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. None of this really matters, but this description of the electrical charging of clouds has annoyed me for decades. Also, acoustic shockwaves generally break up particles rather than making them condense. Still quibbling. 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. 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. 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, 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. ===================================== Robin wrote: I suspect he had it backwards. The high wind speeds in the eye wall create friction between particles which gives rise to charge separation. Falling raindrops carry charge to the ground creating the potential difference that gives rise to lightning. Thunder produces shock waves in the air that drive smaller droplets together creating larger droplets that fall more readily.
