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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."
welcome more light pollution.
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.
...welcome the chance to beat the living daylights out of the first idiot to broadcast an advertisement.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
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.
Yet again I have to say... Nikola Tesla owns you.
Support Liberty, Support Ron Paul
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.
Batman will be pleased. Now the bat signal will be more visible than ever.
Warning: Could be fatal if taken seriously
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
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/
CHA