Hurricane dispersal by supersonic booms & implications of building real life star destroyers

[Steel]

4 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

It has a local effect, and it moves too fast for the pressure behind and in front of the glass to equalize. After it is through, everything is as before. Except for the latter to the insurance. The schockwave doesn't move air away, like a waterwave doesn't move water.

Yes true, but (just pie in the sky here) if you had millions (probably more like billions) of these things going on simultaneously you might be able to disrupt the local pressure distributions enough to do something to a small hurricane. After all, these weather system are driven by pressure. I could make no guess as to what that something might be though.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Steel

[moonsparkejo]

1 minute ago, Kerbart said:

"Logistics and circumstances aside."

It's hard to get not snarky here, because logistics and circumstances are the issue. Sure, if you line up thousands of planes and have them deliver a non-stop barrage of sonic booms I'm sure it'll work at one point. But if we're that far off into lala-land, why not just build a 5-mile high hurricane-resistant wall out in the ocean to stop it in its tracks? Or lay out a couple of thousand of miles of cooling pipes to cool the water to cut off the energy source of the storm. Surely there are a few practical problems with the latter solution, but "physics and reality aside?"

I added that as a second poll to find out whether anybody thinks it would be possible to even do it......... Sort of like if you sent millions of nukes at the sun, Would any of them reach the surface? No, it wouldn't no matter how many you sent, meaning no matter what circumstance you were in or the logistics of actually getting a million nukes and launching them at the sun, the result would not be achievable. So basically, if we had the ability to create enough sonic booms and were able to get everything right, would it be able to disperse the hurricane? see what I mean now?

[magnemoe]

42 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

The “that's not how any of this works” horse has already been beaten to dead, buried, dug up, cooked into a soup and eaten by a tribe of pagans.

To make a new contribution I came up with:

• The Planetary Society refers to meteor strikes as “the only natural disaster we can prevent.” (emphasis added by mr. Kerbart). While I do not deny the chance of bias, they did not say "aside from Hurricanes."
• If it were that easy, it  would already have been done. Even if the patent holder wants to license his technology for $1M per use, it'd be dirt cheap compared to the cost of a hurricane landfall. Heck, insurance companies would gladly pay a hundred-fold of that.
• Getting a patent is easy. You don't need to demonstrate a working prototype (as the software industry is more than well aware of these days); just because there's a patent doesn't mean the solution actually works. But rest assured: if the smartest people of the world get together and figure out a way to make this work (at the expense of a lot of taxpayer money, surely), this guy will happily step forward and collect the money for his "effort!"

Meteorite impact can be prevented, you can build around hurricanes and earthquakes. 
Death tolls in areas with building codes who focus on earthquake protection tend to be 1/100 to 1/1000 lower than the ones there stone, brick or non reinforced concrete is standard building materials. for hurricanes, assume first floor is disposable and you are not building in the most flood hit areas in the fist place. 

[Green Baron]

5 minutes ago, Steel said:

Yes true, but (just pie in the sky here) if you had millions (probably more like billions) of these things going on simultaneously you might be able to disrupt the local pressure distributions enough to do something to a small hurricane. After all, these weather system are driven by pressure. I could make no guess as to what that something might be though.

You need to fill the low pressure up. A shockwave from a plane makes a noise but adds 0. Fantastillions of explosive devices that generate gasses from solids might help fill up, but it'll smell :-)

Surrounding high pressure and a breaking force at the base, but in an undisturbed system air masses only rotate around the center of high or low, but do not exchange. If an obstacle at ground level brakes the rotation, then exchange starts.

[sevenperforce]

Flying hundreds of millions of turbofan jet planes with the rotation of the hurricane would cause the hurricane to stop its rotation, simply by the engine exhaust pushing the air behind itself, before supersonic shockwaves would have any measurable effect.

 

[cubinator]

You might be able to dissipate the hurricane by redirecting an asteroid into it.

[wumpus]

3 hours ago, cubinator said:

You might be able to dissipate the hurricane by redirecting an asteroid into it.

Actually, that method might really work.  Not just that it would provide sufficient energy to make the hurricane into something worse (which is presumably the big reason NOAA has a faq about nuking hurricanes), but presumably a broad bombardment of the ocean could spray  enough deeper water into the air to cool down the air at sea level.  Cut that, and you cut the energy that drives the hurricane.

I wouldn't be too surprised if sonic booms are one day used against hurricanes, but I doubt that simply flying supersonic near the thing is worth it.  The point is wind shear.  It certainly sounds like a sonic boom is made of pure windshear, but it isn't clear that it can maintain such after your plane flies on (what you really need to stop the hurricane).  High wind shear interferes with hurricane development, so even if blasting it with sonic booms won't disperse it, building up enough wind shear will prevent it from gaining power.  The trick is maintaining wind shear after you have passed through (and I suspect that all the research has been on reducing wind shear).  So while I think it might be possible, just flying jets fast willy nilly isn't the answer.

Altering temperature or pressure on such a broad scale would require taking advantage of the gravity well, but I suspect that convincing the wind to interfere with the hurricane's development might be remotely possible as well.

[cubinator]

27 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Actually, that method might really work.  Not just that it would provide sufficient energy to make the hurricane into something worse (which is presumably the big reason NOAA has a faq about nuking hurricanes), but presumably a broad bombardment of the ocean could spray  enough deeper water into the air to cool down the air at sea level.  Cut that, and you cut the energy that drives the hurricane.

I imagine a large asteroid falling into the atmosphere would push the air around it so much that it actually puts a hole in the hurricane like a giant bullet before even doing its full damage. (Which includes Interstellar-reminiscent tsunamis at least as bad as the hurricane would have been?) The note about cutting the energy to the hurricane by bringing up cold water is a good one.

Edited September 8, 2017 by cubinator

[YNM]

Your idea is equal to "let's blow so much wind the whole cloud just move off or disappear".

 

Yeah, good luck blowing something you can't even see all at once unless on space.

[Nuke]

makes me wonder what would happen if you detonated a nuke in the eye of a hurricane.

[Nibb31]

48 minutes ago, Nuke said:

makes me wonder what would happen if you detonated a nuke in the eye of a hurricane.

Read the thread.

[mrfox]

Think about it - every bolt of lighting in a storm generates a shockwave.

Its call thunder.

The answer seems obvious.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

makes me wonder what would happen if you detonated a nuke in the eye of a hurricane.

That have more merit I think ? Also would change the rain straight into blizzard I presume... either that or it becomes a hot mess.

[Green Baron]

8 hours ago, cubinator said:

You might be able to dissipate the hurricane by redirecting an asteroid into it.

Healing the headache with an axe ? :-)

 

[p1t1o]

The question "can we stop a hurricane with nuclear weapons" is asked so often that the NOAA has a dedicated FAQ on it:

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

One of the main reasons nukes wont work is because the amount of energy contained in a hurricane dwarfs the amount released even by numerous large bombs.

Another reason is that the pressure wave generated does not have a lasting effect on the storm anyway, as once the wave has passed, pressure returns to normal.

Ergo, sonic booms wont work either.

***

Gieven "enough" aircraft? Like enough to pile them up into a heap physically larger than a hurricane?

Probably still wont work.

Edited September 8, 2017 by p1t1o

[KSK]

We're all overthinking this.

What we actually need is just a Really Big Fan, on an Even Bigger Flatbed Truck. A remote controlled one would be best, although we could put a call out for a Really Brave Driver, I suppose.

Then we just drive the RBF-EBFT assembly into the eye of the hurricane and have the RBD switch the fan on. Presto - the RBF 'unwinds' the hurricane and calm is restored. For optimum results, make sure the fan is rotating counter to the direction of rotation of the hurricane.

[Green Baron]

Space Balls Megamaid

 

Edited September 8, 2017 by Green Baron

[KSK]

16 hours ago, Just Jim said:

OK... wait... so someone is suggesting tossing a nuke into a BadS hurricane that's headed straight towards me???

Yeah.... right.... Sorry, I've seen way, way too many Sci-Fi movies through the decades to trust this one.... With my luck, Sharknado would become a reality, or I'll end up in some radioactive cloud and suddenly have super powers... or a third eye.... 

Or just be very, very dead. And glowing.

And thus did the world come to fear the one-man atomic zombie apocalypse.

Back on topic, that patent is hilariously bad. Fortunately, it appears the USPTO agrees since it was published in 2010 and doesn't seem to have been granted.

[Green Baron]

One moment, is the linked site really the official American patent office's blabla website ?

If so, i am deeply disappointed.

[DDE]

If you had an actual Star Destroyer, with gigatons TT equivalent per each bolt of countless main guns, maybe.

If no, GTFO.

[KSK]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

One moment, is the linked site really the official American patent office's blabla website ?

If so, i am deeply disappointed.

Nope - www.uspto.gov is the official site if you ever need an insomnia cure. Mind you, their official search tools for looking up patent information aren't much to look at either.

[Raideur Ng]

It would cost less just to build every building with additional requirements against wind and flooding in hurricane prone areas so that they simply resist the hurricane better than currently than ANY of the proposals above (And we already do this) and let the hurricane kill itself.

[Just Jim]

21 minutes ago, Raideur Ng said:

It would cost less just to build every building with additional requirements against wind and flooding in hurricane prone areas so that they simply resist the hurricane better than currently than ANY of the proposals above (And we already do this) and let the hurricane kill itself.

That's exactly what they do here. My brother is a roofer, and there are all sorts of storm and safety requirements they have to follow that they wouldn't have in somewhere like, say, Montana or Canada, where they don't get hurricanes.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Just Jim

[adsii1970]

Just now, Just Jim said:

That's exactly what they do here. My brother is a roofer, and there are all sorts of storm and safety requirements they have to follow that they wouldn't have in somewhere like, say, Ohio, or Canada, where they don't get hurricanes.

And in our region, all new construction has to consider river flooding AND earthquakes. Older construction that's being renovated must be retrofitted, in many cases, to be complaint with the new requirements. In the end, it is all about disaster mitigation and risk management.

[kerbiloid]

Yes.

Spoiler

_{(This works in From Dust, why shouldn't irl?)}

Edited September 9, 2017 by kerbiloid