WIRED MAGAZINE: 17.

08
Politics : Security

Strange New Air Force Facility

Energizes Ionosphere, Fans
Conspiracy Flames
By Noah Shachtman 07.20.09

Photo: CORBIS
GALLERY

Inside Alaska's Answer to Area 51

HAARP Joint Services Program Plans and Activities: Air Force Geophysics Laboratory and Office of Naval Research, February 1990 (PDF)

Todd Pedersen had to hustle—the sky was scheduled to start glowing soon, and he didn't want to miss it. It was just before sunset, a cold
February evening in deep-woods Alaska, and the broad-shouldered US Air Force physicist was scrambling across the snow in his orange
down parka and fur-lined bomber hat. Grabbing cables and electronics, he rushed to assemble a jury-rigged telescope atop a crude wooden
platform.

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 a
panoramic view of the sky. Pedersen had hoped to monitor the camera feed from a relatively warm bunkhouse nearby. But powdery snow two
feet deep made it difficult to string cables back to the building.

As darkness closed in, Pedersen tried to get the second imager working—with no luck—and 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. Other
shards of light shimmered, gathered into a jagged ring, and spun around the oval center. "This is really good stuff," Pedersen cooed. This
wasn't just another aurora borealis triggered by solar winds; this one Pedersen made himself. He did it with the High Frequency Active
Auroral Research Program (Haarp): a $250 million facility with a 30-acre array of antennas capable of spewing 3.6 megawatts of energy into
the 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, and
convince the Pentagon that the project might revolutionize war. Oh, and along the way they sparked enough conspiracy theories to make the
place sound like an arctic Area 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 Marconi received a simple radio signal sent from across the Atlantic Ocean—dot-dot-dot, again and again, the letter S
repeated in Morse code. Leading scientists of the day had said such a transmission was impossible: Earth's surface is curved, and radio waves
travel in straight lines. The dots should have shot out into space. Instead, they traveled from Cornwall, England, to a 500-foot antenna
Marconi hung from a kite in Newfoundland. A previously unknown, electromagnetically charged layer of the atmosphere was reflecting the
signal 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 waves
collide with atoms of air—nitrogen, oxygen, and so on—stripping away electrons like spring rain eroding a snowbank. The result: positively
charged 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. Called
the ionosphere, these undulating bands of charged particles stretch from 50 to 500 miles above the earth—too high for weather balloons and,
in large part, too low for satellites. Researchers who study it jokingly call it the ignorosphere.

For decades, researchers who wanted to bother with the ignorosphere did what Marconi had done—they built an emitter, pointed it straight
up, 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 the
planet, 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," says
Konstant 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 government
since he left his native Athens in the 1960s. He knew his way around the federal science-funding machine. Many of his fellow ionospherists
had similar experience swaying the folks with fat wallets. So this loose band of radio scientists began a campaign of persuasion in support of a
new research center. "We'll sell it," Papadopoulos remembers thinking. "We'll sell it in good faith, but we'll sell it."
One of the first ideas came mid-decade from Bernard Eastlund, a physicist working for oil-and-gas conglomerate Atlantic Richfield. Arco had
the 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 at
Valdez. Eastlund had a better idea: Use the gas onsite to fuel a giant ionospheric heater. Such a facility, he wrote in a series of patents, could
fry Soviet missiles in midflight or maybe even nudge cyclones and other extreme weather toward enemies. That's right: weaponized
hurricanes.

Arco's executives presented the idea to Simon Ramo, one of the godfathers of the US intercontinental ballistic missile program. Ramo passed
it 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 feasibility
study. 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 field—
which 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, the
ionosphere 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 home
state, most notoriously a $223 million bridge from the town of Ketchikan to, well, not much of anyplace. In 1988, the researchers sat down
with Stevens and assured him that an ionospheric heater would be a bona fide scientific marvel and a guaranteed job creator, and it could be
built for a mere $30 million. "He provided some congressional money, some pork money," Papadopoulos says. "It was much less than the
bridge 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 hardware—and for that, they had to enlist the military. In a series of meetings
in the winter of 1989-90, the field's leading lights, including Papadopoulos, pitched the Navy and the Air Force. Haarp, they asserted, could
lead to "significant operational capabilities." They'd build a giant phased antenna 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 own
extremely low frequency waves, which could theoretically penetrate the earth's surface to reveal hidden bunkers or be used to contact deeply
submerged submarines.

That last app caught the military's attention. Communicating with subs thousands of miles away, under thousands of feet of ocean, requires
ultralow frequencies, and that requires whomping-big antennas. To do it, the Navy had built an array in the upper Midwest that transmits its
signal through bedrock, but its construction required razing 84 miles' worth of hundred-foot-wide path through wilderness, including a
national 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 Pentagon
somewhat reluctantly went for it—and began using Stevens' earmarked cash to fund the appropriate studies.
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 Begich—
son of one of Alaska's most important political families—found 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 were
ever recovered. Over the years, Begich became obsessed with uncovering mysteries. Between gigs as a gemologist, miner, school supervisor,
and Chickaloon tribal administrator, he regularly lectured on government mind-control technology. So you can imagine his reaction when he
began looking into Haarp: the weather-control patents, the Pentagon proposals for long-range spying, the oil company schemes. Senator
Stevens had even suggested that the ionosphere could end our dependency on fossil fuels. "At any time over Fairbanks," Stevens said on the
Senate 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 giving speeches on Haarp's dangers
everywhere, from UFO conventions to the European Parliament. Marvel Comics, Tom Clancy, and, of course, The X-Files made the facility an
ominous feature of their narratives. A Russian military journal warned that blasting the ionosphere would trigger a cascade of electrons that
could flip Earth's magnetic poles. "Simply speaking, the planet will 'capsize,'" it warned. The European Parliament held hearings about
Haarp; so did the Alaska state legislature.

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

The military's response only amped up the conspiracists. When program managers swore that the facility would "never be used for military
functions," Begich would trot out military reports touting satellite-blinding research plans or then-secretary of defense William Cohen's
suggestion that "electromagnetic waves" could alter the climate and control earthquakes and volcanoes remotely.
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 study
estimate, and the military was getting antsy. Sure, the initial experiments had been scientifically impressive, detecting ionization in the
atmosphere 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 you
come 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 indefatigable
supertroops! Building nanometer-long hinges? You're developing artificial muscles that could let soldiers leap buildings! But it was tough to
make 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, Haarp
program 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 the
project, was named chair.

Months later, the group had its rationale, and it was ambitious to say the least: post-nuclear space cleanup. By the late '90s, Cold War fears
had 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 down
into the lower atmosphere to be harmlessly reabsorbed. The Pentagon loved the idea. But it would need a lot of testing—which could only be
done at Haarp. "You could actually see the lightbulb flick on," says Ed Kennedy, a former Haarp program manager. "This was something
Haarp 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's
atmosphere. Five generators pump out 2.9 megawatts each; 180 antennas convert the electricity into high-frequency radio waves and send them
into the ionosphere, which turns them into low-frequency waves. Why? Research. An energized ionosphere could be used for all sorts of cool stuff.

Communication
Haarp can bounce signals off the ionosphere with wavelengths long enough to penetrate deep into the ocean and communicate with submarines.
 Protection
Researchers are testing whether ionospheric waves could nudge H-bomb-generated electrons out of the magnetosphere, shielding orbiting satellites.

Atmospheric Research
At 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 underneath—including hidden bunkers.

Illustration: Rafael 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 a
problem. 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 construction—with some congressional pork, of course. Again, Arco's construction subsidiary (by then
renamed and sold to giant defense contractor BAE Systems) was selected to handle most of the hardware, a $35.4 million job that would
balloon to $118.5 million. And Papadopoulos still had his separate military funding for ionospheric heating research. In a field as small as
radio science, it's almost impossible to avoid such overlap. By 2007, Haarp was running at full strength. But it was still mysterious. Neither
the 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 the
Gulkana and Gakona rivers, past trailer homes and rusting pickups. A black spruce forest stretches to a volcanic peak on the horizon. Even
for 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,” a
sign 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. I
say 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 a
windowless six-story building: Haarp's control and power center. Inside, five 3,600-horsepower diesel-electric generators, each powerful
enough 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 ranging
from enigmatic to just plain odd. Four golden crosses are planted in one, to help a radio receiver measure ionospheric absorption. In another
is 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, I
can 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, and
spaced precisely 80 feet apart. Every pole is topped with four arms like helicopter rotors; metal and Kevlar wires connect the poles to one
another, to the earth, and to a wire mesh suspended 15 feet above the ground. The result is an aluminum cat's cradle, calibrated to the
millimeter, that spreads out over 30 acres. Geometric patterns form and reform in every direction, Athenian in their symmetry. It looks like a
bionic 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 as
you're ever going to get."

The ultraprecise calibration allows the array to broadcast a beam as narrow as 5 degrees of sky or as broad as 60. All told, the facility can
pump 3.6 megawatts through its phased-array radar into the sky, accelerating electrons and heating the ionosphere—all within a tightly
controlled set of parameters. Marconi used the ionosphere, unwittingly, to reflect and carry radio signals; Haarp can stimulate the ionosphere
to create anything from direct current to visible light, spanning 15 orders of magnitude on the electromagnetic spectrum. "The science used to
be 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 site hosted 31 investigators conducting 42 different sets of experiments—imaging
ionospheric irregularities, examining the "ion outflow from high-frequency heating," creating artificial northern lights. Physics students flock
to Haarp in the summer. Ionospheric papers are back in the scientific literature. Even the space-based nuclear clean-up experiments are
teaching us lessons about the Van Allen radiation belts. Online, the tinfoil-hatted chatter about Haarp drones on—it's blamed for everything
from Katrina to last year's earthquake in Sichuan, China. But after decades of pushing, radio scientists finally have the experimental facility of
their 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: Mark
Begich, 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 the
conspiracy crowd will react. And the scientists, in their eagerness, can end up feeding the paranoia. Papadopoulos, for example, says he wants
to do another round of subterranean surveillance experiments. "Personally, I believe it can reach 1,000 kilometers. It can't reach Iran, if that's
your 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 in
Alaska, let alone in the Persian Gulf—though he does mention a facility in Puerto Rico as a possibility.
But he has already said enough. Papadopoulos just wants to do science. But for suspicious minds, the implications are there: With just a bit
more funding, a few more experiments, Haarp can still be a place haunted by sinister agencies with three-letter initials and spectral lights
that appear in the sky and then vanish without a trace.

Contributing editor Noah Shachtman (wired.com/dangerroom) wrote about Net-centric warfare 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!

Permalink

Posted by: marlboro_me

599 days ago2 Points

Yes, yes, daren_gray! "Conspiracy? Not if you're comfortable with cracking a book now and again." Even in this fluff piece they stated "3.6
megawatts (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 Points

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

Posted by: Rg3950

599 days ago2 Points

Okay, everyone here Check Out Project Blue Beam

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Posted by: daren_gray

598 days ago1 Point

Okay. Done. Are you seriously suggesting NASA is planning to project a beam into the sky to simulate the coming of the antichrist? You've got
some serious legwork to support that, and that's putting it politely....
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Posted by: jd_zoo

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

Posted by: MisterBTS

600 days ago2 Points

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...
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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 Points

Nikola Tesla came up with the majority of this technology back in 1901 its taken a century to try and emulate his tower
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower with this array from HAARP the constant rejection and government interference with...
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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 using
resonant receivers. The constant rejection was because he was a very expensive nutcase. He spent all the money ...
Permalink

Posted by: i2i

599 days ago2 Points

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

Posted by: willit

599 days ago2 Points

The 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 Point

Yes, but then it is just another point to point energy transmission method. What Tesla tried to do was transmit electricity in a sphere so that
anyone anywhere could access it, which is exactly what the inverse square law applies to....
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Posted by: refreshbot

599 days ago1 Point

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

Posted by: refreshbot

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

Posted by: neeneko

599 days ago0 Points

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

Posted by: refreshbot

599 days ago1 Point

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

Posted by: neeneko

598 days ago1 Point

Actual 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....
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Posted by: mik3cap

600 days ago2 Points

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

Permalink

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 Points

And so it goes... stranger and stranger and then stranger. I really enjoyed this article—a gentle reminder this morning of just how convoluted
and 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 Points

I'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

Posted by: daren_gray

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, and
proponents and participants in this technology under the rubric of Patriot, then do what you must. Maybe that W...
Permalink
Posted by: olsenm

599 days ago2 Points

wtf 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 of
scientists that are getting off at making the sky change color (which is pretty cool, take that Pyongyang!). If ...
Permalink

Posted by: refreshbot

599 days ago2 Points

hahaha, well done!

Permalink

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.

Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

599 days ago2 Points

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 its
history is warranted.

Permalink

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. As
is shown by the piece. Nothing "Strange" or "New".

Permalink

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.

Permalink

Posted by: kepler

599 days ago1 Point

Seems 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's
cause he claimed to be in contact with aliens from another planet through his radio transmission trials in ...
Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

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

Posted by: refreshbot

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 danger
in acknowledging the brilliance of someone who clearly set out to develop technological devices that would i...
Permalink

Posted by: neeneko

598 days ago1 Point

Ahm, Tesla actually WAS crazy, or more specifically he was mentally ill. Esp later in life he suffered from some pretty significant dementia. I
am 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 Point

None of this matters anyway. By the time 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.

Permalink

Posted by: willit

599 days ago-1 Points

Whackoff...you.

Permalink

Posted by: delahaya

599 days ago0 Points

Always fun to read the conspiracy nutjob comments.

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Posted by: LBK

599 days ago0 Points

THEY ARE MANIPULATING THE IONOSPHERE AND THIS CHANGES THE WEATHER! THEY BEND OR MANIPULATE THE JET
STREAM BY MAKING A BULDGE IN THE IONOSPHERE. THIS CAUSES DROUGHT IN AREAS WHERE THERE SHOULD BE RAIN AND
CAUSES A LOT OF RAIN IN PLACES WHERE THERE SHO...
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Posted by: daren_gray

599 days ago3 Points

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

Permalink

Posted by: digitaljesuit

599 days ago2 Points

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

Permalink

Posted by: wwwlibros2012net

411 days ago1 Point

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

Permalink

Posted by: alivenk

598 days ago1 Point

Teller traveled the state of Alaska assuring the residents that radioactivity was of no concern and that the proposed project was completely
safe. 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 Point

sounds 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 great
possibilities and descibe them clearly the process will inevitibility deflate. Testla had many wonderful ...
Permalink

Posted by: dr_john_c_bullas

598 days ago1 Point

I used my last inter-library loan of my PhD study period to obtain a copy of a Victorian meteorological journal nothing whatsoever to do with
my study of dry road friction..... and it just suddenly came to mind.... Why use such a lot of equipment an...
Permalink

Posted by: Angel98501

598 days ago1 Point

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

Posted by: daren_gray

598 days ago1 Point

BTW, we know companies like Microsoft astroturf routinely (they call it viral or guerilla marketing) to push a particular product. Why would
it 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.
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Posted by: daren_gray

598 days ago1 Point

I 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 days
of duck-and-cover. Sure, previous generations didn't question. And that's a bad thing. That's why sailors...
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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 the
northern woods of wisconsin..people go and protest that place all the time as it supposedly screws with dolphins or ...
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Posted by: emodx

598 days ago1 Point

Actually, an Admiral living a couple of hours away is a coincidence. And the pollution that runs into the water from the streets on the East
and West Coast doesn't affect marine life? The mass fishing in the atlantic and pacific doesn't afftect the d...
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Posted by: emodx

599 days ago1 Point

This does have an immediate military use outside of VLF/ELF communications. Electronic Warfare to be precise. If you can turn this project
into a very effective "communication platform" you could easily use it to jam these two bands. If no other cou...
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Posted by: MsReport

599 days ago1 Point

The forgotten mad genius (literally) is Oliver Heaviside, for whom the Heaviside layer is named; He also did the heavy headwork for
Maxwell's Equations. The U.S. government gave the radio spectrum above 2 Mhz to the Ham-ateurs, because "everybody kn...
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Posted by: DadinWestchester

599 days ago1 Point

Love 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'd
like to play with it or at least get advanced warning when they fire it up....
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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 Point

Well, that was interesting. Wonder how much truth contained within? Actually sounds more like someone is concerned about funding, and
contrived to raise the curtain just a little in hopes of allaying fears....
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Posted by: saintseminole

599 days ago1 Point

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 intentional.

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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 Point

As 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...
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Posted by: neeneko

599 days ago1 Point

I would not call this a powerful technology. near-useless might be closer. HAARP is like a radio telescope... some good science coming out of
it, and some new techniques for scanning/broadcasting, but nothing of any further impact....
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Posted by: bobbyharonmykiester

613 days ago1 Point

I sincerely do not understand these scientists who seem so obsessed with seeing whether they can do something, that they completely
disregard 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 Point

It 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 is
baking might destroy humanity! Cheffs never think of the consquences, they just bake! Didn't they read that w...
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Posted by: rapier

599 days ago1 Point

So 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 it
may be theoretically possible to control the weather, induce earthquakes, etc". This doesn't mean, in a...
Permalink

Posted by: Sauliuspr

614 days ago1 Point

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 proven
years after that he accomplished that transmission using technology and ideas STOLEN from Tesla's previous work. Just...
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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 Points

This 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 government
writes and promotes this propaganda so people stay asleep. www.tntphilosophy.com...
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Posted by: pipedowns

599 days ago0 Points

Marconi was a hack,courts even proved it in the early 40s when they took Marconis patent away. Try gettin some educated reporting and use
the names of the greatest individual of that time Nikola Tesla. SO sick of hearin mis information about marcon...
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Posted by: BIGJ

600 days ago0 Points

to 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 the
project and that the tin hatters are right stop it. sure it could kill us all then again us driving cars ...
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Posted by: willit

599 days ago-1 Points

How about allowing others an opinion, dude?

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Posted by: lazyeight

599 days ago2 Points

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

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Posted by: zav

600 days ago0 Points

ignorosphere ??? WTF. Proofreaders please.

Permalink

Posted by: piddlyd

601 days ago0 Points

Do 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 you
think? Senators, the Pentagon, Pork-Barrel politics and tens of millions of (our) dollars spent on maki...
Permalink

Posted by: Bruckley

599 days ago-1 Points

so you're saying Haarp is essentially worthless

Permalink

Posted by: daren_gray

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 of
HAARP's potential uses many, many years before it trickled down to the mainstream press? That crowd? This...
Permalink

Posted by: moxley

599 days ago-2 Points

HAARP isn't new.

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

Permalink

Posted by: Starbuck25

600 days ago-2 Points

A 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 that
the government aren't really creating Chemtrails but are in fact spraying air freshener...
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Posted by: daren_gray

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, surveillance
and all utilized by corporate-military networks completely untethered to any democratic process. This is li...
Permalink

Posted by: flusters1

599 days ago-2 Points

You Guys Are All Shmucks

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 Posted by: sali

599 days ago-2 Points

I think this is the begining of SKYNET

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