[Kylon]

I have an idea on how to eliminate global warming in a localized space by using a high pressure sound wave. If you had a sound wave that was a pulse, an extremely quickly generated sound wave, generated in a millionth of a second, then since the energy would be concentrated, it would generate a high level of pressure, even if there wasn't a massive amount of energy.

My idea related to this, is to use that high pressure to send this sound wave upwards in the sky, and, as molecules are compressed together, their rate of exchange of kinetic energy, the rate of energy of heat/vibrations/motion exchange would increase. As this would increase it could effectively act to more effectively to equalize temperature. As temperature was more effectively equalized between the top of the atmosphere, and the bottom of the atmosphere this could, in effect, lead to lower surface temperatures.

I'm also thinking that this could be combined with an advanced form of ocean thermal energy conversion or OTEC. If you could simply send a sound pulse into the water, and cause the temperature in the area that the sound goes through to equalize, you could have direct access to a thermal difference. You could access the low temperature of the bottom of the ocean to act as a heat sink to drive a heat engine. This would use up energy in the air, to produce energy for consumption. I have an idea(but I won't go into) on how to create a heat engine that using a low temperature source could generate a large amount of power at a fast speed, with little infrastructure.

Combine the advanced form of OTEC, with the temperature lowering weather control, and you take out global warming(in all the areas that matter), and energy shortages.

Combine that with ammonia production via hydrogen via electrolysis, and you take out the liquid fuel limitations.
Combine that further with using ammonia in cold temperatures to extract carbon dioxide(not my idea, but it seems like it could work) then raise temperatures to dump carbon dioxide, combine with various means of taking concentrated carbon dixoxide and converting it to oil and you've got a renewable source of oil.

Combine OTEC with desalination plants and you've got water.

I've got other ideas, but this is enough for one thread.


Any reason why the sound idea wouldn't work?

[agramante]

Hi, Kylon,

An intriguing idea but the physics don't work. (For one, the equipment needed to broadcast throughout the atmosphere a high-power pulse of over one megahertz and a pulse length of one microsecond would be interesting to see, to say the least.) But the compression waves involved in sound do not transfer the molecular kinetic energy of heat--at least, not to any considerable degree. The Navy has sonars powerful enough to boil water at the transducer face and kill a diver at a mile, but those sonars don't cause the thermal structure of the ocean to break down. They have no discernible effect on ocean thermal structure, in fact. (Their effects on marine life areis another matter, however.)

There is no known physical process by which a fluid mass--certainly a large one, and the ocean and atmosphere certainly qualify--could be instantly made thermally homogeneous. There's a long train of science involved in questions of heat transfer within fluids, and it's safe to say that sound waves aren't a meaningful part of the processes. Parcels of water or air exist in the ocean and atmosphere respectively, and they tend to maintain their integrity, with some slight mixing at their boundaries, unless some large-scale mixing event (in the atmosphere--actually, for the ocean too--think hurricane) occurs.

Were the entire atmosphere and ocean of the planet to be made thermally homogeneous--and make no mistake, this would be calamity for all life on earth--it would not decrease the overall heat energy of the planet. Global warming isn't a matter of what the temperature is where you are. It's a matter of the heat content of the atmosphere and ocean, worldwide. (That's the false distinction global warming denialists live on--"But it snowed in Texas!" (actually, I was in Brownsville, right on the Mexico border, the day after a freezing spell there. And the boys on the rig were talking about exactly that).)

Even if you're not talking about perfect homogeneity, but merely lessening the gradients--softening the differences, so to speak--still, sound waves would have no meaningful effect, and it would do little or nothing to affect the progress of planetary warming. The primary cause, the presence of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, would be unchanged.

(PS just reviewed your post, and you specified the process being localized. So never mind my going on about homogenizing the entire hydrosphere, but even on a smaller spatial scale, the same principles apply: sound does not cause thermal mixing in fluid masses. Heck, in the Navy sonar example I cited, it creates thermal gradients when an extremely high-energy source is used. The fluid cannot efficiently transmit the pressure pulse, and heats up instead--rather the opposite effect of what you want.)

[ROCKMAN]

A - O don't know...a global microwave oven sound interesting. We could millions of acres of popcorn before you know it,

[BobInget]

Say what you wish about MicroWave Ovens, they are extremely energy efficient. I cook just about anything in one almost free of charge.... using a small oven and two 120 W PV panels.

[Kylon]

Okay, I guess that idea won't work.


Here is another idea to maybe help with energy needs (and possibly global warming).


I recently watched a video, where a team of student physicist loaded a camera and a toy car onto a device, that had a helium balloon attached to it.

They let the balloon go, the toy car and the camera got to the edge of the atmosphere, you could see the Earth below, and space at the same time.

The Balloon popped and the toy car and camera eventually came back down to Earth, where they retrieved it.


Anyways, I was thinking what if you got an extremely strong plastic, or an extremely light weight but strong metal, created a vaccum inside of it, and used the buoyancy of that to ship things up, near outerspace.

From there you could have like a guided spacecraft/rocket, that would fly into space, where it would dump the radioactive waste.

The rocket then could return to Earth, where it would be reloaded,

The Device that shipped things up there, could slowly repressurize the chambers, which would then cause it to come back to Earth.

This would allow humanity to deal with ever increasing amounts of nuclear waste, which would be produced, if we used breeder reactors on a mass scale to produce energy.

Also, the way this could help with global warming, is that you could have these devices that have vaccums in them go near space, then deploy a kind of screen/shade. It could be very thin, and keep out sunlight.

To prevent it from damaging plant life, it could filter out all light but red light, which is the kind of light plants need for photosynthesis the most.

So this would be a cheap way of shipping nuclear waste to outer space, and a cheap way of slowly shielding the planet from solar radiation and heat.

Also in order to keep the floatation devices from running into each other, the buoyancy of each floating device could be slightly different, so they would occupy different levels of the near space orbit area.


Anyways what do you think?

[Tanada]

I think you need to take a basic Physics class, and if your math skills are not up to that yet a few math classes as well. Balloons float because their average density is lower than the air surrounding them. To make a vacuum balloon you need to make the material tough enough to resist 15 psi for every square inch of the surface area of the balloon that is light enough so the hard balloon shell and guidance system and payload all added together has less density than the air occupying the same volume of space in the atmosphere. We call this tough strong super light weight material Unobtanium.

[Kylon]

I had an idea on how you could achieve these goals without having to completely depressurize the chamber at high levels of pressure.

If you had a large structure, and you slowly depressurized it, so that as it floated above the air, to a certain level, then you pumped more air out of it, then it floated upwards, so there was always a pressure difference, then you could effectively get that the float up to space.

You'd have it pump out a little bit of air, then after it floated to one level of the atmosphere, you'd pump out some more air, and after it floated to the next level, you pump out some more.

You could have a low amperage high voltage cable going from Earth to the aircraft, to provide electricity for this process.

Eventually, once it reached the closest it could get to space, the rocket would detach then fly off into space, dump the toxic radioactive waste, and come back to Earth.

The aircraft, would slowly repressurize, as it could convert the incoming air movement back into electricity, producing electricity which it would feed into it's system, and partially down the cable to Earth to charge up a battery system.

This could be a cheaper way of transporting things into space, and therefore eliminating the waste problems that occur with nuclear power.

I am probably wrong on alot of things but what does everybody think of this idea?

[Subjectivist]

I had an idea on how you could achieve these goals without having to completely depressurize the chamber at high levels of pressure.

If you had a large structure, and you slowly depressurized it, so that as it floated above the air, to a certain level, then you pumped more air out of it, then it floated upwards, so there was always a pressure difference, then you could effectively get that the float up to space.

You'd have it pump out a little bit of air, then after it floated to one level of the atmosphere, you'd pump out some more air, and after it floated to the next level, you pump out some more.

You could have a low amperage high voltage cable going from Earth to the aircraft, to provide electricity for this process.

Eventually, once it reached the closest it could get to space, the rocket would detach then fly off into space, dump the toxic radioactive waste, and come back to Earth.

The aircraft, would slowly repressurize, as it could convert the incoming air movement back into electricity, producing electricity which it would feed into it's system, and partially down the cable to Earth to charge up a battery system.

This could be a cheaper way of transporting things into space, and therefore eliminating the waste problems that occur with nuclear power.

I am probably wrong on alot of things but what does everybody think of this idea?

Three major problems, you still need a hard shell or it will just bend inward when you pump some of the air out. Secondly you need a weightless cable because the way you describe it the balloon is teathered for the whole flight and wire is heavy. Go pick up a 10 meter spool of housing wire at the hardware store if you don't believe me. Thirdly, throwing valuable radioactive resources into orbit would be a really bad thing on multle levels of reasoning.