If you are looking for genius ideas to slow down a hurricane ... you may want to check out Project Stormfly first. The idea was to weaken winds of more than 100 mph … off the coast. Jets flew into the churning cyclones and injected silver iodide to break up dangerous winds before they hit shore. Lives were to be saved and property damage prevented ... because the silver iodide was to freeze water and thereby slowed down the storm’s fury.
In spite of all the naturalistic intelligence used ... it didn’t work….
You have to admit that this was an ambitious idea for the 1960s in spite of the fact that no punch was pulled from powerful hurricanes.
After two decades, hundreds of millions of dollars and four field tests, the outcome of "Project Stormfury" was inconclusive. Perhaps the biggest outcome was the government's decision to no longer experiments with hurricane modification.
But that hasn't stopped other scientists, innovators and adventurous mavericks to enjoy the challenge and to ask “Can’t we stop these things?” Amanda Riddle of the Associated Press tells how ideas for stopping hurricanes …”range from the goofy (build giant windmills along the coast to blow hurricanes away) to promising (dump an absorbent powder into a storm to suck up its moisture).”
There will also never be a shortage of people who chase adventure’s like turning back the wind’s power … "A lot of people really have the burning desire to save lives and save property," said Stormfury founder Bob Simpson, 88, a retired meteorologist who lives in Washington, D.C. "It becomes an emotional thing that attracts a lot of people."
Here are a few more ideas tried and failed:
1. A cloud-seeding project where Navy planes dropped silver iodide into four hurricanes with the intent of freezing cold water and releasing heat to slow winds.
2. Proposed ideas to build giant windmills along the coast
3. Firing torpedoes of liquid nitrogen into storms.
4. Fire an absorbent used in gardening to retain water into soil
5. Build a massive U-shaped pipe atop a submarine to inject air into the eye and tear it apart.
6. Use absorbent powder called "Dyn-O-Gel" to reduce a hurricane's winds by up to 15 mph …. through absorbing water from the eyewall and converting it into a gel that falls into the ocean
In spite of all the good ideas … no one has developed a product yet that can withstand these killer-strength winds.
Peter Cordani CEO of privately held Dyn-O-Mat, Inc. … sent a C-130 plane to drop 20,000 pounds of his product into a thunderstorm in an attempt to land federal funding to dry up storms…. Attempts so far have cost his company more than $600,000.
"This test should prove it," Cordani’s been heard to say. Florida-based company produces Dyn-O-Gel, a polymer that gobbles 1,500 times its own weight in water. It currently helps to make diapers more absorbent. Cordani sent airplanes to drop Dyno-O-Gel $40,000 of the stuff into hurricanes to suck up moisture and energy. His powder becomes like JELL-O, and then reliquified after it hits salt water. He claimed it would take more than $8 million worth of his product to be more effective.
Fernando Morales requested a mere $5 million to research his idea: a pipe to pump liquid oxygen from the outer cloud into the eye of the storm. "Fill the eye of the hurricane with air to equalize the pressure, and the walls that are water molecules disappear," said Morales, who works from
But other experts argue that Morales would need a pipe 40 miles long to reach beyond the 20-mile eye. More money would also be needed for storage and transportation. Wallets are not being emptied for these ideas as the federal government claims it has no money for hurricane modification … and scientists say they are skeptical that hurricane modification can work.
Some innovators remain optimistic that the hurricane's power one day will be used to make it fight itself and tear itself apart while others argue that money is better spent for buildings that can withstand the hurricane’s vengeance. Can human intelligence ever really stop a mighty storm’s fury? What do you think?
To that respect, I leaning in saving lives and I think every idea is been worth when addressed in this sense. There are years I am analyzing data and confronting them to the light of the logic feeding a rational hypothesis of what provokes the phenomenon and, if that is proven, we will have how to stop him. Taking the problem for a table of electronic repairs, we located in the world map, the most susceptible areas of the event to happen. The initial area, factor that also determines the potency, the route and finally his end. The study discovered that a hurricane, needs four components to begin, if we remove one of them, nothing will happen. But, I am a Brazilian, here doesn't have hurricanes, nor with whom to talk about and, without knowing to speak English, my idea perhaps, be not nor investigated. However, brain doesn't have nationality, I continue to think about it.
Posted by: carmelo | December 12, 2006 6:45 PM | Permalink to Comment