6 ms·
Just to clarify. The source of the energy of this earth quake was not man-made. It was pre-existing gravitational potential energy. Similarly, a low-energy scr
by duchenne 8y ago
Just to clarify. The source of the energy of this earth quake was not man-made. It was pre-existing gravitational potential energy.
Similarly, a low-energy scream in the montain can trigger a high-energy avalanche.
- vanderZwan 8y agoExactly. It would make very little sense if a power plant meant to extract energy from the ground somehow inserted a lot more instead.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- reallymental 8y agoYes absolutely, we're just exploiting potential energy here, and that was my point, perhaps I wasn't clear enough. That's why the efficiency of the power plant (if this energy would have been captured) would have been a sight to see on paper. The energy they put into the fracking would have been tiny compared to this. edit: spelling
- mcguire 8y agoAre you suggesting capturing the energy of the earthquake?
- mfoy_ 8y agoThat's literally what he said, yes. He did imply it would likely not be possible. He said that if it could be captured, it would be an absolutely mind-boggling ROI in terms of energy in vs energy out.
- ineedasername 8y agoBut how renewable/reliable would it be? A few years of quaking, and we'd hit peak quake energy. All down hill from there.
- gpm 8y agoThat seems like it would be a feature, lots of free energy and no more earthquakes killing people, destroying infrastructure (which must cause massive amounts of pollution), etc.
- astrodust 8y agoOr all the continental plates have shattered into a billion pieces and molten rock is bubbling up through the innumerable fractures.
- mfoy_ 8y agoMoot point-- it's not possible currently. However, think of the sheer amount of potential energy cause by plate tectonics... we're talking about continents... moving.
- munificent 8y agoI mean, if you want to be technical about it, it would definitely not be downhill from there because all the hills would be gone.
- ajkjk 8y agoIt would be electromagnetic potential caused by strain on the rock, right?
- johnatwork 8y agoWould it be worth it for something like this to be used in places that often have catastrophic earthquakes, to instead release scheduled mini-quakes every so often to relieve the pressure?
- BurningFrog 8y agoSo a good PR could frame this as having pre-empted the quake, and launched an era of managed, controlled quakes. Also, just like after that scream, there is no avalanche risk, since all the snow slid down the valley, there should now be no quake risk for quite a while at that site.
- jfindley 8y ago> Similarly, a low-energy scream in the montain can trigger a high-energy avalanche. While this is a popular myth, it's actually entirely false. You can shout and scream all you want - there's not enough energy transmitted to the snowpack to actually trigger an avalanche (by at least two orders of magnitude). This has been debunked by multiple studies, one example here: http://www.gblanc.fr/IMG/pdf/reuter2009.pdf http://www.gblanc.fr/IMG/pdf/reuter2009.pdf
- sandworm101 8y agoIt is one of those areas where definitions matter more than reality. Many avalanches happen without external input. At a fraction of a second before one will happen, any extra energy will "cause" it to happen slightly earlier than otherwise. So one could biuld a situation where a shout, or a mouse, could indeed cause an avalanche. It is like heating a pot of water to 100c. It is about to boil. Shout at it and it will start to boil a picosecond faster than if you didnt shout at it. Be really careful with the temperature and maybe your shouting makes it boil when otherwise it never would.
- Retric 8y agoNot all potential avalanches happen. As a positive feedback loop the difference between an avalanche that does or does not happen can be arbitrarily small. Back country snowboarding is a great example where small avalanches are much more common even if most of them don’t become significant. But, because the many small avalanches happen close together they are much more likely to grow. This is also why sound is more effective than you would expect, getting a huge number of tiny avalanches to happen at the same time makes it significantly more likely to form a large one.
- thisjustinm 8y agoSound alone, even a sonic boom, cannot trigger an avalanche. You need explosives in contact with the snow. Sources: personal experience in AIARE training [0] and Utah Avalanche Center via Myth Busters [1] [0] https://avtraining.org/ https://avtraining.org/ [1] http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/yodeling-triggers-avalanche/ http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-da...
- pathseeker 8y ago>You need explosives in contact with the snow. Then how do they happen naturally?
- sritchie 8y agoOne way is wind loading... snow falling in a storm gets blown around and piles up on a slope that's already loaded. Another type - a wet slab avalanche - triggers when the sun melts snow and causes water to flow between the various layers in the snowpack, causing two layers to slide. The goal of the bomb is to thump the snow hard enough that if any weak layers of snow exist below a hard slab of solid snow, the slab will crack, slamming air through the weak layer, breaking the support of the rest of the slab and causing a slide. Naturally occurring avalanches usually need some obvious change of force on the snowpack, or some reason why a weak layer becomes weaker. I'd guess that a sonic boom, or definitely a scream, couldn't do enough in almost any situation to tip the balance.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- thisjustinm 8y agoSorry, I didn't mean to suggest that only explosives can trigger an avalanche, obviously that is not true. Lots of natural and human activities can trigger an avalanche, shouting and even very loud soundwaves are simply not one of them. More here if you're interested: https://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanche-problem-toolbox https://utahavalanchecenter.org/avalanche-problem-toolbox