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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."
Instruction: Point At Eyes
Is it too early to consider Open Sky as an alternative?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
and what's their contact info?
welcome more light pollution.
OK son, that's the big dipper, the little dipper, and over there to the right of the Cialis ad is Orion. No, that's not his schvantz, that's his bow son.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Just what we need: more ads in our lives
Anyone have one of those green lasers?
The process is not well understood, but scientists speculate it could one day be employed to light a city or generate celestial advertisements.
do we reall need. "En|@rge Ur PeNI5" 30 miles high in the sky?
what about a feed of the latest slashdot stories? would increase efficiency of nerds worldwide?
any other suggestions?
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
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!
Did anyone else automatically think, "Just like Cowboy Bebop!"?
Yes, marketing within the most vulnerable demographic: space bounty hunters.
- A
...welcome the chance to beat the living daylights out of the first idiot to broadcast an advertisement.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
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.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
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.
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yet again I have to say... Nikola Tesla owns you.
Support Liberty, Support Ron Paul
I think it would be fun to make people think God is speaking to them.
Sure we do. I see an end to spam.
1) They light up the sky.
2) Track the source of the advertisement to a geographical region
3) Shoot the fuckers (for fun! no profit!)
It is a problem that will solve itself.
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?
Batman will be pleased. Now the bat signal will be more visible than ever.
Warning: Could be fatal if taken seriously
Love this from the referenced articale "We unfortunately were indoors watching the data on monitors during the experiment and were busy scrambling trying to make sure the effects were real and not some glitch with the equipment,"
Picture in mind of geeks staring at glowing screens while the 1 MW RF beam blasts the crap out of a 747 or worse.
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" >_>
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!
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.
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.
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/
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
What will aliens think when they see "Get your X-Lax, Corner of Wyse and Main" spread across the night sky on a visit to Chicago?
I for one would rather impress an external intelligence rather than frighten them away with promises of comfortable bowel movements.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Imagine this over Iraq
All your base are belong to us!
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.
Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
Fry: "Not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ballgames. And on buses. And milk cartons. And t-shirts. And bananas. And written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree!