----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin van Spaandonk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 3:05 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Re: Going Van de Graaff
> In reply to Michel Jullian's message of Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:05:29 +0100: > Hi, > [snip] >>It's OK Robin, it happens to me all the time :) >>Your other point is valid though, we don't know how long it takes the Sun to >>charge this capacitor. But it's unlikely it charges it in one two millionth >>of a day = 43 ms, which would be required for it to provide the world's daily >>energy consumption :/ >> >>Michel > If the fair weather current is 1E-12 amps per square meter, then the total > current for the entire planet is 510 A. Multiplying this by 300000 V gives a > power of 153 MW - not much to run our civilization on. > BTW the fair weather current would charge the Earth capacitor in 55.7 seconds. Discharge you mean, but this certainly means the sun provides an equal charging current to compensate for the leak. > > BTW2 if we were to drain this power for other uses, it would not be available > for lightning, which is intimately involved with rainfall. The consequences > for > global rainfall could be catastrophic. ...or beneficial maybe, if suppression of lightning had the effect of favoring gentle rainfall and suppressing brutal flood-inducing rainstorms, not to mention the damages caused by lightning itself. In which case one would have to find a way to drain the capacitor, either permanently or on demand, which doesn't seem obvious. Tethered balloon-borne "lightning rods" maybe? (wouldn't require wind unlike Benjamin Franklin's kite) Michel > > Regards, > > Robin van Spaandonk > > http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ > > Competition provides the motivation, > Cooperation provides the means. >
