HAARP and tessla's death ray!

andyandy

anthropomorphic ape
andyandy
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This is taken from the offical HAARP government site at http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/gen.html


HAARP is a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.

The HAARP program is committed to developing a world class ionospheric research facility consisting of:

The ionospheric research instrument (IRI), a high power transmitter facility operating in the HF frequency range. The IRI will be used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere for scientific study.
A sophisticated suite of Scientific (or "diagnostic") instruments that will be used to observe the physical processes that occur in the excited region.

now according to the FAQ....
The fundamental goal of research conducted at HAARP is knowledge; to explore and to understand natural phenomena occurring in the Earth's ionosphere and near-space environment. Information derived from this research will have major value in the design of future communication and navigation systems for both military and civilian use.

now i can't help noticing that bit about military use.....even if it's slipped in under navigation systems...call me paranoid :)

Now....this High Frequency antenna is going to have an output of 3.6 million watts and actually effect the earth's magnetic field....my question is....what the devil is it for?? it doesnt strike me as very useful for either communications or navigation systems....

more likely it would seem to offer the opportunity to alter the weather - something that the FAQs brush over.....

Is HAARP capable of affecting the weather?
The HAARP facility will not affect the weather. Transmitted energy in the frequency ranges that will be used by HAARP is subject to negligible absorption in either the troposphere or the stratosphere - the two levels of the atmosphere that produce the earth's weather. Electromagnetic interactions only occur in the near-vacuum of the rarefied region above about 70 km known as the ionosphere.

which would suggest that it could alter the weather....if they just changed the frequency ranges :)

this would be a pretty huge technological achievement for mankind - the first time in our history that we could start to control the weather (cloud seeding aside....)

so my questions for the thread would be "is the HAARP facility going to enable us (well....the US) to manipulate the weather?"

or is it going to be used to send some death ray whoopass on some mad muhlahs?
:eek:
 
andyandy said:
now i can't help noticing that bit about military use.....even if it's slipped in under navigation systems...call me paranoid :)
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You're paranoid. Military != diabolical. The marines have to talk to each other, and use sat/cell/radio to do so. Understanding the upper atmosphere would be of benefit to anyone who uses these com systems.

Now....this High Frequency antenna is going to have an output of 3.6 million watts and actually effect the earth's magnetic field
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No, it will affect the Ionosphere. Ionosphere != Magnetic Field.

my question is....what the devil is it for?? it doesnt strike me as very useful for either communications or navigation systems.
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They tell you what its for. Did you read the article you posted? They're going to study the ionosphere, which is important to communication. To do so they're going to excite part of it, then study the effect.

more likely it would seem to offer the opportunity to alter the weather - something that the FAQs brush over.....
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More likely they're dismissing it, not "brushing it over". More likely you're making up likelihoods concerning systems which you neither understand nor have taken any steps toward understanding. This weather control boogeyman comes from one line in the FAQ that you are inflating to mean something else.

it could alter the weather....if they just changed the frequency ranges
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You must've picked the smiley instead of the confused icon, because you're seriously confused. Nowhere are the affects of changing the frequency range mentioned, and I question your credentials as to adjusting weather.

this would be a pretty huge technological achievement for mankind - the first time in our history that we could start to control the weather (cloud seeding aside....)
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You invented the "controlling the weather" whole cloth. Even if they could alter the system to impact the weather, there is no reason to suggest they could control it. Not that there's any reason to be on this hypothetical boondoggle.

so my questions for the thread would be "is the HAARP facility going to enable us (well....the US) to manipulate the weather?" or is it going to be used to send some death ray whoopass on some mad muhlahs? :eek:
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- No.
- No.
 
The effect that harp has on the ionosphere is somewhat less than the effect the sun has. This is why they only bother running it at night.
 
Tirdun said:
No, it will affect the Ionosphere. Ionosphere != Magnetic Field.
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from the FAQ
The full size HAARP facility will eventually be able induce a variation in the Earth's (magnetic) field


What's so hard to believe about military/research facilities looking into ways to manipulate the weather? The climate has a huge impact on us - and one of the driving goals of sceintific and technological development through the ages has been to manipulate the environment for our own benefit...
now, the HAARP is a pretty extraordinary invention - capable of actually heating up localised areas of the atmosphere (as well as effecting the magnetic field....)
now we know that the weather is formed in the stratosphere and troposphere....and that the device is currently being used in the ionosphere.....but this doesn't preclude it from having the potential to be used at these lower levels...
we also know that the level of heat in the stratosphere or troposphere effects weather formation....
so it's hardly a huge leap to surmise that the HAARP facility has the potential to have an impact on the weather....and so of course they will test whether it can or not....now that's not to say it will be able to effect the weather - but it would appear to have the potential....
"control" of the weather of course won't mean that with a flick of a switch snow will fall in canada or a heatwave will break out over France....it means the ability to manipulate weather formation. It really is one of the holy grails (if u can have more than 1 :) ) of science.....indeed Prof Kaku (of superstring fame...) rates us as a type 0 civilisation - becuase we have not yet achieved planetary control of the weather and of our energy....

(slightly off on a tangent but a great article http://www.mkaku.org/articles/physics_of_alien_civs.shtml)

For example, a Type I civilization is a truly planetary one, which has mastered most forms of planetary energy. Their energy output may be on the order of thousands to millions of times our current planetary output. Mark Twain once said, ”Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it.“ This may change with a Type I civilization, which has enough energy to modify the weather. They also have enough energy to alter the course of earthquakes, volcanoes, and build cities on their oceans.

Currently, our energy output qualifies us for Type 0 status. We derive our energy not from harnessing global forces, but by burning dead plants (e.g. oil and coal). But already, we can see the seeds of a Type I civilization. We see the beginning of a planetary language (English), a planetary communication system (the Internet), a planetary economy (the forging of the European Union), and even the beginnings of a planetary culture (via mass media, TV, rock music, and Hollywood films).

By definition, an advanced civilization must grow faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes. Since large meteor and comet impacts take place once every few thousand years, a Type I civilization must master space travel to deflect space debris within that time frame, which should not be much of a problem. Ice ages may take place on a time scale of tens of thousands of years, so a Type I civilization must learn to modify the weather within that time frame.

so lets not dismiss the idea of weather manipulation - it is a pretty fundamental step to our civilisation's progress.....and i hope that research is going on....at HAARP or eleswhere :)
 
andyandy said:
What's so hard to believe about military/research facilities looking into ways to manipulate the weather?
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Nothing indeed we know it has been tried.

now, the HAARP is a pretty extraordinary invention - capable of actually heating up localised areas of the atmosphere (as well as effecting the magnetic field....)
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HAARP is hardly unique. There are a number of ionospheric heaters around.
 
OT, but what is it with associating Tesla with woo science? From what I know about his work, none of it was woo related.
 
Hutch said:
Just a quick nit to pick, I doubt that this is an "Official HAARP Government Site". Official US Government Websites use the ".gov" identifier rather than the .edu or .gen IDs'

Otherwise, interesting stuff.

Press on.
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The the University of Alaska Fairbanks is involved in the HAARP project, which could be why they have an .edu domain. One of the initial benefits of the project was the supercomputing center at UAF. I really don't know too much about it, but my brother was involved with it while attending UAF. I have driven past the site and it is a little too out-in-the-open for some black project by the government to control the weather. There are so many places in Alaska that they could have put it if they wanted to hide it, but they put it on the road system. The natives in the local community (Chistochina) have not noticed any ill effects on the wildlife from the project, which contradicts what was written in the book "Angels Don't Play This HAARP" (which mentions Tesla in the subtitle). According to the people I talked to in Chistochina, the author didn't even talk to anyone in the community.

The bottom line is that this is most likely just a pork barrel project funded by Uncle Ted (Sen. Ted Stevens) which is also conducting some legitimate science. Having been an HF radio operator in the Marines, I can assure you that having a good understanding of what the ionosphere is doing is very important for long range communications. In a major war, all those fancy satellites will go away, and you will need to make sure your HF will work as well as possible.

- David
 
AK-Dave said:
The natives in the local community (Chistochina) have not noticed any ill effects on the wildlife from the project, which contradicts what was written in the book "Angels Don't Play This HAARP" (which mentions Tesla in the subtitle). According to the people I talked to in Chistochina, the author didn't even talk to anyone in the community.

The bottom line is that this is most likely just a pork barrel project funded by Uncle Ted (Sen. Ted Stevens) which is also conducting some legitimate science. Having been an HF radio operator in the Marines, I can assure you that having a good understanding of what the ionosphere is doing is very important for long range communications. In a major war, all those fancy satellites will go away, and you will need to make sure your HF will work as well as possible.

- David
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cheers david....interesting stuff - could you explain the relationship between HF, the ionosphere and long range communications? does it have the potential to replace satelites?


i kind of included tessla in the thread just to spice up the title really :)
(although there are some cracking conspiarcy theories on his "death ray" and the tunguska event....lol :) )
you can read about the tungsuka event on wiki.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
 
just stumbled across this while i was on the
http://www.investopedia.com/

website....trying to learn how to be the next warren buffet....:)
its all about weather derivatives (and how you can trade on what the weather will be like in the future....gotta love capitalism :) )

anyway it gives an example of how important weather is economically....

Weather: Risky Business
It is estimated that nearly 20% of the U.S. economy is directly affected by the weather, and that the profitability and revenues of virtually every industry - agriculture, energy, entertainment, construction, travel and others - depend to a great extent on the vagaries of temperature. In a 1998 testimony to Congress, former commerce secretary William Daley stated, "Weather is not just an environmental issue; it is a major economic factor. At least $1 trillion of our economy is weather-sensitive."
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/05/052505.asp
 
andyandy said:
cheers david....interesting stuff - could you explain the relationship between HF, the ionosphere and long range communications? does it have the potential to replace satelites?


i kind of included tessla in the thread just to spice up the title really :)
(although there are some cracking conspiarcy theories on his "death ray" and the tunguska event....lol :) )
you can read about the tungsuka event on wiki.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
Click to expand...

Satellite communications have replaced HF for most things. HF is a poor substitute for satcom, if you still have satcom. HF is used for long-range communication because it reflects off of the ionosphere (sometimes refracting through it for a while before it comes back down). It can be used for over-the horizon radio communications, as well as round-the-world communications - depending on atmospheric conditions, time of day, sunspot activity, frequency, antenna type and other factors. It can be used to talk to someone on the other side of a mountain range (which would block line-of-sight radio such as VHF) using near-vertical incudence skywaves or NVIS for short. There are a lot of limitations to HF, such as skip zones (shadow areas between line-of sight coverage and NVIS coverage or between areas hit by returning skywaves), multipath fading (the same signal taking two or more paths to a receiver and arriving out of phase - basically cancelling each other out), bandwidth limitations (HF channels usually do not have a lot of bandwidth), etc. It's been too long for me to remember the exact details, but it's pretty neat stuff. Understanding the ionosphere is one of the most important things for being able to predict what frequency to use for talking from one particular location to another at a given time of day. Different frequencies work better at different times of the day. A given frequency may diffract too much and not travel very far at one time of the day and not diffract enough at another time, which would result in it punching through and just radiating out into space.

Of course, having said all that, someone with a real education in EM radiation or HF communications will come along and advise me that I am full of nutritionally-depleted food matter, but that is how I remember it.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HF_radio for some additional info.

-David

Edited to add: Be sure to look at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation link.
 
andyandy said:
cheers david....interesting stuff - could you explain the relationship between HF, the ionosphere and long range communications?
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HF radio waves can be reflected from the ionosphere, thus propogating over the horizon. Indeed, multiple reflections between ground and the ionosphere can give effectively world-wide communications with a very small amount of power, given good conditions. However, this is strongly affected by the space-weather (and by the solar activity cycle), which is why more reliable technologies like satellite have tended to displace it.
 
interesting stuff.....:)

tho...wouldnt it just be better for military communications to equip all personnel with a cell phone....:) :) :)
 
andyandy said:
interesting stuff.....:)

tho...wouldnt it just be better for military communications to equip all personnel with a cell phone....:) :) :)
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No because you run into problems if you are out of range of the transmitters.
 
andyandy said:
interesting stuff.....:)

tho...wouldnt it just be better for military communications to equip all personnel with a cell phone....:) :) :)
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I know that was a joke, but to answer it seriously, many cell phones (or, more specificly, their networks) use satellites for long range communications, in addition to fiber optic and copper cables. If your satellites are taken out and your cables are bombed, you are still left unable to talk long range. That is why HF radios and HF research is still so important for the military.

-David
 
I once saw a documentary that had a segment on HAARP, or some similar facility. One of the applications they mentioned involved using the ionosphere as a reflector in what was essentially a huge ground-penetrating radar system. Apparently this system could be used to detect underground structures and caves from great distances.
I have no idea if it was something they were actually doing now or just a theoretical application. Or complete fiction, of course.
 
I first heard about ground penetrating radar 6 years ago in connection with HAARP. I've since heard it is used in some interplanitary probes. Likely it is real technology, but HAARP may not get good ground penetration data, due to multipath reception. Neil
 
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