We need a war on hurricanes

[brian334]

We need a war on hurricanes,

Brian Sandler brian334@peoplepc.com

 

I recently received a patent on a machine designed to destroy hurricanes.

At my website http://bsandler.com there is a complete description of the machine.

Please contact me at the above address if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Brian Sandler

[insane_alien]

lol, so you want us to make kilometer scale aircraft with the ability to fly into the eye of a hurricane.

 

we haven't even made BUILDINGS that big yet.

 

also, the perpetual motion devices do not add credibility.

[brian334]

Its a ship not a airplane. What perpetual motion devices?

[insane_alien]

isn't that what the 'gravity machines' are. they look like schematics for perpetual motion machines.

[brian334]

The machines convert one form of energy to another.

 

It should be easy to explain why the machines will not work

[John Cuthber]

The machines convert one form of energy to another.

 

It should be easy to explain why the machines will not work

 

It is easy to explain why it won't work; it's a perpetual motion machine and they never work- it would break the law of conservation of energy.

 

 

Incidentally, Am I right in thinking that a lot of houses in the US are made from timber rather than brick?

If so might the "war on hurricanes" usefully be replaced by a "war on houses that blow down easily"?

[Klaynos]

I think the hurricane might win this one....

[brian334]

Gravity breaks the law of conservation of energy. Where does the energy in gravity come from? Does it ever run out? Answer -- Nope

Wood houses are not the only things destroyed by hurricanes. Do you remember New Orleans? Should we make steel trees and houses that float? Or maybe we should vacate Florida.

[insane_alien]

Gravity breaks the law of conservation of energy

 

no it doesn't, it is a conservative field. this has been tested and proven more times than you can shake a hurricane at.

[brian334]

Converting PE to KE, or KE to PE is conserved , but where does the original energy come from?

Is there some chemical reaction that makes gravity?

[insane_alien]

the original energy came from setting up the system.

 

chemical reactions do not cause gravity.

[YT2095]

gravity has no energy in and of itself.

[Klaynos]

gravity has no energy in and of itself.

 

There is a potential energy associated with it.

 

As IA says, energy systems that rely on gravity (like hydroelectricity) the energy comes from the settup of the system... In hydro's case the water is moved to rivers via sunlight evaporating it and then it raining....

[brian334]

Lets talk about hurricanes. How much would the pressure in a hurricanes eye need to increase to make the eyewall stop turning? What if 60 cu. Miles / hr. of air were diverted into the eye? How much would the air pressure in the eye increase? The diverted air would not spread out evenly in the eye, it would tend to stay in the same plane that it was introduced in.

 

Energy from the sun evaporates water and makes it go up, energy from the earth makes it come back down. Someday the sun will run out of energy, will the earth ever run out of energy/gravity? Nope. I will say it again gravity violates the law of conservation of energy.

[YT2095]

will the earth ever run out of energy/gravity?

 

Yes.

[Klaynos]

It's gravity will not change unless it's mass changes significantly... you need to be more specific with your questions. I have a rock on a pully I let the rock go and the pully creates some electricty via a turbine... now where did the energy come from? Gravity, yes, but I had to use a crane to lift the rock in the first place, so the energy came from the crane, and as there were losses at ALL the stages I actually got out less energy than the crane put in.

[brian334]

When the tanks with weights in them expand they weigh less than the liquid they displace. And go up.

[insane_alien]

okay dokey. just went looking for some numbers (used wikipedia as a guide, the numbers look as if they are on the right sort of scale.

 

The average hurricane has a power output of roughly 70 times global energy usage(by humanity). which is roughly a petawatt.

 

in order to significantly disrupt this through active means(like your boat idea is) your going to have to have easy access to a significant fraction of a PW and for an extended period of time, not like the petawatt laser we have developed which is an incredibly tiny pulse.

 

so, being incredibly optimistic and saying we only need a tenth of that power thats 7 times the energy production of the planet. and not only do we have to be capable of generating that much power, but it needs to be able to get to the hurricane. and it needs to become available quick enough so it can actually be used.

 

My first thoughts on this are, can be done, but it will be incredibly difficult. my second thought is EXPENSIVE.

 

price of electricity here is roughly 10p per kWh. lets say we need our hurricane destroyer to run for one single hour to effectively destroy a hurricane. so we need 1PWh of electricity or 1 000 000 000 000 kWh 1 trillion kWh's. multiplied by £0.10 per kWh we get £100 000 000 000.

 

so, 100 BILLION dollars for ONE use. and thats just the energy cost. it does not include construction of the generation infrastucture which would probably be over a trillion or the machine itself which might be another 100billion or even the cost of moving the machine/power generation lets call that50 billion.

 

so, a conservative estimate is £2.25trillion do deal with the first hurricane and £150billion for the rest not counting maintenance man power, redundancy or the machinery to move the damn thing.

 

its cheaper just to rebuild the city every time we have a hurricane. even on an incredibly conservative ideal case scenario.

[brian334]

The machine uses the hurricanes own forces to kill it. There is no way to out muscle a hurricane, but it might be possible to out smart one.

[insane_alien]

you still need a significant fraction of the hurricanes power to do so. if i done the analyses for a pure out muscling then i would have done the power requirements for over a petawatt of energy consumption.

 

your still looking at a multitrillion pound operation

 

according to the world bank there is roughly $40trillion of money in the world. so with current exchange rates, 1.75881 $/£, there is £22.74 trillion in the world. using my conservative estimate that means you want to sink 9.89% of the worlds money supply into one machine.

 

we simply can't afford it.

 

a better option would be to look at removing the driving force behind hurricanes. they are heat engines, remove the heat, remove the hurricane.

Edited September 11, 2008 by insane_alien

[brian334]

Elephants are big and powerful but if you put a tiny hole in ones heart it will die.

Hurricanes have a weak spot. The central low pressure is the weak spot of a hurricane.

 

When the U.S. government needs money it prints it.

The Hurricanes Huggers are dead set against controlling hurricanes.

Edited September 11, 2008 by brian334
multiple post merged

[insane_alien]

printing money just decreases the value of said money. the more money you print, the more money it will take to build the machine.

[Bignose]

The Hurricanes Huggers

 

who?

[insane_alien]

Elephants are big and powerful but if you put a tiny hole in ones heart it will die.

 

something i didn't respond to last night, but this is a woefully bad analogy. hurricanes and elephants really cannot be compared in this way, they are two totally different types of system. elephants involve lots of solid boundaries, hurricanes do not. the vortex is very flexible indeed and diverting the eyewall is only going to result in a deformed eye.

[Bignose]

something i didn't respond to last night, but this is a woefully bad analogy. hurricanes and elephants really cannot be compared in this way, they are two totally different types of system. elephants involve lots of solid boundaries, hurricanes do not. the vortex is very flexible indeed and diverting the eyewall is only going to result in a deformed eye.

 

Oh, but there's where you're wrong. They have tons of similarities. They are both grey. They are both wet. They both spin. They both get stronger in warm water. They both have tails. They both can be trained to allow people to ride them and perform in circuses. And lastly they are both noisy.

 

[ok /end extreme silliness]

 

i_a is very right, comparing a hurricane to a elephant is exceptionally poor. There are very, very few true similarities.

 

The motivation is noble, but the science behind your idea isn't sound. It just isn't going to work as easily as you think it will. If you think it will work, at least show some actual evidence. A computational fluid dynamics simulation of a hurricane being disrupted by your idea is probably a very good start.