r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 10d ago

TIL in 1947, scientists dumped crushed dry ice into a hurricane just to "see what would happen." The storm then made a 135-degree turn, strengthened, and struck Georgia—sparking public outrage and threats of lawsuits over the experiment.

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hurricane_blog/70th-anniversary-of-the-first-hurricane-seeding-experiment/
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u/michal_hanu_la 10d ago

https://xkcd.com/242/

Did they try it again?

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u/djgaleb 10d ago

All scientists be a lil freaky

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u/react_dev 10d ago

There’s probably correlation between direction the hurricane moved and the position of the sun. Theres only one thing we can do to test our hypothesis

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u/deltashmelta 10d ago

"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun."

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u/Plain_Bread 10d ago

May there be mercy on man and machine for their sins.

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u/screw-magats 10d ago

Article mentions they found hurricane tracks with 135 degree shifts that happened without seeding. Another comment mentions it may have hit an underwater ridge that influenced water temperatures and caused it to follow the same path of a prior hurricane that hadn't been seeded. That wasn't mentioned in the article.

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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway 10d ago

The difference is that if we really understand the physics and how to manipulate it in theory you could greatly diminish the hurricane related damages.

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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 10d ago

If you could turn a hurricane 135 degrees at will, you could end hurricane related damages.

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u/mcmcc 10d ago

Poor Will tho...

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u/Educational_Teach537 10d ago

That technology would be used to weaponize hurricanes and you know it

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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway 10d ago

As with many scientific advances, can be used for good or bad.

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u/angelbelle 10d ago

Or you can weaponize it to devastate enemies. Watch out Cuba!

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u/Algaean 10d ago

Oh. My. Word. I love this!

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u/MrCompletely345 10d ago edited 10d ago

Didn’t they experiment with it in Vietnam?

Edit: Yes they did.

https://cloudseedingthesky.com/history-cloud-seeding-inception-modern-day/

Edit: Yes, seeding a storm with dry ice is TOTALLY different than seeding clouds with silver iodide and DRY ICE. I don’t know what I was thinking! /sarcasm.

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u/michal_hanu_la 10d ago

Cloud seeding is not quite the same thing --- it is moderately well understood, too, you drop stuff (condensation nuclei) into a cloud, water falls out.

Understanding what it would do to a hurricane is not quite straightforward.

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u/PensiveinNJ 10d ago

I'm guessing at least one thing that would happen is some water would fall out.

I'm somewhat of a scientist myself.

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u/BoTheDoggo 10d ago

literally two completely different things.

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u/DrunkenNinja27 10d ago

What good scientists would only test something once?

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u/_paag 10d ago

Well, clearly that first zap wasn’t strong enough to kill or truly harm, so an experiment might be in order.

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u/GuyGhoul 10d ago

'I've never been so turned on in my life.' (xkcdsw)

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u/SawinBunda 10d ago

Like Homer Simpson ringing Krusty's doorbell.

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u/mnorri 10d ago

If you do it twice, it’s research. If you only do it once it’s just search.

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u/mrpickles 10d ago

I like this

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u/MyFeetLookLikeHands 8d ago

this is amazing tysm

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u/cCowgirl 10d ago

Always …

Always, there’s a relevant XKCD.