Actually you are very wrong about that IF the asteroid were to be 50 miles wide and it hit the Earth at speeds in excess of 100,000 KPH there won't be jack shit left here but a pile of trash.
First supervolcanoes, then megatsunamis, now hypercanes? Once more I find myself wanting to slap the people who come up with the names for things nowadays! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
What would you have called these phenomena if you'd come up with the ideas yourself? Just 'big disaster 1,' 'big disaster 2' etc...?
So called supervolcanoes and megatsunamis are nothing more than large and powerful volcanoes and tsunamis and are already adequately described by those terms. I don't really see the need for the new ones. Supervolcano is particularly redundant for me as a large volcano is capable of eruptions of varying strength. Is it a 'supervolcanic eruption' if yellowstone squirts a bit of lava? It is more useful to look at the volcanix explosivity index (VEI) of an individual eruption. Anything of VEI 6-8 is currently known as Plinian/Ultra-Plinian. I might suggest Yellowstonian or Toban as names for VEI 8 if people wish for a name to identify those alone. I didn't really intend the above comment to be taken too seriously though.
Let's face it - "Ulta-Plinian eruption" or "Toban eruption" aren't very descriptive. The layman would need an earth science dictionary to understand their implications. But "supervolcanic eruption" says it all!
Becuase of the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic ocean. The cold water in the northern and southern ATlantic and Pacific prevents hurricanes from forming. THe currents in the Gulf of Mexico plus the warmth drive hurricanes towards North America.
Its coast is heated by the Gulf Stream, which provides fuel to the storm. And when combined with the equatorial heat.....
A hurricane can be downsized if a large mylar concave mirror could be put into orbit to aim at the cloud tops of the DEVELOPING storm to heat up the cloud tops as they are gain altitude and growing. This would cause excessive heating of those clouds, which are cold, and not allow them to build any higher. It's like a magnifier effect, if clouds don't have to chance to grow then the storm can't get any bigger.
You want to see one? Take the effects of hurricane Dean in Jamaica and Mexico over the past week, and multiply them by 20...
Wow a hurricane that breaks the speed of sound within itself... and forms a mach cone on both sides... A hurricane is a laminar cone; its flow in general is at an even speed depending on radius. If it approaches the speed of sound around its origin, the laminar flow will split as supersonic turbulent flow starts to form bubbles. In the end the average velocity will be all over the place, and the hurricane will loose its pressure difference, just as compression affected diving planes in ww2. If a hurricane reaches trans-sonic flow at 700mph it will disappear into a bunch of high pressure and low pressure air, there will be no destruction of homes; so I welcome this change. Edit: unless it has a gigantic power source, to make the time it spends in transonic flow as close to zero as possible. Otherwise the energy consumed by transonic speeds will break it up. Even the red spot of jupiter peaks at around 300mph and that not only has the benefit of a less dense atmosphere, but also a much larger one, with enough energy running through it to keep it going for however long it has been there (300 years?).
I'm thinking that the perfect physical environment for the formation and maintainence of hypercanes would be the much thicker, hotter atmosphere of Venus. Possibly also the upper atmosphere and cloudtops of Jupiter, because that planet produces more heat than it pulls in from the sun--there's always heat coming up from below to generate winds, and the rotation speed of the atmospheric wind bands is such that a strong Corialis Effect is set up, which would generate fierce rotation of the storm-cell
I know they are deadly destructive, but the idea of a hurricane just seems amazing and awesome to me. I'm morbid, I know.
There's something deep within the Human psyche that loves the wildness of Nature, and sees the uncontrolable violence as sublime...we're a strange species.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I was reading the how hurricanes work on howstuffworks.com and it cites a case where large hurricanes from 1000s of years ago were studied through the sediment left behind by the storm surge. Paleotempestology. Follow the citation link and Kerry Emanuel is actually quoted in the article (which I found to be much more interesting and applicable to this thread. Actually, I decided to link it below the first one). science.howstuffworks.com/hurricane8.htm environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/hurricane-season/mg19025551.300-raiders-of-the-lost-storms.html
You're right, VI, many people are fascinated by hurricanes and their affects, and if you want to classify it as morbid, lots and lots of people share your "affliction". I currently live very near the coast of Florida in the US, and there is a string of islands separated from the mainland by anywhere from a few feet to half a mile or so. These inhabited "barrier" islands are connected to the mainland by bridges every couple miles or so. When a hurricane is nearby (happens every year), the authorities immediately close the beaches (i.e. the barrier islands) to the general public, restricting access to those that actually live there. Mind you, this is not necessarily a situation in which a hurricane is predicted to actually "hit" the area, but even when one is nearby. Point is, if they didn't close down access, people would (and used to do so, this policy is relatively new) flock to the beaches to "experience" a hurricane, even knowing the danger associated with doing so. I personally used to do this, it is great fun leaning over at more than a 45 degree angle and having the wind hold you up. I have seen "light-weight" chickies weighing 90 pounds or so blown completely over and tumbled down the beach dunes from the winds. Perfectly suited for an adrenalin junkie such as yourself... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Great fun, indeed! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
