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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Scientist's plan to end tornadoes would have 100-mile giant wall in Texas The walls would be 100 miles long and almost 1000 feet high, designed to stop the meeting of east/west winds which some say cause tornadoes by creating an updraft.Keep clicking to see other bizarre ideas on how to control the weather. Can you zap a tornado? Some have proposed using an array of satellites to shoot microwaves at the cold winds that form tornadoes. Of course, someone would have to build this collection of satellites for that purpose. Can an oil slick stop a hurricane? A University of California-Berkeley researcher threw out an idea that ancient mariners might have been onto something when they dumped oil onto troubled waters. He believes a similar method could reduce the surface tension of water and prevent droplets from forming. Can you prevent hail from forming? Hail cannons are shock wave generators that supposedly disrupt the creation of hail through powerful sound waves. There's little evidence to prove they work. Can you nuke a volcano to stop it from erupting? This idea has yet to be tested, but the general sentiment leans toward no. In fact, it may even cause an eruption due to the rapid release of pressure. Can you reflect seismic waves? Scientists have proposed an idea to disrupt the seismic waves that come with earthquakes by drilling holes according to their wavelengths. Can you shield the Earth from the Sun? Former Microsoft technology chief Nathan Myhrvold has floated the idea of pumping liquid sulfer dioxide into the atmosphere using helium-filled balloons. This would create "stratoshield," dimming the sun and reducing the effects of global warming in affected areas. Can you throw rubber tires at a hurricane? A leading British engineer and Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates have patented an idea involving tires and giant plastic tubes. The idea is that a large blob of these tires and plastic tubes would float toward a potential hurricane area and cool the water, preventing it from forming. Can you freeze a hurricane? In the 1960s, the U.S. government attempted to do mitigate the effects of hurricanes by seeding them with freezing agents. The project was later abandoned. Can you destroy a hurricane by coating the ocean with some kind of substance? Such a tactic would likely only have a marginal effect on a cyclone given its immense need for energy. There's also the problem of finding a substance that can stay together long enough in the rough ocean for it to work. Can you throw icebergs at a cyclone? Short answer: No, you can't. You would need a lot of icebergs to cover the cyclone's massive area, and you would need to be quick to match its speed. Plus, changing the temperature of the ocean is bad for all the creatures in the sea. Can you nuke a hurricane? Some people have proposed humanity take the brute force approach in dealing with Mother Nature. Unfortunately, there are two problems with that. One, nuclear weapons couldn't hope to match the energy a tropical cyclone can create. Two, any resulting radiation from a bomb can be picked up by hurricane winds and dispersed across the land. Does the U.S. have a weather control center? Despite the murmurings from conspiracy theorists, the answer is probably no. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program in Alaska is a research facility dedicated to the study of activity in Earth's ionosphere. Some believe that the facility may be responsible for several meteorological disasters, including floods and droughts. Imagine this: a giant wall stretching a hundred miles and almost a 1,000 feet high across southeast Texas and Louisiana. Now imagine three of those spread throughout the South, put there the stop the tornadoes that devastate parts of the country every year. A physicist at Temple University in Philadelphia has had this idea published once and is just about to get it in another high-profile science journal as a viable suggestion to end the threat of the twisters that regularly strike in so-called Tonado Alley. "It certainly would work, nature already tells us it works," said professor Rongjia Tao, who wrote the paper due to be published in the International Journal for Modern Physics B. Tao suggests the walls would act like dams, only these dams wouldn't stop water, they would stop wind. "Last year Washington County, Illinois, was wiped out by tornadoes," Tao said. "Just 50 to 60 miles east it's also flat farmland but they never had any." Tao suggests that the presence of a small hill acted to disperse the dangerous winds and protected that area. There were more than 800 toradoes in the U.S. last year and Tao said almost all could be stopped with his "Great walls" acting as barriers and stopping the dangerous spiraling winds from forming. The three walls would run east to west, one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma, and the third in Texas and Louisiana. It would come at a cost - $16 billion each - but would stop tornadoes forever, according to Tao. His plan does have its critics, though, with some meteorologists indignant that tornadoes are being explained in such simple terms. Professor Joshua Wurman of the Center for Severe Weather Research dismissed the idea. "Everybody I know is of 100% agreement - this is a poorly conceived idea," he told BBC News. "From what I can gather his concept of how tornadoes form is fundamentally flawed. Meteorologists cringe when they hear about 'clashing hot and cold air'. It's a lot more complicated than that," Wurman said. Tao has yet to approach any government body with his idea, but says skeptics are wrong. Poster Comment: Have China use its American dollars to build wind farm. convert wind into electrical energy. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
#5. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
The Chinese already have a "Great Wall", but it doesn't prevent tornadoes.
There are no replies to Comment # 5. End Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
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