let's start the premiums at 500 a month. As in trillions of dollars.
Stopped them...and I am not sure they patented it.
Ya know... if we can fly planes into hurricanes, and we can beam power-producing microwaves from space to earth... why couldn't we figure out a way to tap and store the energy of a hurricane?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
We should be trying to create hurricanes, not stop them. Then put... Wind turbines in the way to harvest the energy.
Deleted
for "chance of furious beam of death raining down from the heavens"
i know i know, just wishful thinking of cool stuff this thing should be capable of. BTW, has anyone made reasonable calculations to determine how much energy we would have to shoot into a storm system to have ANY affect? it feels still firmly in the realm of fantasy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Anyone remember microwave plants in simcity 2000?
What happens when the beam misses?
For that matter, what are we going to do about giant spherical floating iron claw aliens?
And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.
How could they patent such a idea? Does the patent office lay claim to things in Orbit? If so could you, as a patent holder, sue China as their spy satellites pass over your patent holding country?
The patent is fully of if's could's & theoretically. The patent should be for something the YOU, as the patent holder, can do and could do and would use a means to hold the world hostage to your mad empire desires!
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
It seems that Solaren's website has been slashdotted.
http://solarenspace.com/
This Web site has exceeded its allotted bandwidth and has been temporarily suspended. To get this site back online, either wait until the used bandwidth for ...
How are you going to get a space based solar panel array up, if you cant even keep your website up?
So, this forces me to ask the question, if the energy will not heat up water (and presumably water vapor) how is it going to do the whole heat up the top of the hurricane (or pre-hurricane storm) to diminish/ prevent the hurricane? Something is not adding up.
Feel free, its "Open Source" dissent
Its funny you mention cows, they and their flatulence were one of the earliest volleys in this ridiculous GW "Bastile of Lies"
Man that has a ring to it
Wouldn't it be easier to just find that god-damed butterfly that causes all those hurricanes?
PG&E's ambitious deal with upstart Solaren to...
Did nobody else lol at this as hard as me? *UPSTART* ... dontcha mean start-up ? FYI:
upstart - Noun : an arrogant or presumptuous person
Slashdot - I went there to fix their grammar that they're so bad at.
Heating anywhere within a storm, even in the upper levels would be adding energy to the system. I don't see how heating the higher cooling levels of rising air would do anything but accelerate the storm. This is a weapon?
More realistically a sunshade cooling the ocean surface in the path of the storm would weaken it.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I think they should at least think of calling the satellite a "Death Star" and it can be contracted out to corporate entities to help... disinfect certain areas of their domain with high power beams of energy.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
I think the concept had been around for quite a while by then; I tend to attribute it to the Project-Orion-era speculations about what you could do with nuclear bombs (spacecraft, digging canals, the whole Atoms for Peace shtick), but even if that wasn't the origin, the concept had been hanging around science fiction for a while by the late 70s.
A large explosion probably could stop a tornado, but hurricanes are much much bigger, and you'd need to do something to actually dissipate the heat energy that's driving the hurricane to stop it, as opposed to merely disrupting airflow which might be enough to make a tornado into some other shape of windstorm.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Too bad its Bastille you tool: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastille
Destro: "No force on Earth is a match for...nature...gone...mad! Muhahahahahahhaha!"
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If this energy beam that is intended to deliver solar energy from orbit to the ground actually heats up the air that much (that it can alter a storm), how will they prevent the beam from unnecessarily heating up the atmosphere when there's no storm and they only want energy from it??
hmmmmm, do they know what they're doing ??
That's exactly what I've been wondering about this technology. If the ground-based power density is less than that of the Sun, how is this more efficient than just having solar collectors on the ground? If the answer is, ah, because it's all in a narrow frequency range that's easily convertible, then you're actually at much higher than the power density of the Sun in the frequency range and you need to discuss what absorbs well at the frequency. I.e., the gentle 25% of the midday sun number is somewhat misleading. We already know that that frequency is not that of water, because you would have to be an idiot to try to microwave all of the water in the atmosphere. Presumably it's in a relatively transparent microwave window in the atmosphere.
This application would use almost certainly use a different frequency then power transfer to the ground.
It is hacker safe? Casey Ryback may have kick some ass if not.
PG&E's ambitious deal with upstart Solaren to... ... dontcha mean start-up ? FYI:
Did nobody else lol at this as hard as me? *UPSTART*
upstart - Noun : an arrogant or presumptuous person
Your definition is correct - and the summary is strictly correct. Solaren, looking to control hurricanes with directed energy beams, is an upstart.
BTW - the word is grammar - am I the only spelling Nazi here?
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Picture the replies to the EIR that claims this is "safe" when the patent discusses weather alteration.
This is dead, at least in California, before they even start the EIR.
Plus, I have no idea how a actuary would begin to quantify the liability for something like the satellite aiming point being relocated due to collision, software/hardware failure (collusion?), ...
Didn't all those James Bond movies teach us anything?!?!?!
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
Say they damp what would have been a Category 5 storm aimed at New Orleans. They succeed at damping it down to a Category 3, but it slams into Galveston instead because it no longer has the energy to make the northward turn. Who is liable for the damage done to Galveston and Houston?
Barring new laws holding them harmless from such scenarios, I don't think this will get off the ground for this very reason. No matter where they divert a storm, someone gains and someone loses (though not in a zero-sum manner).
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Popular Science talked about this stuff in the mid 1960's.
The plan was to collect energy(the how part was vague) and
convert it to microwaves to beam it back to earth.
I do not want microwaves playing over the landscape. No matter
how well intentioned. Just beam focused sunlight to the Salton
Sea and generate steam, at least you could see the beam.
wasn't there a ground based unit called HARRP
We might be giving a company the power to change our weather? Not sure how I feel about this..
It would be really expensive for them to do it. They'd have to put a LOT of power into a beam that they could otherwise sell. Like enough to heat up a bunch of clouds - or power several cities for hours.
(They'd also have to retune the beam from a band that passes through water - and birds, cows, people, etc. to one that is strongly absorbed. Or they'd have to have built TWO sets of transmitters - with one used only for weather modification.)
So you know they're not going to do it just for fun, altruism, or world domination. Somebody has to pay the bill. And their infrastructure is gigantic and spindly, hanging there in the sky ready to be blasted into fragments by any government that thinks they're misbehaving.
Also: "We might be giving ...?" Is that the same sort of doublespeak as a tax cut being a government subsidy? If they end up doing this it won't be a matter of some "We" "giving" them anything. They'll have to build it, at great expense in capital, time, materials, and rare peoples' careers spent working on it rather than something else useful, in the hope that somebody will pay them enough to use it to recover the cost and make a profit on it.
For right now, of course, it's just a defensive patent. If they're going to be building a space solar power system that COULD be retweaked to kill hurricanes, they're bloody well going to make sure nobody ELSE patents doing that and locks them out of their own invention.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Or at the very least, you shouldn't live there.
1178161 is prime...
Storms need to happen whether we want them to or not. Fiddling with the weather of the planet won't benefit anyone, even if it saves a life or two in the short-run.... -Oz
Set your microwave oven for full power, set the timer for an hour. Turn it on and wait until the hour's up or the oven burns out. Open it and feel how hot the air isn't. The microwave density inside it is orders of magnitude greater than one could expect being beamed down from orbit.
A patent doesn't require evidence to support the claims. Patents get awarded for all sorts of things that end up not working.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Someday we are going to need this technology, so let's keep the criticisms constructive.
... Rock you like a hurricane!
Is microwave power beaming actually more efficient than simply orbiting a mirror and putting the collectors on the ground?
The energy density of the microwave beam in these schemes is typically around 250-300W/m2 which is less than solar insolation (1kW/m2 at the equator). The microwave receiver might be more efficient than a similarly sized solar array on the ground, but for a given area of "collector" in orbit a mirror would be lighter, and therefore cheaper, and would divert a higher percentage of the incoming energy earthwards.
Just ask yourself if you'd be comfortable with the company controlling these orbital beamers being Chinese.
If you aren't, then it's a given that other countries will feel the same about US companies being in this position. And perhaps it good to bear in mind that the Chinese will probably have the money, the technology (or the spy-craft, which amounts to the same thing), and the will to replicate any such stuff within 10 years or so.
This sort of technology has such a (potential) impact on Earth itself that there are many legitimate stakeholders besides those of the US. As I see it, if we go about it with a "finders keepers" and "whoever has control has the right" mentality, that will come back to haunt us within 20 years.
Therefore I think it's probably a good idea to turn to the UN and legislate and regulate this sort of thing (i.e. orbital satellites beaming back industrial amounts of energy back to earth and trying to squelch hurricanes) before it happens. And for preference to have some sort of mechanism that makes certain that one country can't turn its deserts into a bread basket or its permafrost into a garden by e.g. disrupting the weather elsewhere. And to prepare some kind of enforcement (anything from communication cutouts to override codes to lasers to EMPs or missiles).
If we're quick about it, we can probably shape this regulation to suit us and any other reasonable party.
I guess my father's old comic books weren't so far fetched, with the generic evil super-villain surrounded by evil minions in some super-duper-secret lair trying to control the weather in some overly grandiose "destroy the world" plan.
BUT, instead of the stereotypical grotesque super-villain, we have a corporate CEO hiding behind his army of evil hairy Patent Lawyer minions. .....not that they don't exist already, but they now have the 'Weather Control' element.
Now, we have to REALLY put into Social Security, as our aging baby boomers have a wealth of knowledge gleaned from 1950's-era comics. THEY ARE OUR ONLY HOPE!!1!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
As if there are not enough discussions about man-made global warming and if we actually caused it, let's go ahead and remove any doubts and start tweaking the weather. Ne need for arguments any more!
How about heating the air/water in front of the hurricane? Who says this tech has to be made for good intentions?
Ok I've been watching '24' too much.
The Atmospheric Vortex Engine concept http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml is one way to harvest the heat energy in a large area of ocean surface.
"Mechanical energy is produced when water descends or when warm air rises. The Vortex Engine captures the energy produced when warm air rises by creating an air vortex which acts as a virtual vertical conduit.
The vortex is produced by admitting warm or humid air tangentially into a circular arena. Tangential entries cause the warm moist air to spin as it rises forming an ``anchored vortex''. The vortex engine has the same basis as the proven solar chimney except the physical tube of the solar chimney is replaced with centrifugal force in the vortex."
Basically, these guys propose to create anchored tornadoes and to extract some of the energy using wind turbines around the base.
I'd be in favor of funding more research in this and building a prototype in the gulf of Mexico.
Chris
Fuck You You Fucking Tools Tool-
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Bastile
No go wipe the shit of your mouth
a article gets posted that really shows how ignorant posters on /. just spout off mindless crap. This is such a story.
Idiots.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
(making quote marks in the air with fingers) ...the "Alan Parsons Project".
(putting pinky to corner of mouth)
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll