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> If you try to modify the weather without permission I had to laugh at your wording :) I am picturing someone with a drone carrying a sack of silver iodide s
by OldHand2018 5y ago
> If you try to modify the weather without permission
I had to laugh at your wording :) I am picturing someone with a drone carrying a sack of silver iodide suddenly having a very bad day.
- jcun4128 5y agodumb thought: I wonder if they ever considered blowing up typhoons non-nuclear like the bombs that starve well fires
- SapporoChris 5y ago"They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?," Trump reportedly asked aides during one hurricane briefing. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/26/politics/nuke-hurricanes-donald-trump/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/26/politics/nuke-hurricanes-...
- dotancohen 5y agoIt sounds like a stupid question, but so was "Why can't we boost the first stage _back_ to CCAF then land it using legs and fuel that we carried up with us" just a few years ago. So, what is the real answer? I'm not advocating the idea, but why is it not feasible?
- ben_w 5y ago1. Hurricanes are powered by heat, so you just make it stronger 2. The heat energy used by a hurricane is roughly equivalent to one Hiroshima per second, which at least reduces the impact of 1., but tells you how large the scale difference is 3. Explosions produce shockwaves which only change instantaneous pressure, and are totally ineffective at changing barometric pressure, the one thing you want to increase, because barometric pressure is the weight of all the air above the ground 4. The storm is now radioactive
- dotancohen 5y agoTerrific, thank you. I was thinking that a powerful enough explosion may disrupt the winds. And it seemed to be that a disruption of the winds may dissipate a storm. I suppose that the concept of "what a storm is" may not be very clear to the layman, including myself. Until a few minutes ago it seemed to me that a hurricane is just winds going around in a circle.
- ben_w 5y agoYou’re welcome! I had the same incorrect model as you before (I forget when) I learned this.
- jcun4128 5y ago> it means that a hurricane is stronger -- in terms of energy -- than a nuclear bomb. Like, way stronger Ahh got it
- mechanical_bear 5y agoIt’s funny that he got so pilloried. We tell people that we value outside the box thinking, and a willingness to ask questions with no regard to looking stupid. But when these traits are actually displayed, the person will be mocked. Now…if he had followed through on it, after being told it’s dumb…
- Ginden 5y agoObvious reason would be that hurricanes are large. Like 100km large. Force exerted by blast follows inverse-square law and it's quite negligible in 30km for thermonuclear bombs. 30km diameter disruption of wind affects only 9% of 100km diameter cyclone. It's quite unlikely that it would disrupt cyclone, but someone with better fluid mechanics knowledge can probably do such calculation.
- grp000 5y agoNOAA agents will come floating out of the sky in repurposed weather balloons
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- peterburkimsher 5y agoCrazy idea: I read last month that rainbows include infrared and ultraviolet bands. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491494 Are they only outputs, or could they be GPIO? What would happen with a giant prism above a cloud? A very pretty cloud, for sure, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I just wonder whether the ice crystals could be persuaded to melt quicker, and drop their rain. Cheaper than silver iodide for cloud seeding. I have no idea who to talk to about this, or any clue how to simulate it in a lab.