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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..
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
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.
If ever a story deserved that tag, this is it.
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.
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.
Different levels of the atmosphere are at different temperatures,pressures and humidity which all have different contrail forming tendancies. These layers can sometimes be very sharply defined so as a plane rising up through a layer where a contrail is easily formed hits a layer where the ability to form a visible contrail is sharply diminished so the (visible) contrail abruptly cuts off.
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?
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
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.
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.
How much energy do you think it would take to have any sort of meaningful effect on a hurricane we're actually worried about?
What happened to chaos theory? Small changes leading to major effects? Personally I think the butterfly flapping it's wings is the idea taken to a ludicrous extreme, but it must kick in at some level. I imagine as well that it's easier to disrupt a storm's organization than to enhance it.
I'm more concerned about the possible corruption of this technology... Real Genius^10.
Yes, because we should all base our science policy ideas on Val Kilmer comedies. Any lines you want to quote from Top Secret or Top Gun to further support your argument?
What? Top Gun wasn't a comedy? Really?! Huh.
what's to stop it from being used to vaporize human targets or entire CITIES from space.
Reality and the laws of physics?
Seriously, what's with all the BS scare tactic posts? When did Slashdot become home of the hyperventilating Luddites?
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.
Our engines put out particulate matter as a byproduct of combustion (same as your car). If we fly through an area with high enough relative humidity, then water will condense on the particles and form "contrails". If you look at a temperature and dewpoint sounding on a Skew-T/Log-P chart, you can see that both vary quite a bit with altitude and form distinct layers (in reference to moisture content and stability). Some combinations are good for forming countrails, some are not. Remember, a contrail is just a specific kind of cloud, and so the reasoning is the same as "why does a cloud form here, but not also here?".
But take my word with a grain of salt, since I am both an airline pilot and study meteorology.
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..
Wouldn't it be easier to just find that god-damed butterfly that causes all those hurricanes?
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.
Yes! Let's shoot microwaves at a giant chunk of nickel-iron that's hurtling towards us! That way it'll be a giant ball of molten nickel-iron** when it arrives!!
** I have no clue if microwaves would/could even heat up a nickel-iron (assuming of course an orders of magnitude larger "death-ray" then they're planning), but I know sure as shit they're not going to divert it to any measurable degree.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
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