In reply to Michael Foster's message of Sat, 11 Sep 2021 22:14:10 +0000 (UTC): Hi, [snip] >I think we have a chicken and egg problem here. I'm not sure if it was Alfred >Baez or I who have it backwards, if it is backwards. I can no longer find any >reference to Baez's comments on this subject on the internet. Hey.. William >Beaty, if you're asleep at your keyboard, wake up and help us out here. I'm >pretty sure I first found a reference to Baez's hypothesis on your website. In >any case, this whole idea is right up your alley. > >This is really a quibble, but the idea of high winds creating friction between >particles is something made up by an "expert" who needed to sound like he knew >what he was talking about to a curious 12 year old. Hey Robin, let's rub a >couple of water droplets together and get a high voltage charge, or ice >crystals or whatever. It would be more likely influence, something like a >Wimshurt machine.
What you might get when you rub two water droplets together is a charge exchange, i.e. excess electron(s) on one droplet, and excess proton(s) on the other. When the droplets are dragged apart, the voltage increases. Protons might tunnel from one droplet to the other when they are close enough together, if there is a temporary unequal charge distribution in the target droplet creating a local negative charge on the surface close to the other droplet, &/or electrons might tunnel in the other direction for the same reason. Or perhaps when the surface of the target droplet has the "chevrons" aligned such that the Oxygen atom is pointed toward the other droplet, and an H3O+ ion happens to be close at hand on the source droplet. Alternatively, if you are correct about shock waves breaking up rain drops, consider what you get when one or more protons gets left behind on one of the droplets after breakup. This could be another source of charged droplets. When the two droplets are of different size (usually the case), the bigger of the two will fall faster, thus separating them, and their charges. What does bother me is that I would expect there to be just as many large positive droplets as large negative droplets, so that on average no large field should exist. Clearly not what happens, or we wouldn't have lightning. Maybe it's because an electron is lighter than H3O+? This would tend to give rise to a positive ground charge, and a negative excess in the clouds. >None of this really matters, but this description of the electrical charging >of clouds has annoyed me for decades. So tell us what part of it annoys you, maybe we can all benefit from your insight? >Also, acoustic shockwaves generally break up particles rather than making them >condense. Still quibbling. I think both occur. At the wave front particles being pushed outward will collide with stationary particles that are not yet part of the wave. I have noticed that a short time after a thunderclap there is sometimes a sudden downpour, but that's just anecdotal, and far from rigorous, and could also be because falling rain takes longer to reach the ground than the sound of thunder, so the causality might be reversed. > >But back to the subject at hand... Something has to drive a vortex and the >winds at the edge of a tropical depression just aren't all tangential enough >to do the job. Coriolis force at the outer edges usually causes initial rotation? Conservation of angular momentum speeds up the rotation as air is pushed in toward the centre. > When you stir your coffee, it swirls around for a few seconds and settles > down. If you had a hole in the bottom of your coffee cup the vortex would > become increasingly accelerated until all the coffee had drained out and > ruined your table cloth. There is effectively a "hole" at the top of hurricanes and tornadoes. Cold at the top causes both air to contract and water vapor to condense, both of which reduce the pressure locally, just as the hole in the bottom of the coffee cup reduces the pressure locally (the bottom of the cup isn't "pushing back" where the hole is.) BTW the reason this sounds as though I'm explaining to a 12 year old, is because that's how my mind works. I tend to visualize things at that level. > >As, by whatever means, the eye of a hurricane becomes more highly charged it >would attract the uncharged or oppositely charged water droplets from outside >the eye at an accellerated rate, ...but it would also repel like charged droplets, and why would it attract uncharged droplets? >thus making both the radial and linear velocity very high. So, if it's the >cause or the effect can remain the subject of debate. Or perhaps it's both, >one thing feeding the other. > >But let's assume for the moment that you are completely correct and the >electric charges in the eye are merely an effect of the phenomenon. There is >still the possibility that these new electrostatic drones could dissipate or >prevent hurricanes. When a tropical depression occurs as a barometric low >pressure area, it draws in warm moist air from the surrounding area and it >becomes a tropical storm or sometimes a hurricane with heavy rainfall at the >center, thus starting the vortex. > >It might be that a fleet of these new electrostatic drones launched around the >tropical depression could cause rainfall from the moist air before it arrives >at the center. It seems to me a hurricane might be prevented by this method. I >think it's worth a try, but it's a little beyond my budget at the moment. I think it would be difficult to control the drones in such high winds, and I wonder how they work? Do they produce fog with droplets of opposite charges, so as to retain a neutral charge on the drone? [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk <mixent...@aussiebroadband.com.au>
