• Question: Are you's having any plans for the Qatar 2022 World Cup as it will be extremely hot. Have you's thought about any ideas, like artificial clouds?

    Asked by liverum12 to Alex, Claire, Kate, Marcus, Neil on 14 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Marcus Johns

      Marcus Johns answered on 14 Jun 2014:


      During my undergraduate degree one of the final year design projects actually tried to find an answer to this problem. I think the group looking at this ended up designing a very large air conditioning unit that used far too much electricity to power it – it’s much harder to cool something down than heat it up!
      Engineers have looked at termite nests in order to try to cool large buildings down. Termite nests are much cooler than the land around them because they create an intricate system of tunnels that allows hot air to escape out the top whilst pulling cooler air into the nest from the bottom. This creates a flow of air and cools the nest down. There’s a building in Zimbabwe that uses a similar system meaning that it uses less than 10 % of the electricity to cool it down compared to a building of the same size that uses the air conditioning units found in homes.
      Artificial clouds would be a good idea, but the process to create these involves spraying tiny particles, called nanoparticles, into the atmosphere. Water condenses on these particles creating clouds and eventually rain. However, we don’t yet know exactly how these particles affect the human body if they get inside us, which means that we shouldn’t use them.

    • Photo: Alex Lyness

      Alex Lyness answered on 16 Jun 2014:


      Hey liverum12,

      I hope you are enjoying this world cup! I’ve watched every one since 1994.

      I’ll answer your question slightly differently… I really hope that the 2022 world cup isn’t played in Qatar! Sometimes just could things can be done (if you throw enough money/time/resource at it) it does not mean that they should.

      Building and air conditioning 8-12 brand new stadiums in a country that only has 2 million people in it (and won’t use them after) for an event that only lasts 5 weeks is not a very good idea. It is quite likely that the 2022 World Cup will be played in Australia or USA instead. Both country’s already have many suitable stadiums, many more people to watch and much more suitable climates in June/July.

      I would rather see the technology, money and effort described by Marcus be put into working out how we can live on other planets with hotter climates than ours (Mars, Venus) rather than how we can just watch football.

    • Photo: Claire Brockett

      Claire Brockett answered on 19 Jun 2014:


      Hi liverum12,
      I think there are several ways to approach the problem – as Marcus has highlighted, but I agree with Alex – if the money would be available to do this, I’d rather it be spent on something a bit more useful than a few weeks of a football tournament. Although perhaps if something was developed, it could then be applied to other problems – that’s the great thing about engineering – one solution might fix a lot of other problems 🙂

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