Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alice and I don't like, the science editor
at how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
science writer for how stuff works dot com. Today we're
(00:22):
talking about killing hurricane at the very least kind of
remaining edge. Right. It's uh, it reminds me a lot
of the Godzilla movies. Have you seen any of the
Godzilla movies? I have not seen a Godzilla movies. I'm sorry. Well,
generally the whole idea is that a giant monsters rising
out of the ocean lizard right, Well, yeah, in the
case of Godzilla, giant lizard, this giant lizard is rising
(00:45):
up out of the ocean and coming towards the city,
and when he gets there, he's going to destroy lots
of stuff. And the movie comes down to can we
stop this monster from from carrying out this attack? Okay, Well,
a hurricane kind of similar Godzilla. Okay, yeah, it's that
you know, giants, salonic storm that spins out from the tropics,
feeding on warm ocean waters, and a lot of the
(01:06):
time ends up coming closer and closer towards major centers
of population UHA in coastal areas, right, and then they
also have that low atmospheric pressure that's trademark the high winds,
the heavy rain, and all that stuff that's associated with
the hurricane. Yep, if they they're they're spinning feeding off
all that warm water and warm air, is is is
being sucked towards that low pressure center and rising up
(01:28):
at the eye of the hurricane and basically like a
big column of low pressure air rising into the sky
where then disperses in in storm activity. Yeah, I just
think of that quintessential shot on the weather station that
we've all seen with the hurricane spiraling in and you know,
headed ominously for some coastal destination near you. So hurricane
season runs, just to give you us some quick facts,
(01:48):
that runs from June through November in the northern Hemisphere
and then down in the southern hemisphere obviously runs from
January to March. Right. In the Godzilla movies, they tend
to try and uh slow down the mon stop the
monster one way or another. With hurricanes, we really haven't
had many options as far as stopping the hurricane goes. Generally,
it's more battened down the hatches or evacuated. Just evacuate
(02:13):
out of there. Just get get the heck out of dogs.
That's all you can can really do. However, that there
have been plenty of of times where people come up
with sort of hair brained schemes to try and stop
the hurricane or like I say, slow it down right right,
I mean, because hurricanes can be pretty crazy. I mean,
they can kill a lot of people. I think the
biggest one on record in terms of loss of life
(02:33):
in the US was eight thousand people and that was
back in nineteen hundred in Galveston, Texas and Costlius. Of course,
um is a hurricane Katrina, which resulted in about eighty
billion in property damages. So slowing a hurricane down or
stopping it, I mean, it makes sense in terms of
of human life and damage. Yeah, So what are there
(02:54):
are were just some of the ideas that people have
put forth on the table. Well, Um, under under natural circumstances,
hurricane is not going to stop until basically it runs
out of food. It until it it no longer has
warm water to uh to feed off of, which generally
means that it either ends up going into cooler areas
and uh and just disperses into more manageable storm activita,
(03:15):
more manageable storm activiation, more manageable storm activity, or it
actually makes landfall, um, and of course it's on land
there and then it disperses as well. But if it
makes landfall, obviously you've kind of lost if it hits
the city. So one way is to simply take away
that warm water and replace it with cool water. So
one method of trying to do that sticking a giant
(03:37):
water pump essentially on the bottom of the ocean. Basically
that yeah, sticking a giant water pump on the bottom
of the ocean, or trying to create a giant bubble
of cool water, because underneath all that warm water that
the hurricanes speeding over, there's plenty of cool water. It's
just a matter of can we get it up bring
it to the surface. And that the only problem there
is that that would entail a whole lot of effort.
(03:58):
We're talking like man sup pump system, a lot of
pumping are or you know, technology would we just don't
have or at least don't have on that scale. Yeah,
so you give you an idea, I mean, Hurricane Katrina
at one point, her diameter was measuring um roughly the
size of the Gulf of Mexico. So that's that's a
pretty big undertaking. Yeah, even even if you're you're not
going to try and cool the entire Gulf of Mexico,
(04:20):
just just cooling a large enough area to have any
kind of impact on the hurricane, and it's just a
monumental endeavor, right, And that's not even that's not even
mentioning the effect on the wildlife, who would probably react
pretty badly to it. Yeah, I think we have enough
crap on the bottom of the ocean. We don't need
to add more pipes and whatnot. So that's one method
that we're not really looking at too closely anymore. Another is,
(04:44):
instead of coming in underneath the hurricane, coming in from
above and dropping powder, absorbent powders and super observants, super
absorbent powers. A lot of this is uh, pretty much
the same idea as cloud seating, of which the US
and China have both engaged in. So China did it.
We've written our to cloth at it. Can China control
the weather? Yeah, because they don't really want they didn't
(05:04):
really want clouds over Beijing or in the Olympics, and
if they are clouds over farmlands, they kind of want
those clouds to go ahead and rain down and the
water the crops. So the idea is basically a hurricane
is made out of clouds, and if you can turn
those clouds in rain, you are effectively taken out the
legs of the hurricane. Sure. Sure, so you're sucking the
(05:26):
moisture out right. So you know we're talking, uh, dropping
like a lot of potassium chloride, or if you're gonna
use some of the the more regular cloud seeding materials
silver iodine crystals, dropping those into the hurricane. And again
this would be a massive undertaking. The guy is a
gentleman by the name of Peter cor Danny if if
(05:47):
I have if I've pronounced his name right, Um, he
was thinking that I would take about four hundred tons
of this super observement powder. Um and then you know,
just flinging it. How do you get it up there?
I guess just lift plain after a plane or not clear,
not clear on that and face maybe I don't think
he was clear on it either, because he said, and
I quote to the Chicago Tribune, the only thing we
(06:09):
don't know about is the impact on a hurricane and
the after effects. So we just don't know if it'll
work or anything. Yeah, that's the only flaw on that plan. Yeah.
I do like the idea of the super observent powder.
Now it's kind of like telcom powder. Here's another pretty
interesting approach, is, um, why don't we just you know,
(06:30):
lodger or hawk a nuclear weapons smack in the center
of a hurricane. Yeah, who thinks that's a good idea? Well,
I don't know that anyone things it's a good idea.
But people always bring this up. People love to throw
nukes at our problems. And okay, so so one major
flaw with with this is, um, we have no idea
if a nuclear weapon could alter a storm's architecture. Really,
(06:52):
no idea. And then the side issue of all that
radioactive fallout from said nuclear bomb and then taking advantage
of the hurricane force winds that would do a really
great job of dispersing that all of the environment. And
so all we've finentially done is made a already dangerous
hurricane radioactive. Yeah, essentially. And then the other part of
(07:15):
it is, I don't even know that a nuclear weapon
would be strong enough. I read the stat that said,
fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at this crazy rate.
And here's the rate five to twenty times ten tot plots.
So that's totally unquantifiable to to do anybody listening, even
to me who's reading it. But that's equivalent to a
(07:35):
ten megatime nuclear bomb exploding every twenty minutes. Wow. So
so we're not even talking like dropping a singular nuclear
weapon into a hurricane. We're talking in all out nuclear
strike on hurricane. Yeah, on a single storm. Yeah. So
so strike the strike the nuclear weapon approached. Yeah, all right,
so that's not gonna work. Um, what else do we have. Well,
(07:55):
one idea that's uh that's come out in the last
year or so, and it's getting a fair amoun of
press here and there is uh also kind of kind
of macho, kind of manly, and that's that you have
a hurricane approaching the city, Well you just get a
couple of fighter pilots to jump in in some planes
and supersonic planes and fly into that hurricane and going
(08:16):
at about mountain at about mock one, do a few
loops around the eye of the hurricane and then get
out of there. And then and bam. You'll either slow
down the hurricane or disrupted enough to where it just disperses.
So how would this work exactly? Well, Uh, supersonic hurricane
neutralizing or super sonic hurricane suppression UM, which is a
(08:38):
great name. Yeah, it depends more on the supersonic side
of endless on the airplane because airplanes lying in a hurricane,
that's I mean, they might as well be insects. But
when when an airplane breaks the sound barrier A it
produces that you know, magnificent sonic boom. But it's also
creates this conical wave, this shock wave of pressure that
(09:00):
comes out from it. And this pressure can be pretty strong.
UM to put it, put it in terms you can
sort of relate to if you're standing on the seaside,
just the atmosphere around you is exerting about fourteen point
seven pounds per square inch pressure on and you don't
really notice it. Yeah, it's just there. Uh. A F
four phantom flying at a low altitude, though, can can
(09:22):
the shock wave from that plane can? If it's going
mock one can exert about a hundred and forty four
pounds of pressure per square foot, and just sixteen pounds
is enough to potentially like damage windows or structures. So
that's a pretty amountic increase. So right, yeah, it's not
so much the planes. It's the fact that you have
you would have this basically this worm of of expanding
(09:44):
pressure moving around in the hurricane and uh, disrupting the
pressure enough to to essentially kill or alter the hurricane.
Is that that's the idea pretty much. And the guys
behind this belief, they're out of Ohio. Yeah, universe see
an acron and Ohio to Russian guy. But name of
Arcady Arkady Lenoff, I believe. Yeah. Lenoff is basically highlighting
(10:05):
two key ways of taking out a hurricane. Mainly, a
hurricane at least in the northern Hemisphere is rotating counterclockwise.
So the idea as you fly these planes in going clockwise,
it's like if you if you stick your thumb up
into a into a ceiling fan to try and stop it,
because that's always a good idea. We'll not sticking it
straight up, but you know, if you basically you're applying
(10:26):
alternate opposite pressure. So um, yeah, the hurricanes moving one way,
you have your fighter planes come in the other way
with all this pressure from there from there from the
shock wave that comes out from them. Uh, and the
ideas that you either slow them or you even stop
that that turning entirely. Let's say, that's a pretty awesome
task for them to to undertake. Yeah, but the key
(10:50):
is the pressure. And this guy's claiming that just two
planes could do it, just like two f fours. Yeah,
I would do the trick for regular hurricane. Okay, so
that this on seems to have some problems with it
as well, I'm sorry, Russian guy from University of Akron. Fit. Wait,
but he's also saying that he could fly a couple
in at a low altitude and it would basically accomplish
(11:11):
the same thing as the pumping of the water pumping unfit.
It would disrupt the water and bring cause an upwelling
of cooler oceanic water that would again take away that
warm water that the right, sort of similar to that
giant water pump. Yeah, and it would be kind of
side benefit. Okay, Well, right, so this approach is problems right,
(11:32):
So how long do you have to fly the plane
around there? I mean, how many passes do you have
to do? What if it runs out of fuel? I mean,
these these guys consume fuel like it's nobody's business. Jet
fuel ain't cheap and uh and is it indeed, is
it going to be a matter of a guy flies
in fifteen minutes later he's you know, there's a dead
hurricane falling behind him? Or is this like wave after
wave of flights you know? Not clear? Not clear at all? Also,
(11:57):
which storms do you shoot down? Yeah? Not all of them, surely?
And do you do you just do you wait till
they get you know, close enough to harm just the
United States? Or do you you get them when they're
about to hit Haiti? You know when it seems like
politics becomes involved there? Yeah, meteorologist is god. Yeah, it
doesn't seem like a good idea. And then I mean, yeah,
(12:19):
so really like which storms and when do you shoot
him down? How long do you let them play out?
Like do you wait till it, you know, hits a
certain category before it's deemed a danger you know? Well,
and the other thing is why not let mother nature
blow off a little steam every once in a while. Yeah,
I mean that's a that's a key criticism for a
lot of these, uh, these ideas that are out there,
people saying that, hey, you know, hurricanes. They're natural. They're
(12:41):
not radioactive monsters rising up out of the ocean. There, Godzilla,
They're no Godzilla. They are a natural part of the environment,
and they do important U tasks like watering crops. I mean,
when when a hurricane makes landfall, it may you know,
it may destroy a city, but it's also bringing a
lot of rain for a lot of them'll be in
a massive flood. But but yeah, no, it definitely does
(13:05):
bring much needed water. Yeah. And if we don't let
let the if we don't let the weather release that
all that energy in the form of a hurricane, how
is it going to be released? You know? So what
I take from this is Godzilla is not always a
bad things, all right, Right, Sometimes, yeah, sometimes Godzilla is
a good thing. You know. It need a little Godzilla
(13:25):
from times at times. So if you want to read
about hurricanes and all sorts of monsters and other things
that Mother Nature can throw out, you good how stuff
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at blogs dot how stuff works dot com. Thanks guys
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