Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames

8/6/2019 Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames

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W IRED MAGAZINE: 17.08

Politics : Security

Strange New Air For ce FacilityEnergizes Ionospher e, FansConspiracy Flam esBy Noah Shachtman 07.20.09

Photo: CORBISGALLERY

Inside Alaska's Answer to Area 51HAARP Joint Services Program Plans and Activities:Air Force Geophysics Laboratory and Office of Naval Research, February 1990 (PDF)

Todd Pedersen had to hustlethe sky was scheduled to start glowing soon, and he didn't want to miss it. It was just before sunset, a coldFebruary evening in deep-woods Alaska, and the broad-shouldered US Air Force physicist was scrambling across the snow in his orange


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down parka and fur-lined bomber hat. Grabbing cables and electronics, he rushed to assemble a jury-rigged telescope atop a crude woodenplatform.

The rig wasn't much, just a pair of high-sensitivity cameras packed into a dorm-room refrigerator and pointed at a curved mirror reflecting apanoramic view of the sky. Pedersen had hoped to monitor the camera feed from a relatively warm bunkhouse nearby. But powdery snow twofeet deep made it difficult to string cables back to the building.

As darkness closed in, Pedersen tried to get the second imager workingwith no luckand the first one began snapping pictures. A few

minutes before seven, throbbing arcs of green and red light began to form on his monitor, eventually coalescing into an egg shape. Othershards of light shimmered, gathered into a jagged ring, and spun around the oval center. "This is really good stuff," Pedersen cooed. Thiswasn't just another aurora borealis triggered by solar winds; this one Pedersen made himself. He did it with the High Frequency ActiveAuroral Research Program (Haarp): a $250 million facility with a 30-acre array of antennas capable of spewing 3.6 megawatts of energy intothe mysterious plasma of the ionosphere.

Source: Darpa Budget Estimates

Bringing Haarp to fruition was, well, complicated. A group of scientists had to cozy up to a US senator, cut deals with an oil company, andconvince the Pentagon that the project might revolutionize war. Oh, and along the way they sparked enough conspiracy theories to make theplace sound like an arcticArea 51.

But the shocking thing about Haarp isn't that it's a boondoggle (it's actually pretty worthwhile) or that it was spawned by a military-industrial-petrochemical-political complex (a hallowed government tradition). It's that, all too often, this is the way big science gets done in

the US. Navigating the corridors of money and power is simply what scientists have to do.

In 1901, Guglielmo Marconireceived a simple radio signal sent from across the Atlantic Oceandot-dot-dot, again and again, the letter Srepeated in Morse code. Leading scientists of the day had said such a transmission was impossible: Earth's surface is curved, and radio wavestravel in straight lines. The dots should have shot out into space. Instead, they traveled from Cornwall, England, to a 500-foot antennaMarconi hung from a kite in Newfoundland. A previously unknown, electromagnetically charged layer of the atmosphere was reflecting thesignal back down to earth.

At any given moment, the sun is bombarding our planet with 170 billion megawatts of ultraviolet, x-ray, and other radiation. Those wavescollide with atoms of airnitrogen, oxygen, and so onstripping away electrons like spring rain eroding a snowbank. The result: positivelycharged ions drifting free. At high altitudes, those ions are far enough apart that it can take hours for them to bind with a free electron. Calledthe ionosphere, these undulating bands of charged particles stretch from 50 to 500 miles above the earthtoo high for weather balloons and,in large part, too low for satellites. Researchers who study it joki ngly call it the ignorosphere.

For decades, researchers who wanted to bother with the ignorosphere did what Marconi had donethey built an emitter, pointed it straightup, and watched to see what would happen next. Those researchers learned that the ionosphere contains plasma, charged gas clouds that are

more common in stars than on Earth. They saw that regions of the ionosphere expand and contract depending on their position over theplanet, the tilt of Earth toward the sun, and the time of day. (At night, for instance, one of the ionosphere's layers disappears entirely.)

But by the 1980s, US atmospheric radio science had dead-ended. "We had become a very small field, and we wanted to try to revive it," saysKonstant Papadopoulos, a plasma and space physicist at the University of Maryland. "We needed a modern facility."

Papadopoulos, now a white-haired, deeply tanned 70-year-old who goes by the name Dennis, had worked on and off with the governmentsince he left his native Athens in the 1960s. He knew his way around the federal science-funding machine. Many of his fellow ionospheristshad similar experience swaying the folks with fat wallets. So this loose band of radio scientists began a ca mpaign of persuasion in support of anew research center. "We'll sell it," Papadopoulos remembers thinking. "We'll sell it in good faith, but we'll sell it."


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One of the first ideas came mid-decade from Bernard Eastlund, a physicist working for oil-and-gas conglomerateAtlantic Richfield. Arco hadthe rights to trillions of cubic feet of natural gas under Alaska's North Slope. The problem had always been how to get that gas to the port atValdez. Eastlund had a better idea: Use the gas o nsite to fuel a giant ionospheric heater. Such a facil ity, he wrote in a series of patents, couldfry Soviet missiles in midflight or maybe even nudge cyclones and other extreme weather toward enemies. That's right: weaponizedhurricanes.

Arco's executives presented the idea to Simon Ramo, one of the godfathers of the US intercontinental ballistic missile program. Ramo passedit on to the under secretary of defense, who in turn gave it to the Pentagon's advanced research arm, Darpa, and the DOD's secretive science

advisory board, code-named Jason. Tony Tether, director of Darpa's strategic technology office, gave Arco a contract to conduct a feasibilitystudy. Arco brought on board none other than Dennis Papadopoulos as a consultant.

Papadopoulos wasn't very impressed. Eastlund's tricks wouldn't work even if the site were in the right place along Earth's magnetic fieldwhich it wasn't. But the ad hoc coalition of radio scientists did like the idea of setting up a new heater in Alaska. In those upper latitudes, theionosphere intersects with Earth's magnetic field and becomes scientifically interesting.

Luckily, the senior senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, enjoyed a reputation for inserting projects into the federal budget to benefit his homestate, most notoriouslya $223 million bridge from the town of Ketchikan to, well, not much of anyplace. In 1988, the researchers sat downwith Stevens and assured him that an ionospheric heater would be a bona fide scientific marvel and a guaranteed job creator, and it could bebuilt for a mere $30 million. "He provided some congressional money, some pork money," Papadopoulos says. "It was much less than thebridge to nowhere." Just like that, the Pentagon had $10 million for ionospheric heater research.

Now the scientists had some startup cash, but they also needed hardwareand for that, they had to enlist the military. In a series of meetingsin the winter of 1989-90, the field's leading lights, including Papadopoulos, pitched the Navy and the Air Force. Haarp, they asserted, couldlead to "significant operational capabilities." They'd build a giant phased a ntenna array that would aim a finely tuned beam of high- frequency

radio waves into the sky. The beam would excite electrons in the ionosphere, altering that spot's conductivity and inducing it to emit its ownextremely low frequency waves, which could theoretically penetrate the earth's surface to reveal hidden bunkers or be used to contact deeplysubmerged submarines.

That last app caught the military's attention. Communicating with subs thousands of miles away, under thousands of feet of ocean, requiresultralow frequencies, and that requires whomping-big antennas. To do it, the Navy had built an array in the upper Midwest that transmits itssignal through bedrock, but its construction required razing 84 miles' worth of hundred-foot-wide path through wilderness, including anational forest. It drove local environmentalists crazy. But who would protest an ephemeral antenna in the sky?

Of course, the scientists said, you'd need a brand-new, state-of-the-art ionospheric heater to see if any of this was even feasible. The Pentagonsomewhat reluctantly went for itand began using Stevens' earmarked cash to fund the appropriate studies.


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Haap's array can beam up to 3.6 megawatts of energy into the sky.Photo: Joao Canziani

In 1992, the Navy handed out a $21.6 million contract. The deal didn't go to an established engineering outfit or defense firm. It went,instead, to Arco, for which Papadopoulos was a consultant.

For more than a year, planning proceeded largely out of public view. Then, in 1993, an Anchorage teachers' union rep named Nick Begichson of one of Alaska's most important political familiesfound a notice about Haarp in the Australian conspiracy magazine Nexus.

When Begich was 13, a Cessna carrying his father, a Congressional representative, disappeared. Neither the plane nor its passengers wereever recovered. Over the years, Begich became obsessed with uncovering mysteries. Between gigs as a ge mologist, miner, school supervisor,and Chickaloon tribal administrator, he regularly lectured on government mind-control technology. So you can imagine his reaction when hebegan looking into Haarp: the weather-control patents, the Pentagon proposals for long-range spying, the oil company schemes. SenatorStevens had even suggested that the ionosphere could end our dependency on fossil fuels. "At any time over Fairbanks," Stevens said on theSenate floor, "there is more energy than there is in the entire United States." Begich had hit the conspiracy jackpot.

In 1995, he self-published a book,Angels Don't Play This HAARP. It sold 100,000 copies. He started gi ving speeches on Haarp's dangerseverywhere, from UFO conventions to the European Parliament. Marvel Comics, Tom Clancy, and, of course, The X-Files made the facility anominous feature of their narratives. A Russian military journal warned that blasting the ionosphere would trigger a cascade of electrons thatcould flip Earth's magnetic poles. "Simply speaking, the planet will 'capsize,'" it warned. The European Parliament held hearings aboutHaarp; so did the Alaska state legislature.

Begich told his audiences that Haarp was a high-powered weapon prototype. Forget spying underground with low-frequency wavesHaarpwas so strong it could trigger earthquakes. And by dumping all those radio waves into the ionosphere, Haarp could turn a miles-wide portionof the upper atmosphere into a giant lens. "The result will be an absolutely catastrophic release of pure energy," he wrote. "The sky wouldliterally appear to burn."

The military's response only amped up the conspiracists. When program managers swore that the facility would "never be used for militaryfunctions," Begich would trot out military reports touting satellite-blinding research plans or then-secretary of defense William Cohen'ssuggestion that "electromagnetic waves" could alter the climate and control earthquakes and volcanoes remotely.


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Begich's agitating didn't delay the project too much. (Government research projects slip deadlines and bust budgets just fine on their own.)But by 1999, when Haarp's first 48-antenna array was finished, the project's cost was on its way to tripling the original feasibility studyestimate, and the military was getting antsy. Sure, the initial experiments had been scientifically impressive, detecting ionization in theatmosphere caused by a gamma ray flare from a neutron star 23,000 light-years away and finding bunkers 300 feet below the earth's surface.But the Pentagon wanted to know when its overpriced conspiracy-magnet would produce that battle-ready technology they'd been promised.

The Haarp team was caught in an expectations trap. In theory, the Pentagon should spend a lot of money on basic research. That's how youcome up with the Internet and stealth jets. But in practice, the generals and Congress want science that's useful now. Papadopoulos

understood this instinctively: You have to sell it. Looking at the sleep cycles of fruit flies? Why, that might someday lead to indefatigablesupertroops! Building nanometer-long hinges? You're developing artificial muscles that could let soldiers leap buildings! But it was tough tomake that kind of case for Haarp. "It's like, I talk to my mom and she says, 'When are you gonna build something?'" says Craig Selcher, Haarpprogram manager for the Navy. "Mom," he answers, "I'm trying to unlock the secrets of the universe!"

So the ionospherists formed a panel to find a new purpose for Haarp. Tether, who funded the original Arco studies and had consulted on theproject, was named chair.

Months later, the group had its rationale, and it wa s ambitious to say the least: post-nuclear space cleanup. By the late '90s, Cold War fearshad been replaced by worries that a rogue state could get a nuke. If Pyongyang set off a bomb in orbit, it would fry crucial satellites.Theoretically, ultralow-frequency waves in the ionosphere would knock the particles out of their natural spin, sending them tumbling downinto the lower atmosphere to be harmlessly reabsorbed. The Pentagon loved the idea. But it would need a lot of testingwhich could only bedone at Haarp. "You could actually see the lightbulb flick on," says Ed Kennedy, a former Haarp program manager. "This was somethingHaarp could actually help solve."

Haarp's Mission

The heart of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is an ionospheric heater that shoots electromagnetic energy into Earth'satmosphere. Five generators pump out 2.9 megawatts each; 180 antennas convert the electricity into high-frequency radio waves and send theminto the ionosphere, which turns them into low-frequency waves. Why? Research. An energized ionosphere could be used for all sorts of cool stuff.

CommunicationHaarp can bounce signals off the ionosphere with wavelengths long enough to penetrate deep into the ocean and communicate with submarines.


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Protection Researchers are testing whether ionospheric waves could nudge H-bomb-generated electrons out of the magnetosphere, shielding orbiting satellites.

Atmospheric ResearchAt about 125 miles up, Haarp's waves can energize free electrons, which collide with neutral atoms to produce a glow like the aurora borealis.

Surveillance

How low-frequency waves are absorbed and reflected by the earth can reveal what's underneathincluding hidden bunkers.

Illustration: Ra fael Macho

Of course, the facility would need 180 antennas and a lot more money. But as the panel was winding down in 2001, cash stopped being aproblem. Tether became head of Darpa, taking charge of nearly $2 billion a year for research. He put together a deal for the Air Force, Navy,and his agency to fund Haarp's constructionwith some congressional pork, of course. Agai n, Arco's construction subsidiary (by thenrenamed and sold to giant defense contractor BAE Systems)was selected to handle most of the hardware, a $35.4 million job that wouldballoon to $118.5 million. And Papadopoulos still had his separate military funding for ionospheric heating research. In a field as small asradio science, it's almost impossible to avoid such overlap. By 2007, Haarp was running at full strength. But it was still mysterious. Neitherthe public nor the press had been allowed inside since the array became fully operational.

The highway leading to Haarp dips and rises like a sine wave. Two hundred miles northeast of Anchorage, the Tok Cutoff bobs over theGulkana and Gakona rivers, past trailer homes and rusting pickups. A black spruce forest stretches to a volcanic peak on the horizon. Evenfor Alaska, this is lonely land. At mile 11.3, there's a junction with an unmarked driveway. It ends at a gate topped with spikes. Warning, asign announces, US Air Force installation. It is unlawful to enter this area without permission of the installation commander.

Tomorrow, for one day only, the military will grant the public access to Haarp for the first time since 2007. Today, I'm getting a sneak peek. Isay my name into a call box. The gate draws to the left. Ahead, against the slate-gray sky, resting on a small hill surrounded by trees, is awindowless six-story building: Haarp's control and power center. Inside, five 3,600-horsepower diesel-electric generators, each powerfulenough to drive a locomotive, produce the energy that Haarp channels into the heavens.

Every few hundred yards along the road, the forest is cleared and fenced off into 150-square-foot plots. Each contains instruments rangingfrom enigmatic to just plain odd. Four golden crosses are planted in one, to help a radio receiver measure ionospheric absorption. In anotheris a white telescope dome and a gray tangle of poles used to observe the ionosphere's properties. Above the barbed wire of a third clearing, Ican see a wispy, twisted skeleton of wire and fiberglass.

But the most striking sight at Haarp is the facility's largest array: 180 silver poles rising from the ground, each a foot thick, 72 feet tall, andspaced precisely 80 feet apart. Every pole is topped with four arms like hel icopter rotors; metal and Kevlar wires connect the poles to oneanother, to the earth, and to a wire mesh suspended 15 feet above the ground. The result is an aluminum cat's cradle, calibrated to themillimeter, that spreads out over 30 acres. Geometric patterns form and reform in every direction, Athenian in their symmetry. It looks like abionic forest. A cemetery for a cyborg army. Or an infinite nave in a futuristic outdoor church. Even the scientists get rhapsodic when they

describe the array. "You stare up at the stars and listen to the wind in the guy wires," Kennedy says. "It's as close to a religious experience asyou're ever going to get."

The ultraprecise calibration allows the array to broadcast a beam as narrow as 5 degrees of sky or a s broad as 60. All told, the facility canpump 3.6 megawatts through its phased-array radar into the sky, accelerat ing electrons and heating the ionosphereall within a tightlycontrolled set of parameters. Marconi used the ionosphere, unwittingly, to reflect and carry radio signals; Haarp can stimulate the ionosphereto create anything from direct current to visible light, spanning 15 orders of magnitude on the electromagnetic spectrum. "The science used tobe purely observational, with no knobs to turn," Navy researcher Selcher says. "Now you can apply the scientific method."

During a few weeks in October 2008, for example, the s ite hosted 31 investigators conducting 42 different sets of experimentsimagingionospheric irregularities, examining the "ion outflow from high-frequency heating," creating artificial northern lights. Physics students flockto Haarp in the summer. Ionospheric papers are back in the scientific literature. Even the space-based nuclear clean-up experiments areteaching us lessons about theVan Allen radiation belts. Online, the tinfoil-hatted chatter about Haarp drones onit's blamed for everythingfrom Katrina to last year's earthquake in Sichuan, China. But after decades of pushing, radio scientists finally have the experimental facility oftheir dreams.

Yet Haarp's future is unclear. Defense budgets are shrinking, and the facility costs $10 million a year to operate. Haarp's patron at Darpa,Tony Tether, has left his job. The project's godfather, Ted Stevens,was defeated in the 2008 Senate election by the mayor of Anchorage: MarkBegich, Nick's little brother. "I'll have his ear," Nick promises.

So the radio scientists may have to look for funding again, which probably means a whole new set of rationales. You can imagine how theconspiracy crowd will react. And the scientists, in their eagerness, can end up feeding the paranoia. Papadopoulos, for example, says he wantsto do another round of subterranean surveillance experiments. "Personally, I believe it can reach 1,000 kilometers. It can't reach Iran, if that'syour question," he laughs. "But if I put Haarp on a ship, or on an oil platform, who knows?" Not that he has concrete plans for such tests inAlaska, let alone in the Persian Gulfthough he does mention a facility in Puerto Rico as a possibility.


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But he has already said enough. Papadopoulos just wants to do science. But for suspicious minds, the implications are there: With just a bitmore funding, a few more experiments, Haarp can still be a place haunted by sinister agencies with three-letter initials and spectral lightsthat appear in the sky and then vanish without a trace.

Contributing editor Noah Shachtman (wired.com/dangerroom) w rote about Net-centric wa rfare in issue 15.12.

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Posted by: gwmc

600 days ago3 Points

Good article Noah. Looks like maybe you've stirred up a few of the tinfoil hatters!

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Posted by: marlboro_me

599 days ago2 PointsYes, yes, daren_gray! "Conspiracy? Not if you're comfortable with cracking a book now and again." Even in this fluff piece they stated "3.6megawatts (3.6 million watts) of energy into the ionosphere." They didn't educate the reader stating it can fo...Permalink

Posted by: daren_gray

599 days ago2 PointsLet me say this... anyone who has done even the most basic reading on the projects military and corporate organizations have jointly devisedwould know to NEVER EVER consider anything out of the realm of possibility. Weaponized hurricanes, earthquake...Permalink

Posted by: Rg3950


Okay, everyone here Check Out Project Blue Beam

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598 days ago1 PointOkay. Done. Are you seriously suggesting NASA is planning to project a beam into the sky to simulate the coming of the antichrist? You've gotsome serious legwork to support that, and that's putting it politely....Permalink

Posted by: jd_zoo


8/18

599 days ago2 PointsTesla started this 100 years ago. Marconi used Tesla's inventions to get a signal across the Atlantic . The ionosphere may hold many answersto todays problems; it is a shame that the fear-mongering conspiracy theorists are tarnishing the research....Permalink

Posted by: MisterBTS


Talk about not getting the point! The meaning of the article, is that all the nefarious uses for Haarp that have been reported, are just pie-in-the-sky speculation the scientific community thought up as an EXCUSE to get the funding to do the science...Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

599 days ago1 Point

I would put the real outrage at 'look what scientists have to do in order to get funds for research'.

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Posted by: simono

600 days ago2 PointsNikola Tesla came up with the majority of thi s technology back in 1901 its taken a century to try and emulate his towerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower with this array from HAARP the constant rejection and government interference with...Permalink

Posted by: ka1axy

600 days ago0 Points@simono Tesla wasn't doing anything even remotely similar with Wardenclyffe. His goal was wireless transmission of electric power usingresonant receivers. The constant rejection was because he was a very expensive nutcase. He spent all the money ...Permalink

Posted by: i2i


Tesla's "mental illness" was enabled by his cult following in the media and entertainment business, which persists to this day. He put onshows for the public with his high-voltage demonstrations, with his mystical tones, reputed celibacy and wizard...Permalink

Posted by: willit

599 days ago2 PointsThe inverse square law does not apply to such a focused array. Look at weaponized sound, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon, or something as simple as line array speakers....Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

599 days ago1 PointYes, but then it is just another point to point energy transmission method. What Tesla tried to do was transmit electricity in a sphere so thatanyone anywhere could access it, which is exactly what the inverse square law applies to....Permalink

Posted by: refreshbot

599 days ago1 PointIf you had a more careful wit about you, you would have read through the comment thread to see that your comment is completely nonsequitur to willit's purpose for making his point about such a narrow perception. After reading your conditionless dis...Permalink



9/18

599 days ago1 Pointyour opinion here is utterly ridiculous, sir, and is pathologically symptomatic of the behavioral nihilism of the many naysayers of science'spast and present: the so-called "scientists" that habitually fail to perceive the absurd convolutions of log...Permalink

Posted by: neeneko


People might take you more seriously if you put together a coherent argument. I have studied Tesla's history in some detail. ka1axy is basiclycorret. Tesla developed a small number of useful devices that got him an initial cash flow, then he lied...Permalink


599 days ago1 PointI stopped reading at "coherent argument"...good luck pushing your history books on the innocent and naive youth! -I simply don't fall withinthe demographic zone of your target audience that would find your co mments and shitty attitude of any use, es...Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

598 days ago1 PointActual history is so inconvenient, isn't it? Though you are correct, you are not my general target. I prefer people who actually know things

that happened rather then make stuff up and call anything else a pathological conspiracy....Permalink

Posted by: mik3cap


When does COBRA take over the installation and blow up G.I. JOE?

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Posted by: Blackrift

600 days ago1 Point

They won't, they'd use it to take over television first.

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Posted by: richardgeller

611 days ago2 PointsAnd so it goes... stranger and stranger and then stranger. I really enjoyed this articlea gentle reminder this morning of just how convolutedand bizarre our society really is. I appreciated all the deep background in this article; it was clearly a...Permalink

Posted by: Emrak

599 days ago2 PointsI'm amazed at how many nutjobs come out of the woodwork when any new research is occurring. All science is as dangerous as it is helpful.This has always been the case. If we avoided science because of the potential for abuse, we'd still be living in...Permalink


599 days ago1 Point"Always fun to read the conspiracy nutjob comments." If it helps you to sleep at night to place skeptics into the category of Nutjob, andproponents and participants in this technology under the rubric of Patriot, then do what you must. Maybe that W...Permalink


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Posted by: olsenm

599 days ago2 Pointswtf does that even mean? Fine. The government is trying to fry your brain for no other reason than that they can. This is just a bunch ofscientists that are getting off at making the sky change color (which is pretty cool, take that Pyongyang!). If ...Permalink



hahaha, well done!

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Posted by: lisarenee3505

599 days ago1 Point

HAARP is hardly new. Its been around for many years. Way to go with the up-to-date reporting, Wired.

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Posted by: neeneko


True, it has been around for a while, but the point that they are opening it up to the public for a short time is news, and thus an overview of itshistory is warranted.

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Posted by: redkcir

599 days ago1 Point

This is just a fluff piece written by someone who needed something to write about. HAARP has been around and operating for many years. Asis shown by the piece. Nothing "Strange" or "New".

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Posted by: qabalo

597 days ago1 Point

Agreed. This is old hat technology, and not a surprise. However, it's nice to see a rational counterpoint to the breathless "Alaska's Area 51"pictorial which was published just before it.

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Posted by: kepler

599 days ago1 PointSeems like the press and the scientific world doest like to remember Nikola Tesla as the man who first made a radio transmission. I think it'scause he claimed to be in contact with aliens from another planet through his radio transmission trials in . ..Permalink

Posted by: neeneko


11/18

599 days ago0 PointsTesla might have been a genius, but he was also crazy. For every device he developed that did something new and interesting there were 10that would never work but had outlandish claims associated with them....Permalink


599 days ago1 Point

Man, why do so many people - especially here in America - feel such a strong need to point out that somebody is "crazy" as if there is dangerin acknowledging the brilliance of someone who clearly set out to develop technological devices that would i...Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

598 days ago1 PointAhm, Tesla actually WAS crazy, or more specifically he was mentally ill. Esp later in life he suffered from some pretty significant dementia. Iam not talking 'trail blazer' crazy or 'came up with new things' crazy but 'could not tell fantasy from ...Permalink

Posted by: RyanM

599 days ago1 PointNone of this matters anyway. By the ti me this thing is capable of long range plasma bursts the Tri-Lateral commision will have already

activated the implants in all of us, erased our memories, and established the New World Order under the one world g...Permalink

Posted by: RyanM

599 days ago1 Point

Wackos....All of you.

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Posted by: willit

599 days ago-1 Points

Whackoff...you.

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Posted by: delahaya


Always fun to read the conspiracy nutjob comments.

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Posted by: LBK

599 days ago0 PointsTHEY ARE MANIPULATING THE IONOSPHERE AND THIS CHANGES THE WEATHER! THEY BEND OR MANIPULATE THE JETSTREAM BY MAKING A BULDGE IN THE IONOSPHERE. THIS CAUSES DROUGHT IN AREAS WHERE THERE SHOULD BE RAIN ANDCAUSES A LOT OF RAIN IN PLACES WHERE THERE SHO...Permalink




12/18

Maybe not paranoid, bro, but try setting your phasers to not-caps.

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Posted by: digitaljesuit


Thanks daren_gray... I just about chuckled a can of cola through my nose! :)

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Posted by: wwwlibros2012net

411 days ago1 Point

Stop Secrets... http://www.libros2012.net/

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Posted by: alivenk

598 days ago1 PointTeller traveled the state of Alaska assuring the residents that radioactivity was of no concern and that the proposed project was completelysafe. http://www.etiffanyshop.com/ Of course, this was a complete lie as he well knew since he was privy to ...Permalink

Posted by: RichardofOregon

598 days ago1 Pointsounds like Tesla revisited to me. While it's great to capture people's imaginations with this science if you don't focus clearly on a few greatpossibilities and descibe them clearly the process will inevitibility deflate. Testla had many wonderful ...Permalink

Posted by: dr_john_c_bullas

598 days ago1 PointI used my last inter-library loan of my PhD study period to obtain a copy of a Victorian meteorological journal nothing whatsoever to do withmy study of dry road friction..... and it ju st suddenly came to mind.... Why use such a lot of equipment an...Permalink

Posted by: Angel98501

598 days ago1 Pointor this piece could just be apart of the government's misinformation campaign. I think that most of the conspiracy theory is smoke andmirrors; And, some of that smoke and mirrors is from disinformation campaigns. Yet, I feel it might be better to...Permalink


598 days ago1 PointBTW, we know companies like Microsoft astroturf routinely (they call it viral or guerilla marketing) to push a particular product. Why wouldit surprise you to know that the US government does exactly the same thing? I'm of the opinion that most of t...Permalink

Posted by: digitaljesuit

599 days ago1 Point

I don't know if it's a generational thing, but I remember when "Science for Science sake" wasn't an invitation to laughter.


13/18

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598 days ago1 PointI don't know to which generation you refer, but there has been a lot of scandal and revelations of abuse and outright criminality since the daysof duck-and-cover. Sure, previous generations didn't question. And that's a bad thing. That's why sailors...Permalink

Posted by: memos87

599 days ago1 Point"penetrate the earth's surface to reveal hidden bunkers or be used to contact deeply submerged submarines"...That would be ELF in thenorthern woods of wisconsin..people go and protest that place all the time as it supposedly screws with dolphins or ...Permalink

Posted by: emodx

598 days ago1 PointActually, an Admiral living a couple of hours away is a coincidence. And the pollution that runs into the water from the streets on the Eastand West Coast doesn't affect marine life? The mass f ishing in the atlantic and pacific doesn't a fftect the d...Permalink

Posted by: emodx

599 days ago1 PointThis does have an immediate military use outside of VLF/ELF communications. Electronic Warfare to be precise. If you can turn this projectinto a very effective "communication platform" you could easily use it to jam these two bands. If no other cou...Permalink

Posted by: MsReport

599 days ago1 PointThe forgotten mad genius (literally) is Oliver Heaviside, for whom the Heaviside layer is named; He also did the heavy headwork forMaxwell's Equations. The U.S. government gave the radio spectrum above 2 Mhz to the Ham-ateurs, because "everybody kn...Permalink

Posted by: DadinWestchester

599 days ago1 PointLove to try out the propagation on 10M. That antenna array is a ham's wet dream. Wonder how long and what frequencies are affected. I'dlike to play with it or at least get advanced warning when they fire it up....Permalink

Posted by: stevendal8

599 days ago1 Point

I wonder if there is a connection to the bridge to nowhere and the planned $15 Million airport in small remote Alaska town.

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Posted by: Today

599 days ago1 PointWell, that was interesting. Wonder how much truth contained within? Actually sounds more like someone is concerned about funding, andcontrived to raise the curtain just a little in hopes of allaying fears....Permalink

Posted by: saintseminole

599 days ago1 Point


14/18

While I'm not in the camp of the fear-mongers below, I did notice a curious lack of attribution in much of the story...

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Posted by: zav

600 days ago1 Point

Ahhh, looks like "ignorosphere" was i ntentional.

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Posted by: ndgmtlcd

603 days ago1 Point

It's copyedit time. 8th paragraph from the top starts with:

For decades, researchers who wanted to bother with the ignorosphere did what Marconi had done

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Posted by: baronzilch

606 days ago1 PointAs it stands this piece seems more like a re-hashed DoD PR release then an article. Other than blowing off Mr. Begich's concerns as"conspiracy theories" the author offers no sources that dispute any of the dangers associated with this technology. Th...Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

599 days ago1 PointI would not call this a powerful technology. near-useless might be closer. HAARP is like a radio telescope... some good science coming out ofit, and some new techniques for scanning/broadcasting, but nothing of any further impact....Permalink

Posted by: bobbyharonmykiester

613 days ago1 PointI sincerely do not understand these scientists who seem so obsessed with seeing whether they can do something, that they completelydisregard the negative repercussions it will have on humanity. The philosophy seems to be, "Push forward with your ide...Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

599 days ago1 PointIt is easy to call people immoral when you assign made up dooms day scenarios to whatever they do... That cheff is immoral! That cake he isbaking might destroy humanity! Cheffs never think of the consquences, they just bake! Didn't they read that w...Permalink

Posted by: rapier

599 days ago1 PointSo what you need to understand is that a scientist will often say something along the lines of "yes, with the proper application of this effect itmay be theoretically possible to control the weather, induce earthquakes, etc". This doesn't mean, in a...Permalink

Posted by: Sauliuspr

614 days ago1 Point


15/18

Who cares about Marconi. Tesla was the Man!

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Posted by: ZeroLux

614 days ago1 Point

What in the **? How could an article like this exist WITHOUT mentioning EVEN ONCE Nikola Tesla? And that *bag Marconi, it was provenyears after that he accomplished that transmission using technology and ideas STOLEN from Tesla's previous work. Just...Permalink

Posted by: MartinBriley

614 days ago1 Point

Guys, acronyms are capitalized: DARPA. HAARP.

Cool article, though.

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Posted by: marlboro_me

599 days ago0 PointsThis article is so sugar coated it' s sad. It's just like the History Channel telling us we're all crazy about Bilderberg. I swear the governmentwrites and promotes this propaganda so people stay asleep. www.tntphilosophy.com...Permalink

Posted by: pipedowns

599 days ago0 PointsMarconi was a hack,courts even proved it in the early 40s when they took Marconis patent away. Try gettin some educated reporting and usethe names of the greatest individual of that time Nikola Tesla. SO sick of hearin mis information about marcon...Permalink

Posted by: BIGJ

600 days ago0 Pointsto all of you saying that this technology could potentially kill us all and that it should be looked at by other scientist not involved with theproject and that the tin hatters are right stop it. sure it could kill us all then again us driving cars ...Permalink

Posted by: willit


How about allowing others an opinion, dude?

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Posted by: lazyeight


Only if you'e willing to pay BIGJ's outstanding punctuation debt.

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Posted by: zav


16/18


ignorosphere ??? WTF. Proofreaders please.

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Posted by: piddlyd

601 days ago0 PointsDo they think we're fucking stupid?!? That is really the question after you read this article. Point by point argument is useless here - don't youthink? Senators, the Pentagon, Pork-Barrel politics and tens of millions of (our) dollars spent on maki...Permalink

Posted by: Bruckley


so you're saying Haarp is essentially worthless

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600 days ago-1 Points"You can imagine how the conspiracy crowd will react." Oh. You mean the foil-hatted nutjobs who correctly (as it turns out) broke the news ofHAARP's potential uses many, many years before it trickled down to the mainstream press? That crowd? This...Permalink

Posted by: moxley


HAARP isn't new.

Don't buy this bulshit - there is a lot more to this.

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Posted by: Starbuck25

600 days ago-2 PointsA very well written piece of blatant propaganda, I'm sure the sheeple will love it. Personally I can't wait until next week, when you explain thatthe government aren't really creating Chemtrails but are in fact spraying a ir freshener...Permalink


600 days ago-2 Points"An energized ionosphere could be used for all sorts of cool stuff." Golly gee, could it ever! Weaponized weather, plasma beams, surveillanceand all utilized by corporate-military networks completely untethered to any democratic process. This is li...Permalink

Posted by: flusters1


You Guys Are All Shmucks

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18/18

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