So, you know that microwave ‘pain ray’ thing that Raytheon invented, and that journalists keep insisting on trying out for some bizarre reason*? It turns out that using microwaves to heat an area can be used… to heat an area. Specifically, an area filled with crops that need to be protected from sudden frosts.
Tempwave sits atop a 25 feet pole and is powered by the grid. When its sensors detect weather conditions that may result in frost, its low-level microwave delivers energy directly to the crop without wasting energy on heating the intervening air. As long as the Tempwave system has enough power delivered to it, frost protection is guaranteed.
(Via Fark Geek) The article uses grapes as an example, but oranges and other citrus crops are also vulnerable to sudden frosts, too; these gadgets could expand the range of some fairly profitable agricultural products. Plus, of course, you can still use them to disperse blackshirt anarchists, assuming they start spreading out from their natural habitat (pretentious urban enclaves). Which they probably won’t; the poor things are a bit of an evolutionary dead end…
Moe Lane Continue reading It’s a pain ray AND a crop yield increaser!