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Its a Strangelovianscenario that only thePentagon could dream
up: North Korea,
in the throes of a military coup, launches anuclear weapon that
explodes 120 kilome-
tres above the Earth. The blast fills the atmos-phere with
killer electrons that would withindays knock out the electronics of
all satellitesin low-Earth orbit. It would cause hundreds
ofbillions of dollars of damage, and affect mili-tary, civilian and
commercial space assets.
If this doomsday scenario sounds outland-ish, then the possible
response may sound evenmore improbable: injecting radio waves
intothe atmosphere to force these energetic elec-trons out of
orbit. Yet this is exactly what theUS Department of Defense is
looking at in a
major ionospheric research facility in Alaska.The High Frequency
Active Auroral ResearchProgram (HAARP) has been entwined
withcontroversy since its birth. Originally envi-sioned as a way to
facilitate communicationswith nuclear-armed submarines, HAARP
tookalmost two decades to build and has incurredaround US$250
million in construction andoperating costs. It consists of 360
radio trans-mitters and 180 antennas, and covers some14
hectaresnear the town of Gakona about250 kilometres northeast of
Anchorage.
With 3.6 megawatts of power at its com-mand, HAARP is the most
powerful iono-
spheric heater in the world. At its heart is aphased-array radar
that emits radio waves that
are partially absorbed between 100 kilometresand 350 kilometres
in altitude, accelerating
electrons there and heating the ionosphere(see graphic). In
effect, HAARP allows sci-entists to turn the ionosphere, the
uppermostand one of the least understood regions of theatmosphere,
into a natural laboratory.
It is one of several ionospheric heaters scat-tered around the
world. The facilities createunique opportunities to study the
fundamentalphysics behind how plasma and electromag-netic waves
interact. Researchers have alreadyused HAARP to create an
artificial auroraand otherwise study the basic physics of
howcharged particles behave in the ionosphere.
Experiments have been ongoing for several
years, but the facility didnt reach full poweruntil last June.
As yet it may be too early toassess whether its research potential
has beenworth the time and money invested in it, par-ticularly
given the ever-changing justifica-tions for building it. The
facility, which hasbeen passed around varying military agen-cies,
including the Office of Naval Research,the Air Force Research
Laboratory and theDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA),
is perhaps the only research facilitythat has had to justify itself
as being neither adeath beam aimed at Russia nor a mind-con-trol
device. So prevalent are the conspiracy
theories that HAARP has even been referredto in a Tom Clancy
novel, in which a fictional
facility is used to induce mass psychosis in aChinese
village.
In fact, HAARP is a unique case of coldwar-era military goals
meshing with scientificresearch, and then maintaining that
linkageeven after the end of the war. If the conspiracytheories
surrounding HAARP draw on fantas-tical ideas of death beams, then
the real historyof the facility is almost as colourful.
Death beams and submarinesHAARP traces its origins back to cold
war-era concerns over nuclear annihilation, whenUS and Soviet
submarines prowled the deepseas, engaged in an elaborate game of
hideand seek. By staying underwater, the subma-
rines avoided detection, but they also couldntcommunicate well
the deeper they went,the weaker the contact signal became. Then,in
1958, Nicholas Christofilos, a physicist atthe Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratoryin California, proposed using extremely
lowfrequency (ELF) waves to communicate withsubmarines underwater.
His idea, adopted asProject Sanguine, eventually led to the
devel-opment of operational facilities in Michiganand Wisconsin.
But these were mired in con-troversy. They were huge needing 135
kilo-metres of antenna wire to transmit the signal and many took
exception to their goals and
to the possible detrimental effects on the healthof people
living nearby. The Navy eventually
HEATING UP THE HEAVENSBattling rumours of death beams and mind
control, an ionosphere research facility in Alaska
finally brings science to the fore. Sharon Weinberger
reports.
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Ionosphere
Magnetic field
Irregularities
HAARP transmitters
HOW HAARPWORKSThe facilitys transmitters
send radio waves upwards
into the ionosphere, between
100 and 350 kilometres in
altitude. The resulting heating
effect creates irregularities in
the electron density there,
which in turn allow
communications signals, as
from satellites, to be relayed
off the ionosphere.
closed them down in 2004, saying that theywere no longer
needed.
Another approach to ELF submarine com-munication was to take
advantage of electro-jets currents of charged particles that
flowthrough the ionosphere and could act as avirtual antennas,
transmitting messages tosubmarines. Once this idea was proven
experi-mentally1 in the mid-1980s, physicist Dennis
Papadopoulos, then of the Naval ResearchLaboratory in
Washington, DC, began tryingto drum up support for a new
facility.
At the time the Pentagon was shutting downover-the-horizon radar
sites that had beendesigned to detect Soviet bombers attackingthe
United States including one in Gakona,an ideal location because it
is underneath anelectrojet. So Papadopoulos, who is now at
theUniversity of Maryland in College Park and hasserved as a
scientific adviser for HAARP sincethe projects inception, argued
for building anionospheric heater there. The facility wouldhelp the
Navy to study ELF waves, it would pro-
vide scientists with an ionospheric heater and itwould guarantee
continued life for the militarysite in Alaska, something that
Alaskan SenatorTed Stevens, famous for steering
congressionaldollars to his home state, also liked. That,
saysPapadopoulos, was the genesis.
But even before construction began, peoplestarted to speculate
about what the facility couldbe used for and why it was being
built.In a newsconference in 1990, Stevens talked about bring-ing
energy from the aurora borealis down toEarth so it could be used to
solve the worldsenergy crises, earning him the mockery of
phys-icists. Others such as Nick Begich, the son of
another Alaskan lawmaker, began claiming thatHAARP was really
intended as a missile defence
process by creating whistler waves, whichwould kick the
electrons into low enough alti-tudes around 100 kilometres where
they
would rain out naturally.No one knows for sure whether it will
work.
It is what we call a data-starved area theory isahead of actual
observations, says Paul Kossey,HAARPs programme manager at the Air
ForceResearch Laboratory at Hanscom Air ForceBase, Massachusetts.
Several experiments arebeing done to look at this possibility.
StanfordUniversity in Palo Alto, California, for example,is
involved in the One Hop Experiment, whichuses HAARP to inject
very-low-frequency wavesinto the magnetosphere to create whistlers.
Theinvestigators use a buoy and ships in the South
Pacific, where the waves fall
back to Earth, to measure thepresence of whistler waves2.
Mitigating the radiation froman atmospheric nuclear detona-tion
would require an entirelynew facility, and the technologywould be
daunting. In 2006, aNew Zealand-led group of scien-tists published
a paper3 arguing
that any attempt to remediate radiation couldlead to worldwide
blackouts of high-frequencyradio waves, disrupting communications
andnavigation. And some say that countering suchhigh-altitude
nuclear detonations is simply
unrealistic. I think scientific research to betterunderstand
Earths ionosphere is a worthwhileendeavour, says Philip Coyle, a
former associatedirector of the Livermore laboratory who servedas
the Pentagons chief weapons tester during theadministration of
President Bill Clinton. But,he adds, they dont know how much
energythey would need to flush the electrons, or how,ultimately,
injecting this much energy wouldchange the ionosphere.
In the meantime, there are plenty of straight-forward science
questions for HAARP to lookinto. The ionized part of the atmosphere
has
The HAARP facility includes 180 antennas.
weapon. According to Papadopoulos, these
claims, although far-fetched, were based on asliver of truth:
Bernard Eastlund, a consultantto one of the firms building HAARP,
had fileda series of patents making extraordinary claimsthat
HAARP-like technology could be used as adefence shield by
transforming natural gas intomicrowaves, which would knock out
incomingSoviet missiles. The idea, jokingly dubbed thekiller
shield, was even reviewed by the JASONdefence advisory group, but
was dismissed asnonsense, according to Papadopoulos.
From annihilation to defenceWith the breakup of the Soviet
Union, submarine communi-cations no longer seemed ascrucial, and
HAARP neededa new raison dtre. Support-ers proposed new tactics,
suchas studying ELF waves abilityto map out underground bun-kers
like those found in NorthKorea, a goal that quickly
drewscepticism.
After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, however,the military found
a new use for HAARP. In2002, a panel headed by Anthony Tether,
thedirector of DARPA, recommended that the
facility be used to study ways to counter theeffects of a
high-altitude nuclear detonation,which would release energetic
electrons thatcould cripple low-Earth satellites.
Electrons are produced naturally in thisregion when the solar
wind, a stream of ener-getic particles flowing from the Sun, slams
intothe magnetic envelope that protects Earth. Theplanet has its
own self-cleaning mechanism torid itself of the particles: it
eventually dumpsthem lower into the atmosphere through natu-ral
auroras and lightning. Scientists are nowlooking at whether they
can accelerate this
Scientific researchto better understand
Earths ionosphere
is a worthwhile
endeavour.
Philip Coyle
E.K
ENNEDY/NAVALRES.L
AB.
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A L A S K A
Gakona, siteof HAARP
Anchorage
long captivated researchers, going back to thedays of Nikola
Tesla, who dreamed of using it tosend electricity around the world.
In 1933, sci-
entists found that changing the electron densityin the
ionosphere could alter the propagationof radio signals4. That
discovery eventually ledto the development of ionospheric heaters
tostudy these and other effects.
Bells and whistlesRadiation from solar flares is one area of
inter-est. These things are really important becauseit is the
radiation coming off the Sun that is themain cause of satellite
failure or potential deathin human space exploration, says
MichaelKosch, the deputy head of the communicationsystems
department at Lancaster University,
UK. Other areas include looking at the proc-esses that cause an
aurora when electrons inthe magnetosphere collide with the
unchargedparticles of the atmosphere, creating the opti-cal
emissions often seen as brilliantly colouredlights in the night
sky. One of HAARPs mostcited accomplishments is the creation of
thefirst artificial aurora visible to the naked eye5.On zapping the
ionosphere, HAARP createda green aurora between 100 and 150
kilome-tres high in the middle of a natural aurora.That was
something you couldnt predict,says Michael Kelley, a physicist at
CornellUniversity in Ithaca, New York, who has been
involved with HAARP.Other ionospheric heaters around the
world
include a lower-power US facility in Arecibo,Puerto Rico, which
has been offline since aflood several years ago (although plans
areunder way to refurbish it), and one in the Rus-sian city of
Vasilsursk, which has struggledwith funding issues. HAARPs closest
peer is apowerful ionospheric heater at the EuropeanIncoherent
Scatter (EISCAT) Scientific Asso-ciation in northern Scandinavia.
EISCATsheater has cost roughly $24 million to buildand operate to
date, and was the first to create
Scientists want to better understand the processes involved in
creating auroras.
an artificial aurora, even before HAARP.HAARP, though, has the
highest power as
well as the most advanced optics and diagnos-tic equipment. But
most of all, its phased-arrayradar means that the signals can be
steered andcontrolled digitally. It can also create multiplebeams,
which can be shaped,or changed instantaneously tosweep north,
south, east andwest. I think the main thingthat makes it unique is
that ithas a much wider frequencyoperating range, adds Kosch,who
has also worked extensivelyat EISCAT. HAARP operatesbetween 2.8 and
10 megahertz,
whereas EISCAT operatesbetween 3.9 and 8 megahertz. It can
operate ina much lower frequency range than the one wecan use here
in Europe, Kosch says.
As HAARP was only finished in 2007, sci-entists and Pentagon
officials involved in theproject concede that management issues,
suchas allocating time at the facility, are still in theformative
stages. In fact, one of the most recentHAARP experiments is
something thats notlikely to show up in the scientific literatureat
all: an experiment done in January thatinvolved sending radio waves
to the Moon and
then having amateur radio enthusiasts and areceiving antenna in
New Mexico measure thereflected signals. But Papadopoulos says
that
the experiment was more for the amateur radiocommunity than for
scientists.
At the moment, time at the facility is dividedbetween
researcher-directed work, which takesplace during campaigns of two
to three weeks,and military needs. Its a fairly
complicatedsituation in which we support new research-ers, and new
people, by getting them involvedin the campaigns, which is
relatively cheap,says Kossey. Then of course we also
fund[military]proposals and contracts that come inunder broad
agency announcements, in whichresearchers propose research that is
of interestto the various organizations.
And even though HAARP is a military-owned facility, academics
say that access hasnot been a problem. Umran Inan, the lead
sci-entist for the Stanford work, says that Stanford
has been one of the most fre-quent users, with numerousgraduate
students and foreignscientists working at the site.Obviously, there
are securityarrangements, because its aUS Department of
Defensefacility, says Kosch. Im aforeigner escort required but I am
already so famil-
iar to the people there, and sofamiliar with the facility, that
its not really amajor problem.
HAARPs evolution may not have beenstraightforward, but it is, in
the minds of manyscientists who work there, a success. HAARPhas
been a boon to science in this area, and Ithink the managers that
run HAARP, from the
very beginning, have involved the community,says Inan. So unlike
many other Departmentof Defense facilities that are built before
thereis a clear rationale, in this case the commu-nity was involved
from the very beginning, sothe properties of the facilities were
all defined
with the involvement of the community. Now,I think its a
thriving success, he says.As for HAARPs original legacy, as an
antenna to send signals to submarines, thatera has come and gone
with the end of the coldwar. The communications for submarines
isnot as important any more, says Papadopoulos.There are, he
acknowledges, no submarinesfrom the other side. Sharon Weinberger
is a freelance writer in
Washington DC.
1. Barr, R., Rietveld, M. T., Kopka, H., Stubbe, P. &
Nielsen, E.Nature 317, 155157 (1985).
2. Inan, U. S. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L24805 (2004).3.
Rodger, C. J.et al. Ann. Geophys. 24,20252041 (2006).
4. Tellegen, B. D. H.Nature 131, 840 (1933).5. Pederson, T. R.
& Gerken, E. A.Nature 433, 498500 (2005).
HAARP can operate
in a much lower
frequency range than
the one we can use
here in Europe.
Michael Kosch
B.MARTINSON/A
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