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Stopping a hurricane with a Thermonuclear detonation?

carbonmotion

carbonmotion

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 28, 2004
983
0
San Francisco, CA
As I was flying back to the States from Hong Kong today, a interesting thought experiment occurred to me. Can you stop a hurricane by detonating a 10MT warhead in its path? Will the shock wave blow out the hurricane? I am not advocating this method for stopping hurricanes, but its a intriguing thought. Anyone studying physics wanna satisfy my curiosity?
 
Good question, but they are still to "dirty" to try. A neutron bomb might be fun. :p

Even more interesting, to me, is what would happen if you detonated one inside the eye?? :eek:
 
It might work. Although Hurricane's and weather systems carry far more energy with them than a measly nuclear bomb (I'll look it up in a second). And lets not forget that hurricanes are hundreds of kilometres across, a nuke middle would probably only disrupt it momentarily before the momentum of the rest of the system would bring it right up to speed.

Btw: neutron bombs aren't explosive (right?).

But we can always do it for fun :D

EDIT: yeah, this site pretty much sums it up.
Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?
Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.
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I believe if everyone pointed electric fans towards a storm they could change its path, but that causes another problem of using up so much electricity and further (power source depending) problems with global warming and MORE hurricanes!
 
The question is should weather modification techniques even be used?

My answer is a big "hell no".

Hurricanes serve a crucial role in the transport of heat and moisture poleward. The effects of simply destroying every hurricane that appeared would most certainly have dire consequences.

I also know of people researching ways to destroy tornadoes. Again, they serve a big role in our atmosphere and shouldn't be messed with.

The fact is that weather is nothing more than the Earth trying to reach an equilibrium. Unfortunately, we as humans are so arrogant to try and change everything that inconveniences us.

On the fun side however, it would be pretty cool to see it tried. Boom goes the dynamite.
 
gibbz said:
The question is should weather modification techniques even be used?

My answer is a big "hell no".

Hurricanes serve a crucial role in the transport of heat and moisture poleward. The effects of simply destroying every hurricane that appeared would most certainly have dire consequences.

I also know of people researching ways to destroy tornadoes. Again, they serve a big role in our atmosphere and shouldn't be messed with.

The fact is that weather is nothing more than the Earth trying to reach an equilibrium. Unfortunately, we as humans are so arrogant to try and change everything that inconveniences us.
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Well said, and I agree completely. We don't need to be screwing around with the weather.
 
barr08 said:
We're human. We need to screw around w/ everything everyone!
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Fixed.:p

Isn't playing with the weather just another way to play God. We have weather for a reason, I don't think we should be messing with it at all.
 
You'd likely create a bunch of water vapor in the air for the hurricane to feed on. This cloud cover might change weather patterns for awhile.

Don't know what the sea-based bomb tests would make of this, since we didn't have the computers and data available to see what effect this had on weather.

---

I do agree, you might have better luck by moving all the mobile homes into the path you want the storm to take.
 
raggedjimmi said:
I believe if everyone pointed electric fans towards a storm they could change its path, but that causes another problem of using up so much electricity and further (power source depending) problems with global warming and MORE hurricanes!
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what about getting everyone walking into a hurricaine with a fan connected to a dynamo and rechargable battery. That way you'd kill the storm and get some free power?
 
I think a smarter way to stop them or slow them down maybe is to cool them down. With liquid nitrogen or something, because heat is what makes them so strong, but what do I know I'm just a PC tech guy.
 
nando2323 said:
I think a smarter way to stop them or slow them down maybe is to cool them down. With liquid nitrogen or something, because heat is what makes them so strong, but what do I know I'm just a PC tech guy.
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But that is still screwing up the atmosphere in some way. Anything we do to alter things will make it worse in the long run.
 
If you nuke all the people in the path of a hurricane. Then no one need suffer from the storm. Much more humane that way... don't you think?
 
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