​A 1,000-foot high wall might be the key to saving the midwest from tornados

A towering, 50-meter thick wall may sound like the fevered dream of isolationists bent on border control, but it just might be the solution to the midwest’s tornado problems. University of Drextel physicist Rongjia Tao reckons that a trio of 1,000-foot high, 165-foot “great walls” could mitigate the worst natural weather of Tornado Alley — a loosely defined area that spans several states with high tornado risk. Tao compared Tornado Alley to a geographically similar area in China and concluded that the midwest suffered from more tornados primarily because it doesn’t have east-west mountain ranges to weaken or block the weather patterns that form them. Now he’s proposing that we build some.

Tao envisions three enormous walls to protect the midwest: one in North Dakota, a second in a middle area like Oklahoma and a third near Texas or Louisiana. Smaller sections of these barriers could be built in high-risk areas to start, he says, and then gradually extended. As much as Tao believes in his proposed solution, he’s at least being realistic about it: he doesn’t expect the project to start anytime in the near future. Even so, it could be comparatively affordable — one mile of the tornado wall is estimated to cost about $160 million, but it has the potential to stop tornados that cause damages that rack up into billions. Check out Tao’s findings in the International Journal of Modern Physics at the source link below.

[Image credit: Gettystock]

Filed under: Misc

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Via: VICE

Source: World Scientific (1), (2)

Research breakthrough could make hydrogen gas an even better green fuel

Toyota might be bringing a commercial hydrogen fuel cell car to roads in 2015, but the fuel still has a few drawbacks — the major ones being storing and transporting the gas itself. Research from the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) reckons they can solve it using ammonia, which is more secure and less volatile, as the hydrogen delivery method. “Cracking” ammonia offers up one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen and while the catalysts that do this are typically pricey precious metals, this new research uses two chemical processes at the same time, offering the same results at a much lower cost. According to the research team leader, Professor Bill David: “Our approach is as effective as the best current catalysts but the active material, sodium amide, costs pennies to produce. We can produce hydrogen from ammonia ‘on demand’ effectively and affordably.”

Storage-wise, Ammonia can be housed at low pressure in plastic tanks, while any hypotheical tanks would use the same structure as LPG. “We’ve even thought about how we can make ammonia as safe as possible and stop the release of NOx gases,” (the byproduct of cracking) added Professor David. “While our process is not yet optimized, we estimate that an ammonia decomposition reactor no bigger than a two-liter bottle will provide enough hydrogen to run a mid-range family car.”

Filed under: Transportation, Science, Alt

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Source: Physorg