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

Who owns the sky?

[RLiegh]

and what's their contact info?

welcome

[subzero_ice]

welcome more light pollution.

Just what we need

[mattthateeguy]

Just what we need: more ads in our lives

No country will allow that, except for fed use

[digitalgimpus]

A guy shines a laser pointer in the Sky, and the FBI is after his ass. You think there going to allow this? I think not. They will consider it a airline safety issue (hence homeland security) until they can pass a separate law.

Then the sky will chance based on that terror warning system.

So get ready for yellow and orange nights!

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

[digitalgimpus]

Actually, some of the early bombing in Afganistan was based at several Air Force bases in the US.

And yes, Russia concented to use of their airspace.

It's cheaper (less miles in the air), and quicker (just fly and drop, no layovers, delays, setting up staging areas).

The bases in Germany, Turkey, Kewait, etc. were setup for smaller aircraft (F-16, F/A-18 etc.)

What about..

[Anonymous Coward]

People with epilepsy that is triggered by light? It won't do to have epileptic people look at the sky and seize up.

Energy inefficiency at its least useful?

[PornMaster]

The article talks about possibly lighting urban areas with this, but to me, it sounds like a HUGE waste of energy. I'd rather see dirigibles with fluourescents than irradiating the sky (and any planes/satellites/birds overhead) with what doesn't instead just keep going out into space.

Re:Energy inefficiency at its least useful?

[FuturePastNow]

I'd rather see dirigibles with fluourescents than irradiating the sky

I'd rather they not completely kill off amateur astronomy.

It's more like ion polution

[EmbeddedJanitor]

ions--> chemical change --> problems.

Considering that Freon is a wonderfully inert substance at ground level that gets changed into an ozone eating monster at altitude under high UV, one wonders whether hosing the atmosphere with highly charged particles is a good idea.

I have not RTFA, but I hopefully this is done over the US and not in in a far away place like was done by the nuclear testing bastards.

Re:It's more like ion polution

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If it's just the same as solar winds then why do these tests need to be done?

Different radiation at different levels have different results. You would not want to expose your unprotected body to whats in the ionosphere.

Ignorance, arrogance and powerful toys == a bad recipe.

Re:It's more like ion polution

[eno2001]

Hey Dick... Simple rule:

If it's natural, it's less likely to cause problems.
If it's man made, it's more likely to cause problems.

Humans have a pretty piss poor track record when wielding large amounts of power.

In other news... Boy George really looks scary these days. Almost like something out of an anime. I just saw him on BBC America on the chat show The Kumars at Number 42.

Re:It's more like ion polution

[metlin]

> If it's natural, it's less likely to cause problems.

Not really and not always.

It's just that if it's natural, you shrug and say that you were powerless to do anything about it.

Look at the Asian Tsunami - nature wiped out thousands in the blink of an eye. Or for that matter hurricanes and what not.

We might cause a few problems, but unfortunately since _we_ cause the problems we tend to notice them and find a way to prevent them. That's not a bad thing, that's the way we are learning.

And more importantly, some day man-made stuff will be powerful enough to control the vagaries of nature. I, for one, look forward to that day. And that will not happen without man learning to weild the power that you speak of.

We'll eventually figure things out.

Skypr0n?

[mrs clear plastic]

What happens when they shoot up a sky pr0n spam from a liberal state and it is seen by a neighboring conservative state?

A sky ad promoting San Francisco's Gay Pride being seen by those in neighboring conservative New Mexico?

Or when I project my famous image of myself wearing my clear plastic wedding dress from an offshore projector and it's seen by the fine folks in South Carolina?

If these things catch on, they will go down in price.

In 10 years or so (just like the digital camera), you may start seeing these at Sharper Image; then Best Buy, and finally on Ebay. You wait.

Luv you all!

One question

[Man in Spandex]

Why?

I'm not saying it wasn't an interesting experiment but I see _no_ benefits for us, the people, the end-user. Somebody, guide me to the light but not the one saying "Enlarge this Enlarge that" >_>

I don't expect to see any ads anytime soon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the light pollution in most of the world, people don't spend much time looking skyward anymore. Even if you could produce a pretty design, most people wouldn't see it.

BTW, did you notice the transmitter power. One megawatt. The frequency; HF. We're talking about some seriously expensive engineering in order to get a pattern of RF which will produce any kind of controlled image.

On a historical note: The Canadians had the HARP project which involved Gerald Bull shooting shells into the ionosphere. Because this was the world's leading ballistic technology at the time, the Canadian government cancelled it. Canadians hate being the best.

Re:Yeah, we do

[fireman sam]

No, how about we point the street lights toward the ground, you know the thing that we want light on. Think about it this way (if you can):

Street light puts 1/4 of its light emitted energy in the sky (based on a worst case of 45% above horizontal). If they were designed to shine only below horizontal they would produce up to 25%* more light for the same energy consumption.

*Naturally some light energy would be converted to heat energy in heating the reflecting surface.

Re:Who Steals the Sky?

[killjoe]

Ask 10 Americans if the military should manipulate the weather to destroy crops, cause floods or draughts, or other kinds of mayhem in some faroffistan and 8 of them will say "KICK THEIR ASSES!".

There will never be hearings. Americans enjoy their military too much.

Re:Who Steals the Sky?

[Evil Pete]

I call bullshit on this. I've been arguing with crackpots for over 10 years about this. It doesn't take much knowledge of plasma physics to understand what this is for and what it can and can't do. People either seem to think it is for a) manipulating the weather, or b) beaming thoughts into your head (I kid you not). Ok, the last one is by definition for the tin foil hat brigade. The weather modification stuff just doesn't make sense. It is bouncing very low frequency radio off the ionosphere ... those layers are way way up above the troposphere where the weather is for starters and if you beam energy using HAARP to somewhere else it will also pass right through the troposphere ... and anyway just think how much energy it would require to alter the atmosphere by inductive heating by a grossly inefficient method using a transmitter that is also very inefficient. Bahh. Silver iodide or just spreading a crop disease is just so much easier.

Re:Who Steals the Sky?

[torpor]

Sigh, if this were being done for evil government/military(oh no, be afraid!) purposes why would they publish in nature!!?

wow, you have so much to learn about propaganda.

i suggest you get off your fat consumercian ass and read a book or two.

here's one you might want to start with...

hint: the nature magazine article is a shim.