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."

Comments

High-energy particle "wind"

[Dancin_Santa]

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.

Re:High-energy particle "wind"

[Antonymous Flower]

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.

surely you mean a Van Allen Radiation Belt

Tinfoil hat reference

[wytcld]

Ever looked at www.haarp.net? This project has kept conspiracy theorists busy for over a decade.

Re:Ugh.

[bobscealy]

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.

Who Steals the Sky?

[handy_vandal]

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

Re:Who Steals the Sky?

[chascarrillo]

The initial post states quite clearly that a major portion of this is for military purposes, so that was a bit redundant (except for the "Angels Don't Play This HAARP" mention, which is instead a bit quackish).

There are quite legitimate reasons for producing an aurora. Amateur radio operators have used auroras to communicate over long distances for decades over decades. I don't blame the government for looking into this, although there certainly is a valid argument as to whether creating a large phenomenon is ethical or not. For instance, I'd hate to book some telescope time right when they decide to fire up a test. Still, I can't help but feel that a lot of the arguments against such research end up being a few layers short of an ionosphere.

Re:Who Steals the Sky?

[handy_vandal]

The initial post states quite clearly that a major portion of this is for military purposes, so that was a bit redundant ...

A reasonable objection. However, the nature of these military purposes is not spelled out. The first link in the original post does lead to technical information about the project. But the second link in the original post leads to a lightwight story about the pretty lights, not much more. And nowhere in any of these sources do we read about the radical weapons possibilities, e.g. using HAARP to heat the ionosphere so that it bulges up into space in order to deflect incoming ICBM's.

Furthermore, when I made my post, most of the other posts were jokes about the pretty lights -- I figured those posters needed a clue.

...(except for the "Angels Don't Play This HAARP" mention, which is instead a bit quackish).

Agreed, that book is a bit quackish. But not, I think, entirely quackish -- it raises serious issues, worth considering. In any case, there are numerous reviews from differing viewpoints on the Amazon page, which seems useful to me. I took care to provide the Amazon link, and not a link to some certifiably conspiratorial site such as rense.com, for precisely that reason.

There are quite legitimate reasons for producing an aurora. Amateur radio operators have used auroras to communicate over long distances for decades over decades.

Agreed. All good and fine -- I'm a man of science, I too want to figure out how things work by experimenting with the nature of things. But I wouldn't want to leave the impression that HAARP is pure science and nothing more, when it does appear to have profound military applications which, if misused, could seriously fuck up the world.

-kgj

Bad for animals? Good for war.

[dj42]

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.

Re:Doing this since the 50s

[hairykrishna]

I believe they did this already in the '50s by detonating nuclear warheads in space.

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.

Re:Doing this since the 50s

[FuturePastNow]

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.

Re:No country will allow that, except for fed use

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

The north pole is used extensively by the US Military. It's the fastest flight path from the US to Afganistan for example. Long range bombers use it.

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.