Energy-Beaming Space Collector To Also Alter Weather? 274
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. "
So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So..[.] (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:So.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No no, this is private enterprise. It will be a hurricane prevention surcharge on the microwave power bill.
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Perhaps like a butterfly flapping its wings?
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hurricanes release a lot of energy. If that energy isn't released I would hate to see what happens.
It would be REALLY EXPENSIVE for them. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 o
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If you've every read Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy, it's the same scenario.
Except Clancy jumped the shark somewhere around the time that Jack Ryan ceased being the all-American hero and started spouting Clancy's own political beliefs. Sorry, this is totally offtopic and I expect to be modded as such but it needed to be said. Sad thing is that he used to write some REALLY cool novels.
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If you've every read Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy, it's the same scenario.
Except Clancy was always terrible.
Fixed that for you.
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Well there are two worst-case scenarios. The fake one:
GE:We will create hurricanes unless "insert evil demands here"
US:We don't negotiate with terrorists
GE:*assassinated*
US_Assassin:pwnt
Or the real one:
US:oh n03s! +34 4urr1c4n3
GE:*milks US for insane amount*
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But would they do it with a Sean Connery accent?
Lots o' power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lots o' power (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one concerned what might happen to other weather systems if we suddenly start damping hurricanes? the energy to form a hurricane comes from somewhere, if we're adding more to kill a hurricane, where is this new net total going to express itself?
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I'm sure they've done experimenting with all of this. Nothing will happen. Don't worry about the GPS positioning in your cell phone. No weapon could reach you as you walk down the street.
Seriously folks-- does the sound of someone beaming down terajoules from the sky make you just a little bit nervous? Imagine a solar sun spot causing a sudden atmospheric defraction that sends the beam to say, Tucson by mistake?
I think this needs a lot of examination before it goes into pilot, let alone production.
Re:Lots o' power (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously folks-- does the sound of someone beaming down terajoules from the sky make you just a little bit nervous?
Yeah, but we'll only need the solar power plant until 2050 when Fusion becomes available ;)
Re:Lots o' power (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the same as a 'no burn' policy put in place in most forests a century ago. Eventually the dry stuff builds up to the point where when it does catch fire, you're fucked.
Imagine a hurricane formed with the energy from 5-10 damped out storms.
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Probably the same as a 'no burn' policy put in place in most forests a century ago. Eventually the dry stuff builds up to the point where when it does catch fire, you're fucked.
Imagine a hurricane formed with the energy from 5-10 damped out storms.
Oh, you are underestimating things. Imagine it "working" for 5-10 years or decades and then all the sudden new hurricanes are 50-100 times more powerful for a few years.
Re:Lots o' power (Score:5, Funny)
Probably the same as a 'no burn' policy put in place in most forests a century ago. Eventually the dry stuff builds up to the point where when it does catch fire, you're fucked.
Imagine a hurricane formed with the energy from 5-10 damped out storms.
Oh, you are underestimating things. Imagine it "working" for 5-10 years or decades and then all the sudden new hurricanes are 50-100 times more powerful for a few years.
There's nothing to worry about. We've been controlling storms for 50 years now. The sky is still blue, the clouds still white, the ocean still sparkling, and although we did have a few scares last year (some big, red ones you wouldn't believe!), nothing has come through that our energy beams haven't been able to divert!
Glax Northog
Solar Satellites of Jupiter, Inc.
Posted 4:29 PM, September 8th 780000000 BC
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Given the temperature of the ocean surface at the areas where these hurricanes form, either the water evaporates and the air becomes humid, or the lower layers of oceans would start to heat up. Having this warm humid air rise and then cool off seems to be a built-in cooling system of the earth's climate. If the warm air didn't rise and end up forming a rotating system, would the hurricanes just become warm fronts/cold fronts instead?
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Imagine a hurricane formed with the energy from 5-10 damped out storms.
Blows my mind...
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What could possibly go wrong?
Anything done for good = good outcome.
I'm going shopping for a older home with a fallout bunker under it, can I get wifi down there?
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can I get wifi down there?
You don't want shielded cables?
Re:Lots o' power (Score:5, Informative)
Reality doesn't work like that. Science is not some sort of alchemy where any "good" that you do has to be balanced with "bad" done elsewhere. Sure, entropy always increases, but that doesn't mean that lessening the impact of a natural disaster means you're upsetting some karmic balance. Every day without a hurricane does not increase the intensity of the next hurricane. Hurricanes are only one way that heat can be transported from the ocean's surface to elsewhere.
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the energy to form a hurricane comes from somewhere, if we're adding more to kill a hurricane, where is this new net total going to express itself?
Build more windmills.
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2. You are capturing solar power (which is responsible for creating the hurricane in the first place.)
3. There is that whole butterfly effect thing...
4. What are the unintended consequences?
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I always wondered if someone set off a large explosive in the eye or center of a hurricane what would happen? Would it be enough to break up the storm? Would it do nothing? We would most likely still get the rain but no hurricane force winds. Maybe less of a storm surge as well.
Nothing nuclear conventional explosives only. Anyone know of a simulator where this could be tested? Writing one from scratch might take a while.
Re:Lots o' power (Score:5, Insightful)
The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x10^13 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 10^13 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.
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I think that there is a lot more power in there. The water content, assuming a 250x250km area that can be soaked in 10cm of water would be, at least, 250 exaJoule (250*10^18, temperature drop from +27 sea water to +17 degrees C rain). The scale of a storm is even in excess of these dimensions. So, conversion of the power at a 10^12 rate to mechanical energy is peanuts compared to the real energy content.
If you manage to generate power in space at the 10^15 scale, then you might do a very local change of pat
So what you're saying is. (Score:2)
We should be trying to create hurricanes, not stop them. Then put... Wind turbines in the way to harvest the energy.
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Wow, so it's actually a possibility then. I hadn't realized we were that close. Or the human energy use thing: at only 5x the power usage of the entire human race, that means that the total yearly energy is actually quite a bit less than the total human energy usage.
"we" definitely know how to build 10 MT bombs in volume. The only question is how many you'd need to effect a positive outcome for a given storm.
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Well, it was first speculated upon in a French science fiction comic book [wikipedia.org] in the late 70s. Roger Leloup didn't stop at your limitations either.
First? Not likely (Score:2)
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 dri
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4. What are the unintended consequences?
For starters, hurricanes play a role in climate regulation, and that role is the transport of heat away from equatorial regions and into the extratropical zone. It is theorized that if humans break that mechanism by preventing hurricane formation, we will end up with fewer storms, but those that do form will be incredibly devastating as they feed off the "surplus" latent oceanic heat.
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Re:Lots o' power (Score:4, Informative)
Nah. I spoke with a space/nuclear engineer on this once. He had worked it out in grad school using a Brayton cycle engine. (i.e. closed loop gas turbine) The engine itself is extremely power dense and would have more mass for cooling than heating. (Think large fins on the dark side, running fluids through to exhaust heat as black body radiation.)
The trick to collecting large amounts of sunlight would be massive mylar sails. The sails would be deployed as large mirrors. These mirrors would reflect the solar energy toward the power-producing engine. This way you could get a massive footprint in space while still having a relatively light launch package.
His idea was better than mine; which was to construct a massive Stirling engine near the sun to absorb 3GW of power at near-failure temperatures. :-P
Can you buy insurance for that? (Score:2)
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?
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Not if they spend much less money than the liability they would avoid to simply lobby Congress to craft laws categorically immunizing them from liability.
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I'll sell it (Score:2)
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.
at the very least (Score:3)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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We could also detonate nuclear bombs in the center of the Earth. Brilliant!
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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
A.K.A. one of the worst Bond movies ever. The premise was insane, the CGI was absolutely awful and the locations were ridiculous. It made me miss the old Bond movies. Thank God Casino Royale brought us back to something resembling reality.
i dunno know man (Score:2)
any movie starring denise richards as a nuclear physicist has to be scraping the bottom of the barrel
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A.K.A. one of the worst Bond movies ever. The premise was insane,
Worse than Octopussy? As for the premise it was just diamonds are forever w/ N. Korea instead of Spectre.
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whatcouldpossiblygowrong (Score:5, Insightful)
If ever a story deserved that tag, this is it.
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Downside... and Upside... (Score:2)
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!
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Not to rain on the parade, but the brownouts were thin energy market abuses by Enron.
This patent shouldn't be surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Prior art (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't Cobra already do this in like 1985?
Airplanes? (Score:4, Insightful)
iMayday! iMayday! We're going down! (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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It gives off pilot killer rays. [penny-arcade.com]
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Yeah, it would be much better if they just flew into the hurricane.
Re:Airplanes? (Score:4, Informative)
This is from a NASA study of the safety of space-based solar power. I believe the original studies were done in the '70s because I recall almost identical wording from a glossy NASA coffee-table book on space colonies I picked up at the Smithsonian in 1978.
That's not "death ray" levels. Planes are probably OK, but it could be a problem for birds.
Another point that occurs to me: solar insolation at the equator is around 1kW/m2. The tests mentioned above are 25% of that level. I suspect that the birds were becoming uncomfortably warm.
Re:Airplanes? No (Score:2)
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.
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Real genius at work. (Score:4, Funny)
But what would you use that for?
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Making enormous swiss cheese?
Geoengineering (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Think of all the funding they would lose when it turns out that it will only cost a million or so dollars a year for the right to pick a global mean temperature anc achieve it. Not to mention the fact that we would likely pick one that is higher than it is today...
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Think of all the funding they would lose when it turns out that it will only cost a million or so dollars a year for the right to pick a global mean temperature and achieve it.
Fixing atmospheric carbon takes about as much energy as was generated when it was first dumped into the atmosphere in the first place. So if you can generate all the fixed carbon that the world currently uses for power generation at a cost of USD1e6 pa then you my friend have a serious business plan and the goons from Exxon will be taking you out any day now.
(In fact, this is what some of the algae biodiesel plans could be used for, but I doubt their operating costs are anything like that low.)
Technical Specifications Document (Score:3, Funny)
Personally, I think that while our Coal Plants are dirty, they should last well up until 2050, when Fusion Power is expected to showcase.
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If we don't fund something at the level needed we should not really be surprised about delays.
And whats 50 years in the face of climate change time frames. I would say its a good investment, and this is for less than the price of the latest traditional nuclear plant in China discussed here.
Please consult a meteorologist before patenting (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Exactly. You need cold, so the only real solution is to detonate a nuclear device deep under the ocean in front of the hurricane so that the upwelling of cold water saps the storm of its strength. Find a flaw in that plan! I dare you!!!!
I can out mad scientist ANYONE! Muh ha ha ha! :-)
Shhh... (Score:2)
Don't tell them that. It'll be much more fun that way.
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I want to be far away from their aim point (Score:2)
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
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AP news release Feb 23 2023....
Midwest town evaporates in 12 seconds.
During a routine systems check the orbital power station lost attitude control for 27 seconds and drifted off it's station point by 0.1 degrees, the nearby town was vaporized near instantly.
when confronted the company executives said, "it's no big loss, only level 4 personnel lived there, and the town was a dump anyways. This event will actually help the economy by ending the Depression. It just opened up 8500 jobs alone and caused the n
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uhm yea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever see (Score:2)
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Simcity (Score:2)
What happens when the beam misses?
For that matter, what are we going to do about giant spherical floating iron claw aliens?
patent??? (Score:2)
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!
Butterfly.... (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't it be easier to just find that god-damed butterfly that causes all those hurricanes?
The hurricane machine. (Score:2)
More realistically a sunshade cooling the ocean surface in the path of the storm would weaken it.
Death Star (Score:2)
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.
The Weather Dominator! (Score:2)
Liability. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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They don't have to try too hard to discredit those guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c6HsiixFS8 [youtube.com]
Good lord.
Re:Whoop de doo (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Whoop de doo (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Required energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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(Oblig) You must be new here.
Clearly not... (Score:2)
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.
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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
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Vortex Blaster by E. E. Doc Smith?