Would you believe that the largest man made tornado in the world is in a car museum?
Yep, that picture you see in the post is of the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. The architect didn’t want to build the fire doors required by the local fire code. he thought it would mess up his design.
So instead, he built a tornado. the goal being to channel smoke out of the building in the event of a fire. The artificial tornado, which was never meant as an attraction, has now become a major attraction at the museum.
Well, I didn’t get anything posted yesterday because of some big storms that hit my hometown. I had no Internet or phone service at my house because of downed lines. And when I got to work, I discovered that the same was true for my office. I didn’t get Internet access back at my office until about midday. So there just wasn’t a lot of time to spend posting here.
The fun this is, that in all the thunderstorms and rain that went through here, I got to see a tornado hit about two blocks north of my office. The tornado did a bit of damage in downtown and in some of the suburbs around Pensacola. Thankfully I didn’t suffer any personal damage to my property.
The first video is taken from the ground right outside of an office building that is adjacent to mine. The second one is taken from a building a lot farther north. Be advised, the language on these videos isn’t real clean.
Louis Michaud, an engineer with 24 years of experience in the energy field, wants to build a power plant the harnesses man made tornadoes to generate electricity. He has several patents on his designs and many scientists claim it is at least feasible in concept. He calls his concept an Atmospheric Vortex Engine. You can look up the Wikipedia article on it here.
Currently Michaud is trying to raise the $60 million that he estimates would be needed to build a prototype. A few small scale prototypes have already been built and tested. Michaud envisions a vortex that climbs 20 twenty kilometers into the atmosphere for the finalized plant. If it works, his “power plants” would be visible to anyone in the vicinity of the plant. And they certainly would look incredible.
Would you believe that the largest man made tornado in the world is in a car museum?
