Imagine a ultralight and resistant fabric or plastic hose attached to a helium ballon. release it to high altitude and suck cold air from a mile above straight to your house. The hose might serve as an anchor and should be insulated to keep the air cool as it desents.

A fan might be needen in the begining, once the tube is filled with cold air, the fan can be removed and cold air will fall (cold air goes down, warm air goes up).
-- noyola, May 18 2009

Even if you could get it to work, there wouldn't be much oxygen in the air would there?
-- skegger, May 18 2009


This tube would have to be incredibly well insulated and thus pretty heavy.
-- hippo, May 18 2009


Why doesn't the cold air fall down in the first place? Also sp. balloon, lo-tech, descends. //Needen// is good, though.
-- spidermother, May 18 2009


Erm, no.

The cold air up there would be compressed and warmed as it descended. Look up "adiabatic" for the math, but the short version is that cold, thin, upper air has the same energy as warm, thick, lower air--the difference is a matter of expansion cooling. There's no useful difference. This idea won't work.

If the principle behind the idea was sound, the atmosphere would spontaneously turn over, even without a tube. (Or maybe this idea would trigger a turnover, and kill us all (--way to go, [noyola]).)

Something like this idea might be made to work if there was a hose loop carrying an incompressible liquid, with a radiator at the top. Maybe.
-- baconbrain, May 18 2009


I think it's a logistical nightmare but fundamentaly sound. My neighbors have an AC system just like this in their well, the difference is that the air goes deep underground instead of up into the atmosphere.
-- DIYMatt, May 18 2009


DIYMatt, the AC system in the well is using geothermal cooling, not adibadic cooling.
-- goldbb, Jul 28 2009


I think I saw this idea under the heading: Giant Tornado Machine.
-- JackyD, Jul 29 2009



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