schneiderism

Absolutely stunning imagery of the recent fly-by of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by Cassini presented in a photo animation. You will find little mention of this in the news, and that is mostly because the news does not care. Lost opportunity for the news. We’ve investigated the robotic Cassini probe here before, and it continues to be very, very busy. On March 12th Cassini flew within 30 miles of Enceladus, approaching from above Enceladus’ north pole and thus seeing the moon as a crescent. Some facts on this beautiful moon:

• Enceladus is very bright, reflecting nearly 100% of the light that strikes it
• This is because we believe it is almost entirely covered in water ice
• It’s surface is considered to be geologically young at less than 100 million years old
• There is evidence indicating that the interior of the moon may still be liquid
• It is about 500 km wide, or roughly the width of the state of Arizona
• Enceladus is known as the “geyser moon” because of enormous eruptions
• These are created by the release of energy caused by frictional geothermal heating

More on Enceladus and Cassini’s observations here, here, and here.

A fascinating image. On the left is all of the water on Earth, roughly 1.41 billion cubic kilometers (including oceans, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds… etc) proportionally represented by the blue marble sitting over Italy. On the right, all of the air in the atmosphere, roughly 5,140 trillion metric tonnes, proportionally represented by the pinkish marble. I would have thought both to be somewhat larger, the reality being that we only have a tenuously thin skin of both water and air.

I found this to be quite surprising, a bit startling, and a little scary.

Image and story via Dan Phiffer, who tests the mathematical veracity of these proportional representations.

From MIT’s Technology Review (an excellent online tech resource) comes this interesting list of technologies to watch for over the coming months… the “emerging technologies” of this year. You’ve no doubt heard of some of these, and others can’t be too surprising, but taken together this list should give at least a little techno-infused optimism for the balance of 2008 (I’m feeling better already):

1. Modeling Surprise - Data+human psychology+ machine learning=less surprise
2. Probalistic Chips - Slight decrease in precision yields better power usage
3. Nanoradio - Nanoscale radios built from carbon nanotubes
4. Wireless Power - This one should be self-explanatory, but still very, very cool
5. Atomic Magnometers - The miniaturization of magnetic sensory arrays
6. Offline Web Applications - Next generation apps bring back the desktop
7. Graphene Transistors - Potentially 100x faster than today’s silicon transistors
8. Connectomics - Physically mapping the neural circuits of the nervous system
9. Reality Mining - Identifying and understanding patterns in life to help you live your life
10. Celluloytic Enzymes - Effective cellulosic biofuels require effective enzymes

The practical neatnik in me is perhaps the most enthused about the potentiality of my environment without the tangle of power cords everywhere. The futurist in me is getting pretty excited about the potential of graphene transistors. There is concern in Silicon Valley about the probable termination of Moore’s Law as we approach the performance envelop of silicon based chips. Having something that is so theoretically expansive in contrast, and from PENCIL LEAD, is quite comforting.

This video, via Winding Road, is utterly amazing. The organic, chaotic, nature with which this traffic flows, melds together, and merges at an intersection in Hyderabad, India is incredible to see. That it seems to work, despite a number of close calls, is a testament to the focus and mettle of the drivers and pedestrians transiting this intersection. The way the traffic fluidly comes together and then separates reminds me of how the blood mixes in the ventricles of the heart.

It would seem that reality does map nicely to the various themes of science fiction:

“I’ve made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029.”

Ray Kurzweil via BBC News

That is both fascinating and definitely something to ponder. I had imagined it taking us longer to reach human level AI as 2029 is only just over twenty years away. In the article Kurzweil goes on to say that humans and machines will eventually merge and become indistinguishable from one another. He does not say whether or not this will be by choice.

These images just blow me away.

The universe is inconceivably vast and empty and we are incredibly isolated here on our little blue speck of dust. This cold, hard reality is an abstraction to most of us because as far as we’re concerned, we’ve got it pretty good. This video is along the lines of the one I posted earlier in the week that contrasts Earth against some impossibly large celestial bodies elsewhere in the universe. More fuel for universal irrelevancy.

Video found via Western Paradigm, a smart and superbly generalist blog I recently discovered.

The International Space Station has been underway for so long that I think it is often just forgotten about. Work commenced in 1998, so its been under construction for nearly a full decade. But it’s up there and manned 24/7/365. We should collectively pay more attention to the development of the ISS as that is where the future of humanity is slowly (very, very slowly) being shaped. That, and we’re freaking building this thing in space. Most are at least familiar with the station if only because of the problems that have plagued its construction, including the problems with the NASA space shuttle that have caused major construction delays. There have been some close calls for the astronauts and scientists manning the ISS, and some difficult learning experiences for the international team tasked with building Earth’s first large scale “permanent” space platform. But that is the whole point, really, to learn along the way. Building this station is an incredible undertaking.

Some quick ISS facts:

• - It is the largest and most complex international science project in history
• - 27 nations are actively involved in its construction, most not having a space program
• - When completed it will weigh over 1 million pounds
• - It will ultimately be 356 feet across and 290 feet long
• - The solar panels on the ISS would cover an acre
• - It is in orbit approximately 250 statute miles from Earth
• - It completes 15.77 orbits of the Earth each day
• - The station has been continuously inhabited since November, 2002
• - It will eventually have 15,000 cubic feet of living space
• - The costs to create the ISS will exceed $130 billion, far beyond the original budget
• - Five space tourists have visited, paying $25 million each for the opportunity
• - The microgravity environment on the station is 88% of Earth’s gravity
• - As of today it has been in orbit 3,362 days, and has been inhabited for 2,651 days
• - For this pinnacle of human technological achievement, it looks rickety

There is a tremendous amount of valuable research already underway on the station, including experiments in biology, medicine, physics, biotechnology, materials research, cosmology and meteorology. Obviously, much more is planned and as more research modules come online the opportunities will increase. 2010 is tentatively planned to be the year of completion. But that will certainly be subject to change. Oddly, the year that the station is completed is the year that NASA decommissions the space shuttle with its replacement, the Orion/Constellation program, not coming online until 2015.

Some images I grabbed of the ISS for review:

This image, from 2001/2002, shows the initial operational solar arrays.

This is the station configuration as of November, 2007.

Very cool image of an astronaut capturing a reflection of the ISS and the Earth below in his face mask.

A detail shot of the connection between one of the solar arrays and a module. Note the astronaut working on the station in the upper center of the image.

Another detail. The exterior is incredibly complex. There is an astronaut in the image towards the center middle providing the scale of this module. The arm in the image was manufactured by Canada.

A space shuttle preparing to dock with the station. The shuttle has been the primary large payload delivery vehicle for the ISS. The Russians provide supplies and take away refuse via manned and unmanned Soyuz capsules.

A chart showing the breakdown of components and with nation’s of origin.

More from NASA. Check out the interactive informational tour.

2007 was a terrifically important year in the field of robotics. It was a year of new accomplishments in mobility, application, and the continuation of exponential increases in functional robotic populations. Take note, we are riding a technological wave that will dramatically impact our collective futures for the better, and in some ways for the worse, I surmise. The forces behind the continuous improvement and innovation within robotics are gaining tremendous momentum, and the associated tremendous budgets. This is not just about the military, either. Advances in robotics are happening globally and are sponsored by both public and private enterprise. It will be interesting to see what 2008 brings.

There was an excellent article late last month at Scientific American that summarizes well some of the incredible accomplishments and developments in robotics from the past year.

It has taken me too long to write about this. I say that because this is an effort that should be an absolute top priority for all of us, at least those of us who value rational, reasonable thought and the support of science as an issue demanding attention from the presidential candidates.

Sciencedebate 2008 has been underway for several weeks, and it is an effort to get the candidates to engage in a substantive debate on science and technology. This is effectively an effort to inject intelligence back into the election process as a barometer of how a presidential prospect will move our society forward. I encourage you to check this out by clicking on the link and if you are so inclined, sign the petition. You’ll be in good company as some of the more notable supporters of this effort are 23 Nobel and Crafoord laureates, 21 government leaders of both parties, 25 University and college presidents, and several thousand concerned citizens, including yours truly.

I have posted previously about the planet Mercury, so I was excited to learn that the robotic Mercury research spacecraft Messenger had sent back it’s first image of the planet, the first since Mariner 10 visited Mercury 30 years ago. Messenger stands for the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemsitry, and Ranging mission. The image above was was taken on January 11 as Messenger approached Mercury (at just over 1 million miles from the planet). Scheduled for Monday is a pass at about 125 miles over Mercury’s surface. The plan is for Messenger to make two more close passes (in October 2008 and September 2009) before settling into orbit in March of 2011 and initiating its mission of mapping the surface of Mercury in detail. And in color.

Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system, and the maneuvering that Messenger will have to do (see graphic below from the Messenger website) to comfortably settle into an observational orbit is complex. It involves the three flybys mentioned to help the craft build up enough speed to match Mercury as it settles into orbit, called “Mercury Orbit Insertion,” or MOI. Messenger will also use a series of trajectory corrections and deep space maneuvers achieved by the controlled firing of its thrusters.

Over the course of his life, Stephen Hawking has made a number of sharp and pointed comments with regards to humanity. One of the most memorable for me would be:

“It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.”

Stephen Hawking

Today he celebrates his 66th birthday. The man is beyond remarkable, and ranks up there with Carl Sagan as an inspiring astrophysicist who has made his life’s work making cosmology understandable and of value to the rest of us. From his limited physical state, the man has tirelessly worked to broaden our understanding of the universe we live in, and the physics of that reality, in ways that are beautiful and poetic while eschewing complex technical descriptions. He also has a terrificly dry sense of humor which he wields at every opportunity. His approach to life is probably as simple as stated in this statement, one we could take the time to consider:

“When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have”

Stephen Hawking

More about my favorite living cosmologist here, here, and from YouTube, Stephen Hawking lectures on the origins of the universe.

This post was initiated by one of my xmas presents. My good brother Mattisimo gave me a subscription to a newish arts and culture magazine called Cabinet. On page 13, as part of a really terrific article on the history of giant spheres, was the above image with a paragraph explanation. According to Cabinet, in 1960 NASA launched Echo 1 (the balloon pictured above) which qualified as America’s first communications satellite. This was not enough information.

The image above depicts a giant aluminumized satellite balloon, the same balloons that most likely account for +90% of all UFO sightings during the 1950’s and 1960’s. This is because from 1956 until 1964, engineers and scientists at the Langley Research Center developed a series of these spherical satellite balloons called “satelloons.” They were part of a much larger project, named Project Echo, that was the United States’ initial foray into orbital communications. Project Echo served as our proof of concept for orbital communications satellites, and anticipated the looming space satellite race between the United States and the Soviet Union (who kicked it off with Sputnik in 1957). These satelloons, like the more than 100-foot diameter aluminumized balloon pictured above, were one of the inaugural projects for NASA, which was only officially established in 1958 in an effort to fast track our nation’s efforts to get America into space. In his 1995 history of NASA Langley, Space Revolution, Dr. James Hansen wrote:

The Echo balloon was perhaps the most beautiful object ever to be put into space. The big and brilliant sphere had a 31,416-square foot surface of Mylar plastic covered smoothly with a mere 4 pounds of vapor-deposited aluminum. All told, counting 30 pounds of inflating chemicals and two 11-ounce, 3/8-inch-thick radio tracking beacons (packed with 70 solar cells and 5 storage batteries), the sphere weighed only 132 pounds. For those enamored with its aesthetics, folding the beautiful balloon into its small container for packing into the nose cone of a Thor-Delta rocket was somewhat like folding a large Rembrandt canvas into a tiny square and taking it home from an art sale in one’s wallet.

These satelloons were initially conceived as research tools to collect data on the density of the upper atmosphere. The original research proposal put forward by a Langley engineer named William J. O’Sullivan called for a 20-inch balloon, which was soon increased to 30 inches. The size of the balloons would jump exponentially as the demands for more research, and the accompanying payloads, would increase in intensity. Eventually, we made the jump and just stuffed the gear into satellites that were in turn stuffed into the payload bays of various re-purposed intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Nine years after NASA was experimenting with balloon based communications satellites they put astronauts on the moon in 1969 as part of the Apollo manned mission program. Is there an equivalent for that kind of progress today?

I really struggled with this post, but in the end felt compelled to put this out there. The election process that we are all being subjected to, the process that will ultimately choose the leader of the free world, is a joke. Instead of intense focus on the candidates’ perspective on the real issues that our nation faces, there is distraction after distraction and meaningless investigation into issues of faith. This is happening with both parties, and with people who may or may not actually be “religious” at all, but our process mandates that they act the part of the pious politician in order to participate and at least have a hope of being elected. During a debate a couple months back three Republican candidates, asked about their views on evolution, expressed concern with its validity, one of them saying that it is as yet unproven. Huh?

I think the Democrats are worse, though. This is because their sudden conversion has more to do with having parity with their Republican counterparts and not alienating the vast majority of people in this country who believe in a god. I get that, but it totally chaps me. What of science, of reason, or rational thought? What of the responsibility to not mislead? It is depressing, really, to realize we have another eleven months of this process and the exposure to candidates who may best be described as disingenuous. What has happened to our country?

I seek reassurance. Something I find interesting is the catalog of confirmed non-believers, of atheists, who have constructively and positively influenced our society and our culture. Here is an incomplete list of known atheists that I find reassuring in these times of feigned religiosity, offered in no particular order:

Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Sean Penn, Woody Allen, Albert Camus, Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Benjamin Franklin, Ayn Rand, Charles Darwin, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Bertrand Russel, Kurt Vonnegut, James Madison, John Adams, James Joyce, John Lennon, Walt Disney, Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, George Orwell, Charles Schultz, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Susan B. Anthony, William Howard Taft, Thomas Edison, Stanislaw Lem, Ian McEwan, Richard Dawkins, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Hitchens, Steve Wozniak, PZ Meyers, Angelina Jolie, Lance Armstrong, David Attenborough, Eddie Izzard, Penn Jillete, Ira Glass, Dick Cavett, Ingmar Bergman, Clive Barker, J.G. Ballard, Brian Eno, Ferdinand Piech, Gore Vidal, Ted Turner, Bruce Sterling and Steven Soderbergh

I would like to point out that there are five former presidents on this very incomplete list. We can dream. I leave you with the following quote:

“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there was no religion in it.”

John Adams

Former President and Founding Father of the United States

More here, here and here.

That question is on the whiteboard of Bill Johns office at Lockheed Martin, and is his mantra as he engages in what is perhaps the most important program for the U.S. space program in the last thirty years. The question has a box around it with a “do not erase” pointing to it. Johns is a senior manager at Lockheed Martin, which in August 2006 won the $8 billion contract to build the next generation of NASA’s reusable space vehicles. Called “Orion,” and depicted in the rendering above in orbit around the moon, this crew capsule is being designed to take six astronauts into orbit in support of the International Space Station, or four astronauts to the moon. The space shuttle, initially the darling of an aggressive NASA in the 1970’s and 1980’s, continues to be plagued with problems and technology challenges. That, and it is incredibly expensive and inefficient to operate. NASA is decommissioning the three remaining space shuttles in 2010. It should be noted that as a wide-eyed 10 year old I wrote a letter to NASA expressing my own excitement with the shuttle program. Not only did NASA respond, but they sent me an enormous trove of images, press releases, and an autographed photo of the first shuttle crew. That was 1979. I think I speak for many when I acknowledge the disappointment that has become the shuttle program.

The Orion crew capsule, part of the larger Constellation program, is scheduled to replace the shuttle by 2015, leaving a five year gap in the United State’s ability to get into space without any help. This is a bit of a digression, but it is important to point out that during those five years we will see a proliferation of space exploration and orbital entry vehicles from Japan, China, India, Russia, the European Space Agency, and private ventures like Virgin Galactic. We are at the beginning of a new space race, and the competition is intense.

So, there is a lot of pressure on Bill and his team. And $8 billion is not that much money for a program of this importance. That is the equivalent of about six weeks of expenses for U.S. operations in Iraq. Needless to say, the Orion and Constellation programs have some daunting challenges to overcome, and it is how they are overcoming these challenges that is immensely interesting. Here are some details on how they are doing it…

1. Build on the successes of the seemingly antique Apollo program:

• - Apollo is the model for Constellation, put a crew capsule on top of a giant rocket
• - The hatch for the crew capsule is from the Apollo capsule with minor changes
• - One of two heat shield technologies being tested is the one used for Apollo
• - The reentry parachutes are slightly modified versions of those from Apollo
• - The launchpad for Orion will be a rebuilt pad that originally launched Apollo 10

2. Take advantage of “off-the-shelf” technologies, which are superior to those currently in use:

• - Flight control computers are engineered versions of those used for the Boeing 777
• - Much of the avionics electronics are from already existing and massively tested craft
• - The solid rocket boosters will be modified versions of those from the space shuttle

3. Utilize a “small,” agile and innovative team:

• - The team that created Apollo numbered in excess of 400,000
• - The Orion team is made up of 1600 at Lockheed Martin and 600 at NASA
• - Orion utilizes rapid prototyping and environment testing with actual astronauts
• - There is a focus outside of the space program for innovation (like NASCAR)

original story via Fast Company

Don’t for one second think that I feel anything but optimism with regards to the increasing prominence of robots in our lives. Yeah, they’re seemingly everywhere… but they can be so damn cute. And helpful. This post is a semi-comprehensive robot survey, a high level review of just how thoroughly robotics has become relied upon to provide a diversity of services. Services either undesirable or considered potentially harmful to humans. Services that, in some cases, are just impossible for humans to perform. How have robots had their presence expanded? By us. Voluntarily. The following list is of many of the places you can find robots in our world today working very effectively, and without emotion:

• - exploring the surface of Mars
• - in orbit surveying and investigating Saturn and its moons
• - investigating and exploding IED’s in Iraq
• - hunting pirates on the high seas
• - cleaning our gutters
• - sweeping and mopping our floors
• - mowing our lawns
• - cleaning our swimming pools
• - admitting patients and showing them to their room in Japanese hospitals
• - replacing soldiers in combat situations
• - competing in complex autonomy competitions for DARPA
• - laying bricks
• - doing surgery
• - filling orders and managing warehouse logistics
• - replacing our physical presence in the workplace
• - flying combat air patrol
• - searching oil and gas pipelines for leaks and failures
• - starring in music videos
• - influencing musicians and making music
• - making graffiti
• - performing search and rescue
• - providing childcare
• - preparing to (re)explore the moon
• - working to contain underwater oil spills
• - teaching young students, our future robotics specialists and innovators, about robotics
• - fighting fires
• - weeding farm fields

From the unbelievably mundane to the incredibly dangerous, robots are there and in many cases have been for years. Applications of robotics technology is diverse, and this diversity is creating momentum for the investigation into increasingly complicated applications to complete increasingly complicated tasks… on our behalf.

If you think that I have left out any important robots, please let me know and I will update the survey.

With the post on The Energy of Nuclear Weapons Ed Wilms commented and posed a question regarding any known effects of the dozens and dozens of test detonations of nuclear weapons on the atmosphere. I knew that there were detrimental effects, and responded, but wanted to take that question and put some real meat behind the answer.

I found a quite comprehensive report from 1997 titled The Effects of Nuclear Explosions from the Nuclear Weapons Archive written and compiled by Carey Sublette (no biography yet found). The report details the harmful environmental effects of nuclear detonations as they relate to impact on the atmosphere. Basically, the intense heat created by an explosion causes large quantities of nitrogen oxides to form from the nitrogen and oxygen already present. This is very similar to what happens on a much smaller scale inside of an internal combustion engine. On average, each megaton of a weapon yield will produce ~5000 tons of nitrogen oxides which are carried into the upper atmosphere as the post explosion mushroom cloud gains altitude. In the larger weapons these oxides will reach the ozone layer, significantly depleting it. We know that there were multiple +megaton test detonations by the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950’s and 1960’s, which caused significant damage to the atmosphere by depleting the ozone layer on a mass scale. Unfortunately, ozone measurements from that time were not significant nor specific enough to provide substantive data to detail this data, though at the time scientists were concerned that the test detonations were causing irreversible damage.

Incidentally, the image above is the resulting mushroom cloud from the image shown in my previous post. I have yet to identify when and where this test detonation happened, but the research team at schneiderism is hard at work.

UPDATE: This image, as well as that from the previous post, are of a French nuclear test codenamed Licorne, which was fired on August 24, 1970.

This story started back in 1979 when the robotic space explorer Pioneer 11 did a fly-by of Saturn. This was followed a year later by Voyager I, and again in 1981 by Voyager II. These craft sent back primitive but compelling images, obviously far beyond anything we had yet seen from Earth, that created more questions than answers and compelled a generation to learn more. Now, Pioneer and the Voyager twins only captured images as they slingshot through the solar system on their way out as emissaries of humanity, so to speak. It would not be until 2004 that we would again visit Saturn, and this was when the robotic probe Cassini settled into Saturn’s orbit, the first craft to do so. Officially named the Cassini-Huygens, it is an international collaboration between three space agencies (NASA, ESA, and the Italian Space Agency) with 17 nations contributing to the building of the craft. There is an army of 250 scientists throughout the world studying the telemetry being beamed back to Earth. One of them is Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and leader of the Cassini mission who gave an excited, emotional, and amazing presentation at TED earlier this year. Definitely watch it. She showed some amazing images of Saturn, like the one here:

This Image was taken by Cassini as Saturn eclipses and is backlit by the sun. Stunning. Her focus, though, quickly moved to the moons surrounding Saturn and what Cassini-Huygens had discovered. The moon Titan stole the show, as Cassini dropped the Huygens probe to the surface to end decades of speculation of what that surface might be like. It has been a successful mission, and Huygens has sent back incredible imagery of an environment not that much unlike Mars, but with characteristics also quite Earth-like. Carolyn’s excitement by the implications of the imagery was readily apparent. The image below is one of my favorites taken by Cassini and is Saturn’s moon Tethys. That large crater that dominates the image is called Odysseus and it is about 400km across, roughly 1/25th of Tethys’ surface. On exactly the other side of Tethys is a series of large trenches cut into the moon’s surface and these were most likely the result of the impact that created the Odysseus crater. That’s cosmological drama.

Some intersting facts about Cassini-Huygens and Saturn to drop into conversation this week:

• - The total cost of the Cassini mission will be about $3.27 billion ($2.6 billion from the U.S.)
• - More than 5000 people worldwide have worked on or contributed to the Cassini mission
• - Saturn averages about 890 million miles distance from Earth
• - Cassini traveled nearly 2.2 billion miles to get to Saturn slingshotting off other planets
• - Traveling at the speed of light you could make it to Saturn in 84 minutes
• - Cassini took six years and eight months to reach Saturn
• - On the way it flew by and took images of Earth, Venus, and Jupiter
• - The atmosphere of Saturn is primarily hydrogen and helium
• - Saturn is a gas giant (made up mostly of gas) and is less dense than water
• - That means that in a large enough swimming pool, Saturn would float
• - Saturn has a core made up mostly of rock and ice with a radius of about 3700 miles
• - At its poles Saturn exhibits auroras similar to those on Earth

More about Cassini-Huygens and Saturn:

Cassini mission images

Cassini overview

In the previous post we learned that the average thunderstorm releases power that roughly amounts to a 20 kiloton nuclear explosion. Well, that got me thinking…

A 1 kiloton nuclear explosion is equivalent to an explosion of 1000 tons of TNT. Therefore a 20 kiloton nuclear weapon will yield an explosion that is equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. The United States dropped a 20 kiloton nuclear weapon on the Japanese industrial city of Nagasaki during the closing days of WWII on August 9, 1945. In terms of the nuclear arms race that followed WWII and dominated the Cold War, 20 kilotons was incredibly small. That incredibly small nuclear explosion still vaporized most of a city and killed over 80,000 people. Let’s review more for the sake of perspective:

During the Cold War nuclear weapons proliferated, and so did their size… disproportionately so with regards to destructive potential. The largest weapon test detonated by the United States was in 1954 and it measured 15 megatons. A megaton is equivalent to 1,000,000 tons of TNT. A 15 megaton nuclear weapon releases energy equivalent to 15 million tons of TNT. The Soviet Union exploded a device with a yield of 50 megatons and a theoretic potential yield of 100 megatons. That is a bomb with the power of 100,000,000 million tons of TNT, or 5000 times the size of the weapon exploded at Nagasaki. That is equal to roughly 50 billion kilowatt-hours of energy.

The average hurricane releases about 12,000 times the energy of the largest nuclear weapon developed during the Cold War. Per day. It simply amazes me that our planet can absorb that level of energy release multiple times each year.

In comparison to hurricanes, the energy the average thunderstorm releases equals about 10,000,000 kilowatt-hours. That is roughly the energy equivalent of a 20-kiloton nuclear warhead. A large, severe thunderstorm might be 10 to 100 times more energetic. All of this is only a fraction of the energy generated and released by a hurricane. The kilowatt-hours equivalent from a hurricane is on the magnitude of 600 trillion. Per day.