Bill Gates: Hurricane Killer

Can Bill Gates stop hurricanes?

Every year, the states of Florida, Maine, Louisiana and Texas brace themselves for Hurricane Season, but apart from battering down the hatches and riding it out, there's not much that anyone can do. However Intellectual Ventures, a private company funded in part by Bill Gates, believes they have found a way to stop hurricanes, potentially saving hundreds of lives and millions of dollars each year.

Intellectual Ventures is a private company that for the past six years has been buying and licencing patents and inventions. In its own words, the company spans a "broad range of areas including computer software and hardware, user interface design, semiconductors, biomedical devices, advanced medical procedures, digital imaging, nanotechnology, nuclear energy and advanced particle physics."

However, their latest invention is a scheme to stop hurricanes before they even begin.

Killing hurricanes

The main reason hurricanes form is due to intense low pressure areas forming over warm surface water. The water vapour that is evaporated, essentially fuels the hurricane as it releases 'heat' when it condenses that form clouds and rain. Intellectual Ventures' plan is to suppress this warm water, by dumping cold water upon them from massive float bowls that would be deployed by airplanes in front of a storm's path.

If you're thinking this plan sounds a little impractical, you're not the only one. Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at MIT even describes it as "unfeasible", however Intellectual Ventures have a back-up and slighly more practical idea - the Salter Sink.

The Salter Sink

Like the above plan, it centres around cooling water to prevent hurricanes forming, but instead of using planes and tubs of water, the Salter Sink uses wave power to change the temperature. Essentially a wave powered pump, the Salter Sink lets waves push hot water into the top of the cylinder, which pumps the water inside down. It comes out the bottom, approximately 200 metres down, and mixes with colder water.

This brings the temperature on the surface down over time, but the sheer expanse of ocean surface that would need to be 'cooled off' would mean that thousands of Salter Sinks would be needed. However, the cost would be much lower than the damage caused by one of these storms.

Either way, it has Bill Gates intrigued... and if it's peaked his curiosity, one assumes it's worth researching.

Other ideas from Intellectual Ventures:

Mosquito Laser Defense - Researchers at a recently opened Intellectual Ventures lab in Bellevue, Wash., are building the ultimate bug zapper. The “photonic fence” combats malaria by surrounding houses or villages with a perimeter guarded by lasers that shoot mosquitoes from the air. That's right! Anti-mosquito laser beams! The computer-guided laser can track the flight of individual mosquitoes, and distinguish harmless males from biting females by measuring the frequency of their wing beat.

Super-Strength Semiconductors - Intellectual Ventures recently purchased the entire patent portfolio of Transmeta, a trailblazing manufacturer of low-power microprocessors. Intellectual Ventures believe that the technologies could lead to powerful, efficient computer chips to use in expendable remote sensors, as well as medical devices inside human bodies and nano-scale manufacturing.

Relevant articles:

Hurricane Season: How do states cope? | America's most expensive natural disasters | Obama surveys New Orleans recovery efforts

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