Tsunami Warning From Space? 351
Peter bayley writes "Tell me I'm crazy or tell me someone has already done it — but wouldn't a satellite equipped with a laser be a great way to warn people of tsunamis? I was pondering how to warn people in remote coastal areas once evidence of a seismic incident has been received by the monitoring stations that have now been set up following the large Boxing Day tsunami. The idea is to illuminate the areas that are likely to be at risk with a bright (but not dangerous) light. People would be told to head to higher ground if such a light appears in the sky. Put the satellite in a geosynchronous orbit. Make it tunable so that different colors can convey different meanings. You would be able to warn anyone, anywhere they can see the sky. The laser could be directed to illuminate only those areas at risk, skipping unnecessary areas to save power. Power could be varied so that it is visible day and night and through cloud (raise the power where the satellite detects cloud cover). I emailed some people at NOAA about it but they said it would stand on too many toes by circumventing local emergency service organizations in the various countries. I replied that countries could easily opt out, in which case the laser would be turned off for those countries — but received no further reply. Anyway, I thought the massed minds of Slashdot would relish the chance to demolish my idea."
Cheaper solution (Score:5, Insightful)
So... it's a super hi-tech siren? (Score:5, Insightful)
Laser Power... (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting a laser from a sattelite to one place on earth so it could be seen would require a LOT of power, even at night. Illuminating an entire part of the earth would take more power than you could imagine...
Even measuring the ocean's height with a satellite would be challenging.
However, I think you've uncovered the real problem. It's not warning people that's the issue ( you could easily broadcast radio and pick it up with a small receiver ) it's that there's no desire to create such a system.
Usually, the authorities would prefer to be the only ones to know. Then they can make the decisions... Do they tell people in all areas? How do they handle the evacuations? etc.
Your heart is in the right place, but your idea itself presents a lot of problems... If you really want to help, then spend a few years teaching yourself world politics. Speak to experts in the field of emergency services and become one yourself. Don't wait for others to pick up your idea, make it work yourself and become an expert. Most experts are simply people who were driven for one reason or another to keep on learning about a particular field.
As a suggestion? The easiest way to address tsunami's might be without sattelites and high-tech... Perhaps just keep an eye on the situation by following the websites that publish that kind of information, then set up your own website to co-ordinate redistribution of it - Then people who are worried about it, such as yourself, can subscribe - perhaps you could even use SMS to notify them?
Big ideas are easy to implement and opt-in is the best system.
GrpA
Re:I don't think so (Score:1, Insightful)
I was thinking the exact same thing.
But isn't the other problem that this warning could be easily be overseen? Like when people sleep or when there is a really sunny/cloudy day?
Just some seismic sensors in the sea with some kind of network connection and sirens on the other end should do just fine.
Re:Unmanned Warning System (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a damn second here. You are against warning people about tsunamis because some might use it as a chance for looting? Personally, if there is a giant wall of watery death heading my way, I'd like to know about it. If some moron decides to stay behind to grab my stuff, I'll the aforementioned wall of watery death deal with him, wash away all evidence, including the moron himself.
Please... stop... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, now brainfarts... directly on slashdot... the only thing more stupid than anything following "Hey y'all watch this" are usually exposee introduced by a falsely humble "crazy idea" which in 90% of the case is totally retarded and in the 10% remaining already more common than water but the bragging genius was to dull to understand how it worked in the first place.
Seriously, keep this for april first or Digg...
Re:Terrible idea, of course, which is why we don't (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Terrible idea, of course, which is why we don't (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd still need enormously powerful lasers, and sufficient power generation on the ground. We're talking about space-based weapon class power here, and honestly politicians would be far more excited about the offensive capabilities of such a system than 'merely' saving civilian lives.
A slightly more realistic approach would be to use massive space-based tinted mirrors to reflect sunlight toward the ground. You'd still need truly enormous mirrors for this to work at all -- $$$$$$$. It's not gonna fly.
Re:Opt out? (Score:4, Insightful)
Could you imagine a nation whose citizens are not informed about this? They will develop new fears. "Billy, don't look at the sky you might go blind". and then after Billy goes blind from looking at the laser beam, the island gets hit with a tsunami at which point they will accuse Billy of being a prophet of doom.
Well, in conclusion, I think opt-in with formal education about not looking in a particular direction in the sky would be a good thing.
Re:Laser Power... (Score:3, Insightful)
if the laser was intense enough to be visible on the ground in the day, how intense would it be at 40,000 feet? would we be frying pilots eyeballs?
disregarding the impossibility of generating that much energy in space. and the lack of Pink Floyd to go with the laser light show.
My tags for this story (Score:3, Insightful)
This is obviously absurd, as pointed out by plenty of the above posters. What I'm more concerned about, is why this got posted to the Slashdot front page. We have the Digital Economy Bill about to be passed without debate in the UK, various stories on the LHC's full power experiments, all sorts of lunacy in the US with patents, and we get a "hey guys, what about this idea" from a random slashdotter.
If this were coming from a noted astronomer, a major figure in disaster relief, or GWB, then it would be Slashdot-worthy. But seriously, what value did this Ask Slashdot add?
Also, the previous story on the sun-chandelier was such a non-story as to be shocking.
I've now started tagging stories: ohnoitskdawson
Re:I don't think so (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be a little cheaper, and a bit more sure way to communicate with the locals if they just issued sat phones to the local government?
And how about daytime? (Score:5, Insightful)
How you gonna get enough power to make daytime *brighter*?
Was the idea to cook people and see who notices?
How about bad stormy weather which the (visible light) laser can't penetrate?
You going to have geostationary satellites so far away as to multiply the power required and the tremendous power losses?
Or were you going to have low level satellites, and need thousands to make sure every inch of ground was within a few seconds of any satellite coming into position?
How about topography blocking line of sight?
There are so many FAILs all over this idea.
It's a comic book idea, should never have gotten past the hangover stage.
Not nuclear (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Opt out? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess there's some misconception about what such a "light" would look like.
Everyone seems to react like this was going to be a streetlight type of a thing. You'd need a rather big nuclear powerplant to get that sort of power density on the ground. Assume we want 1W/m^2 on the ground, and a "square" area 5,000km on the side. That's 2.5E10 m^2, so you'd 25GW of optical power output for your illumination. How anyone sees that much power being generated in orbit using current technology -- I don't know. Even getting a 1MW generator in the orbit would be a big feat. You can't exactly put a chiller tower up there. Dissipating all the waste heat would be a huge fucking problem, no kidding.
For what's achievable with current technology, we're talking about a faint star that say can be red, green or blue. So beam forming to a point where "a country could opt-in" etc. is a fantasy at this point. How hard is it *not* to look up?
Re:Opt out? (Score:3, Insightful)
Formal education would remove some of the need for tsunami warnings in themselves. For example, the American tourists who saw the water recede sharply before the Indian Ocean tsunami (an obvious warning sign), and took that time to explore the newly uncovered beach rather than getting to higher ground. Then we can just skip the laser satellite, and focus on education and audible warning systems (which do not depend on people looking the right direction)