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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."
I am not proclaiming to be an expert on this subject... in fact I am far from it.
But if I remember correctly I believe that I read some articles about the true purpose of HAARP was conceived as a weather control device to be used in a military fashion. Can anyone correct me on this info?
Here is an interesting link - (which may or may not support my post...
http://www.earthpulse.com/haarp/
Instead of raising your voice, try strengthening your argument.
The process is not well understood, but scientists speculate it could one day be employed to light a city or generate celestial advertisements.
Those seem like two completely different options there...help humanity by providing light to a city, or numb the mind of humanity a little more by advertising in the auroras in the night sky.
Really, we should just float huge space banners geosynchronously over all of the big cities. 24 hour exposure, plus in the daytime it could block harmful UV rays from reaching Earth. Argh...can't we have ANY physical space not filled with advertising?
Really, this is so wrong. I predict if things like this happen that a population pushed to the breaking point may get frothing angry and hunt these creeps down like dogs... If any activists wish to blow it to bits, I will quitely applaud such actions. Personally I think it's time we as the people of earth stand up to this and make sure it never happens.
What are the current laws regarding the ownership of the sky above the country? Doesnt that only extend to certain heght above the sea level? What would happen if the ionosphere was above that line? Wouldnt that allow a certain country to display ads or popaganda over other ountries ?
"3) Shoot the fuckers"
Do they have to be spammers, can't we just shoot anyone who floods the night sky with any form of light.
For example, Most of the street lights around my area will project light up to 40 degrees ABOVE horizontal. Not only is this a waste of energy but it makes the stars almost impossible to see.
On a better note, last night many parts of Sydney was in blackout because of some storms. Best night to see Saturn and Jupiter and for the first time my daughter found out why the milky way is called "milky".
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
It's frankly staggering how many tests were done. Heaven forbid anyone else would develop nuclear devices and behave anywhere near as recklessly.d ominic/index.html
d ominic/Dstarfish2s.jpg
i ndex.shtml
http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/films1.htm
Several pictures of Starfish-Prime about half way down.
http://www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/
http://www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/
http://www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/
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.
Huh? How do you figure this? One thought doesn't follow from the other.
UV breaks the stable bonds in Freon, producing chlorine radicals among other things. This is bad because chlorine in that electronic state does not usually exist there and the chlorine catalyzes the breakdown of ozone.
This "HAARP" process sends radio pulses up into the ionosphere to excite the free electrons in the plasma that exist at that height. The exited electrons strike ordinary air molecules. This is nothing that doesn't happen already. Auroras occur every day. The only real difference here is the direction of the incoming radiation. Thunderstorms have a similar atmospheric chemistry.
Not that I support this development at all- while this may have been a technically brilliant experiment, it threatens to spawn a new form of advertising. This is going to become really annoying if it catches on. And the astronomers are going to hate it.
Maybe not so much for the scientists, as astronomical observation in this field is done almost entirely with autonomous instrumentation.
More specifically, the Hobbyist astronomer will be a big loser in this deal...Light pollution is already a big problem in cities. Once corporate interests get their hands on this technology, we can all pretty much forget about going out on a clear night and gazing to the stars.
So far, the planets and stars represent the only remaining frontiers void of political or corporate boundaries.
*sigh* as a cynic, I've been expecting to hear news like this for quite some time...
It's been tried before, and somehow it manages to get shot down. Astronomers really don't like people fucking with their ability to work, and surprisingly the astronomy lobby has successfully managed to put the kibosh on these sort of things so far.
Last time I remember an attempt at something like this was 1989, when the French wanted to commemorate the centennial of the Eiffel Tower by launching into orbit a bunch of reflective balloons forming a glowing ring in the sky. More info here.
~Philly
Light pollution is as much a cultural problem as an environmental one, because it helps to sever our emotional ties to nature, and blunts our understanding that a rich universe exists outside the grey expanse of the city. If you're an urban kid and you never get a chance to see a sky that is relatively unblemished by artificial light, how likely are you to develop an interest in astronomy? While I haven't seen the phenomenon first hand, I've heard stories about the city kids that get bused out to the countryside and are completly awestruck by the night sky because it's the first time in their lives that they've been able to see it.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
"Humans have a pretty piss poor track record when wielding large amounts of power."
Really? Then why's the planet still here? Afterall, we're in control of enough energy to scorch the surface of it a few times.
"Derp de derp."
Money making and mass murder... the two main reasons to fund any scientific research.
Why can't we sink money into finding better uses for this kind of stuff?
dude, 99% of those Amazon reviewes are bogus, go look at the subject lines and patterns like "i found" and "this book" with the odd uppercase "GREAT READ" thrown in for good measure, similar sentence structures between so-called "independant customers" , i would even say that those reviews where all written by the same person!, now if the book was "credible" he wouldn't need to put up bullshit reviews to try and sell his cranky ideas.
you can spot bullshit a mile off
--Steve