
Could sonic booms stop hurricanes? (2008) - vezycash
https://www.uakron.edu/about_ua/news_media/news_details.dot?newsId=377585&pageTitle=UA%20News&crumbTitle=Could+sonic+booms+stop+hurricanes%3F
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nabla9
> Edward Teller's idea to use a nuclear bomb to destroy a hurricane.

But of course he did. Teller really loved the bomb. He proposed using the bomb
for every problem.

* build a canal. just use a H-bomb.

* mining, a H-bomb.

* need a new a harbor in Alaska, a H-bomb.

* reflection seismology, use a H-bomb

* stimulate natural gas from tight fields, use a H-bomb.

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shshhdhs
Dis this man not understand radioactive fallout?

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Tuna-Fish
A very large H-bomb can be made almost arbitrarily clean, if you are willing
to compromise (a lot!) on other qualities. It would be possible to use bombs
for excavation work and have the resulting added radiation to be hard to
distinguish from the natural background.

Not that this makes using bombs for excavation a good idea...

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yters
If there are no bad after effects, then why is it not a good idea? We already
use explosives for all the things listed. Stopping hurricanes sounds pretty
useful about now.

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Tuna-Fish
Firstly, stopping hurricanes with bombs will not actually work and will
instead make them worse.

Secondly, because clean nukes need to be so huge that they are simply too
dangerous for their utility. Think at minimum "more powerful than all
conventional explosives ever produced" level huge.

While doing things like channeling to the Qattara depression sounds promising,
the actual practical problems of operating with true city-busters are just too
great. There are plenty of industrial accidents caused by explosives every
year, you don't want to live in a world where a really bad accident can wipe
out a city.

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rossdavidh
As has been variously pointed out, this is extraordinarily unlikely to work.
But, the discussion did get me wondering if it is possible to _cause_ a
hurricane (or tropical storm). If you could cause them to happen on a more
frequent basis, presumably each one would have a lot less energy. In other
words, if the energy built up in the temperature imbalance of warm water on
the surface is more regularly dispersed by storms, perhaps you could reduce
the chance of a level 4 or 5 hurricane ever forming.

The "only" problem being you're creating hurricanes, of whatever size, and
they will eventually hit somewhere, and that's not a neighborly thing to do.
:)

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CapitalistCartr
Hurricanes transfer heat energy from the Tropics to the temperate North.
Suppresion of them would cause the energy imbalance to build up, making the
next storm worse. Directing the storms away ftom land would be safer.

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newsbinator
What would be some examples of ways to redirect a hurricane?

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Someone
Huge walls aka “mountain ranges”.

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tzs
I've wondered if you could do something like that at airports that have
problems with crosswinds. Could you build tall walls on both sides of the
runway to block crosswinds?

I'd expect there would be turbulence around the entrance to the walled area
which might be dangerous, but that could probably be addressed be having the
walls flair out near and beyond the end of the runway, and also past the end
have the height ramp down to 0 instead of just stopping abruptly.

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mhh__
They do that (for ships) in the Netherlands but extending it to planes seems
impractical

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Someone
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rozenburg_wind_wall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rozenburg_wind_wall):

 _”Rozenburg wind wall in Rozenburg, Netherlands, is a wall built to block
wind from entering the Calandkanaal, and ease the passage of large cargo ships
through the narrow canal, particularly through the Calandbrug bridge. The wall
blocks about 75% of the wind and allows the ships to pass smoothly. The wall
is 1600 meters long and it is made up of 125 rectangular and cylindrical
slabs, each about 25 meters tall and 18 meters wide.”_

Edit: beter photos at [http://googlesightseeing.com/2013/05/rozenburg-wind-
wall/](http://googlesightseeing.com/2013/05/rozenburg-wind-wall/). That page
points to a dutch-language video that shows hoe tight that passage is:
[https://youtu.be/H4ZIMXjMRJk?t=3m5s](https://youtu.be/H4ZIMXjMRJk?t=3m5s)

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ohiovr
If the energy of the hurricane is not allowed to be released where does it end
up?

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marcosdumay
Do hurricanes release enough energy to cool down the ocean?

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ohiovr
Well I have read that it is a heat engine of at least the 12th power so there
must be some accounting of where all that energy goes.

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pnenp
There's a more recent thread [1] where the consensus seems to be that no, it's
not possible to stop hurricanes this way, or with nukes. According to the
thread, the energy in a hurricane is simply too great.

1:
[https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/165281...](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/165281-hurricane-
dispersal-by-supersonic-booms-implications-of-building-real-life-star-
destroyers/&do=findComment&comment=3167822)

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mrfusion
I think pumping cold water to the surface from lower depths could be very
effective. I wish we’d try it out.

Edit. Bill gates actually filed a patent on this.

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mbreese
I doubt that you’d be able to do this at a large enough scale to make it
worthwhile. And any storm is a moving target, so you’d need to have pumps all
over the ocean.

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mrfusion
Storms actually move fairly slowly. I would suggest placing the pump boats in
the eye as it’s forming before it gets to hurricane strength.

Remember you’d just be moving already cold water which takes orders of
magnitude less energy than cooling the water.

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throwaway5752
And you'd be pumping warm water lower, thereby making the next storm worse.

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mrfusion
I’d need to see a source on that. I’m not sure how you can assume that.

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throwaway5752
I will not provide you with a source, I don't have the time. I consider what I
said basic, first-principles stuff. We two layers deep discussing an idea that
is not feasible, anyway. Here is a source that the pumps will not work:
[http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/28/hurricanes.gates....](http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/28/hurricanes.gates.gray/)

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noetic_techy
Awesome. I don't know why they stress over the need for a skilled pilot, this
could easily be a drone/AI project.

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JumpCrisscross
> _I don 't know why they stress over the need for a skilled pilot, this could
> easily be a drone_

The article was published in 2008. It’s actually neat to consider a
technological solution to hurricanes that became viable in the last ten years.

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Synaesthesia
Wow this could be fantastic, a peaceful application for what are otherwise
over-engineered instruments of war.

