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First Artificial Aurora May Lead to Night Sky Ads
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting that the military's HAARP project has had its first success generating artificial light displays in the ionosphere. They created little green speckles of manmade aurora within an existing auroral display. The work is designed primarily to 'enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.' Next up: sky-high neon advertisements."
The ionosphere is an amazing thing. Circling and enveloping the Earth from pole to pole, it captures and blocks much of the deadly radiation from the Sun. Without it, we'd be as dead as Deimos.
So what's the big deal with shooting a few billion particles at it from ground level? Well, those particles, if you've studied any physics at all, are highly charged and very high in energy. That means that as they travel through the ionosphere, they are blasting a hole (albeit on a tiny scale) through the atomsphere. These holes, unlike the Aurora activity caused by the Sun, are directed straight through. The Sun's rays travel perpendicular to the ionosphere, so although there is a lot of particle activity from the Sun, it is mostly absorbed and bent in to the shape of the Van Halen radiation belt. It's a good system, and produces some really beautiful natural artwork.
But poking holes in the ionosphere that lead directly out can lead to any number of consequences. The least among these is that the ionosphere somehow regains and replenishes itself with charged particles. The worst is that a "leak" in the ionosphere leads to a complete destruction of the radiation-blocking area that keeps us alive.
Put advertisments on the Moon, or fly giant reflective satellites around the Earth. Just don't be trying to put a hole in our ozone on purpose.
Ever looked at www.haarp.net? This project has kept conspiracy theorists busy for over a decade.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I don't know if we need to be too worried just yet, according to the article they are not sure yet wether they are able to create this effect without an aurora already occuring, which would immediately limit where the technology can be used. Then they need acres of antennas, and a 1 megawatt generator, and only got green speckles - presumably only once every 7.5 seconds when the radio pulse was sent up. Since the system relies on radio waves it is probably not going to have decent enough focus to paint the sky with how much you need a refreshing Coca Cola.
Interesting from a physics point of view, but I can't see advertising executives scrambling over each other to get to this one.
HAARP isn't really about pretty light shows.
It's about military-industrial applications:
* Detection and Imagine of Underground Structures Using ELF/VLF Radio Waves
* Angels Don't Play This Haarp
-kgj
-kgj
Triangulation
Depending on how bright this, couldn't it be bad for animals, insects, life in general? Many animals use the night and day cycles so extensively that if they were "fooled" into thinking it was day when it was night, it could easily destroy eco-systems. You'll often read about how animals get confused during eclipses, think it has become night time. Anytime we significantly alter the Earth's "default settings", we're asking for trouble. Not that I can't see this as being useful if it could be isolated for lighting urban areas, which in turn could save power potentially. It's application in war, to light up the night sky is also incredible.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
You see, I read this and I thought: "No way. We never set any nukes off in space. That'd be crazy".
10 minutes with our friend google.
We're crazy. From wikipedia - "On July 9, 1962, Thor missile 195 launched a Mk4 re-entry vehicle containing a W49 thermonuclear warhead to an altitude of 248 miles (400 km). The warhead detonated with a yield of 1.45 Mt. This was the Starfish-Prime event of nuclear test operation Dominic-Fishbowl". Ionosphere's ~80 to ~400 kilometres up by the way. Reading around about this test seemed to indicate that our madness did achieve a pretty badass light show (your patriotic tax dollars at work)- couldn't find a photo though. This wasn't the only high altitude test by any stretch of the imagination either. Another fun fact: In total the USA has carried out 1,030 nuke tests with 1,125 seperate devices.
It's things like this that make me marvel at the fact that we've made it this far without wiping ourselves off the face of the planet.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
The film Trinity and Beyond has video of this, I think. Incidently, when a nuke detonates in the vacuum of space, it creates no mechanical blast. That is, no shockwave (well, the mass of the weapon itself gets blown outward, but that isn't much). Virtually all of the bomb's energy gets converted into one big electromagnetic pulse. That's how we know about EMP- Starfish-Prime blacked out most of Hawaii.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
No.
Military aircraft from the West Coast and mid west fly east, generally to Dover Delaware, then over the Atlantic and "stage" in Germany, sometimes touching down in Turkey before ending up in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We also have some heavy lift in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. But regardless of where they end up, it is extremely unlikely they flew over any poles. Nope, no, don't think so.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
There was a great write up in a popular sci/tech trade mag a few years back about the purpose of HAARP. Basically, the project uses high-energy RF to manipulate the ionosphere in such a way that radar can be use on targets OVER the observer's local horizon (kind of like the effect that occurs sometimes at night when you can pick up a far away radio station). In addition, the low radio frequencies that HAARP operates at allows it to penetrate the earth, which affords it the ability to detect underground bunkers at remote locations (of course, using some serious computing power to make sense of the radar returns). I would guess that the "Tiny Green Pockets" of auroral activity that they've caused are the visual byproduct of the ionospheric radar reflectivity pockets that they were trying to generate. The article mentions that they were operating at 1MW output energy, but the DoD's HAARP site mentions that a total output of 3.6MW is possible. I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually operating at the higher end of the scale...
Of course. Yes, without question. Most (but not all) came from stateside bases.
And yes, Russia concented to use of their airspace.
And these bombers crossed the Atlantic (refueling several times in the air), passed over parts of many counties including parts of the former Soviet Union, to reach their targets in Afghanistan and Iraq. But they did not fly over the poles.
The bases in Germany, Turkey, Kewait, etc. were setup for smaller aircraft (F-16, F/A-18 etc.)
Yes, in general, smaller aircraft spend more time at these air fields. But they are all built for heavy lift, and can accommodate bombers as well, none of which actually live at these bases (they are all "transient"). However,bombers do live at Diego (as well as Guam), and travel from both the west and east coast of the United States to get there, without passing over the poles.
I'm not saying they can't pass over the poles, I'm saying that in the case of our present "situation" in the Mid-East, they did not pass over the poles.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Yes you can, but the moon is about 2100 miles across
Even the best laser will disperse to a spot a few miles across on the moon. When it hits there, it needs to be bright enough to be visible here. and it needs to be much larger.
Imagine the moon as a circle 2100 pixels across. For the writing to be visible on earth, the illuminated line probably needs to be 25 to 50 miles across. And bright enough to shine back 235,000 miles. Mind you, the moon is about the size of your thumbnail when you hold your hand out in front of you. Think something with the resolution of a 48 pixel icon file, maybe less.
The proportions are easy enough to figure out. Then we get to the power requirements of such a beam.
Typical entertainment grade lasers for light shows are 5 - 20 watts, and can be higher power. If you want a spot 6 kilometers wide on the moon, then normal 6 mm wide beams (about 1/4) would have to expand 1,000 times the diameter, 1,000,000 times the area, and would have to be about 40 megawatts. 6 KM = 3.728 miles.
If you want a 60km spot then you are taking about 10 the diameter, another 100x the area, and so 100x the power for the dot to scale properly.
This means a 4 gigawatt laser to draw your pretty design on the surface of the moon. You could probaly get away with a simple Gigawatt laser. The only ones currently made are scientific research grade, and generate pulses in the nanosecond range. a 10 gigawatt laser to push a solar sail as a means of interpalnetary propulsion. There is also this interesting paper.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm glad to see somebody beat me to the punch. Perhaps a bit of additional info may shed light on the subject. Disclaimer: I'm a plasma physicist.
The initial 'deal' with detonating nuclear weapons in the ionosphere was to see whether we could create our own artificial radiation belts. Due to Earth's magnetic field, the plasma created by the nuclear detonation will remain trapped (for the most part) in a bananna-shaped orbit, bouncing from north to south pole. Over time, the radiation cloud is ejected into space, again becuase of interactions with the Earth's magnetic field. (Particles can get lost and settle down over the poles, too -- watch out Antarctica!)
Sure enough, lobbing nukes up there created big, bananna shaped radiation belts, just as Nicholas Christofilos had predicted in the 50's. They decayed within a few weeks, and didn't attain the desired military effect of creating a band so intensely radioactive that it would knock out nearby missiles and sattelites. (It vindicated much of the early plasma physics, though!)
In addition to making a radioactive blanket that encircled the Earth, it also made one helluva light show at the poles, where the magnetic mirror bounce was taking place! (Incidentally, such a belt can be more damaging to sattelites than the original EMP itself. Google HANE if you're interested.)
It is ironic that you brought this up, because undoing the damage from a nuclear detonation in space is exactly one of the uses that are being studied for HAARP. See here, page 204, at the bottom.