Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says somewhere
Speaker 1: they're meeting on a pinhead, calling you an angel, calling
Speaker 1: you the nicest things. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Foca,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And you know, guys, I did
Speaker 1: a an episode of Forward Thinking, the video show Now
Speaker 1: that long ago where I started talking about the possibility
Speaker 1: of weather controlled devices, and uh, you know, it turns
Speaker 1: out weather is pretty complicated stuff that has a lot
Speaker 1: of energy involved in it. But there were a lot
Speaker 1: of people who who said, why are you talking about
Speaker 1: this is If this is a possible future thing, we've
Speaker 1: got one right now, And they all came up with
Speaker 1: the same example. Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe you're talking about a program called HARP, which
Speaker 1: is a big machine up at the North Pole that's
Speaker 1: run by reptilians and transdimensional reptilian Yeah, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, secretly run the world. And uh, I
Speaker 1: mean yet it causes all kinds of things like like
Speaker 1: earthquakes have mind control. Sometimes it can hurricanes, it can
Speaker 1: it can zap stuff right all the sky. This is
Speaker 1: all due to, uh, you know the fact that conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories run rampant on the Internet. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: actually talk about the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
Speaker 1: better known as HARP in this podcast. Yes, like HARP, HARP. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's a little piratical in that sense. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about what it really does and why there
Speaker 1: are all these conspiracy theories around it. Now, first of all,
Speaker 1: let's just get this out of the way. HARP is
Speaker 1: not a weather control device. It's not able to create
Speaker 1: hurricanes or guide a tornado or any of that that
Speaker 1: we know of orcan sign typically proved to be in
Speaker 1: any way even feasible. Yeah, we can't even hint at
Speaker 1: really right, right, we can't. We don't even fully understand
Speaker 1: all the variables that go into creating the weather patterns
Speaker 1: that many people attribute to HARP. And we have leading
Speaker 1: scientists who are always talking about how much we do
Speaker 1: not know and how much we're still learning about these things.
Speaker 1: So to assume that we could uh create and control
Speaker 1: a system as as destructive and packing as much energy
Speaker 1: as a hurricane is a little um yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean hurricane can have as much energy as ten thousand
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs. That's a lot of energy. You think if
Speaker 1: we could reliably create hurricanes, we'd also have the power
Speaker 1: to stop them. Yeah, yeah, or at least steer them
Speaker 1: somewhere else, although that raises its own problems, and maybe
Speaker 1: the interdimensional reptilians really justlike Florida. It could be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about what harp really is and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll get back to the RC theory stuff towards
Speaker 1: the end and kind of talk about what was it
Speaker 1: that even got these conspiracy theories moving in the first place. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I was wrong on lots accounts. Actually, it's not
Speaker 1: even at the North Pole is now. It's in Alaska. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's in the the general region of
Speaker 1: the Arctic. Uh, it's in actually the southern central part
Speaker 1: of Alaska. It's not really close to anything else, which
Speaker 1: may in fact have lent itself somewhat to the conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories because it's not easy to get to or at least,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not close to anything else. It's near
Speaker 1: some I looked it up on Google Maps. It's like
Speaker 1: near a hunting lodge or something. Yeah, I saw and
Speaker 1: if you were to look at this place, it would
Speaker 1: look like it's a forest of antenna Like they're they're
Speaker 1: various antenna fields, some of them as large as something
Speaker 1: like thirty acres of antennas that are all spaced out exactly.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, whether like eight ft apart art it's
Speaker 1: kind of and there's seventy two ft tall. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is impressive stuff. Yeah, it looks like a hazard.
Speaker 1: You jump over in Mario, fell into it, you die. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. Yeah, we're talking like maybe, well really we're
Speaker 1: talking about Super Mario. But it's like it's this big
Speaker 1: field of spiky metal. Yeah. Yeah. So again it look
Speaker 1: it looks a little weird. So what's the deal with
Speaker 1: this thing? It's actually a program meant to study the ionosphere,
Speaker 1: which then raises the question, what the heck is the ionosphere? Y'all?
Speaker 1: So the ionosphere is the very outer edge of our atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It is technically a kind of a layer within an atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Some people call it the thermosphere, and the ionosphere is
Speaker 1: part of that. So if you're going from the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth outward, you have the troposphere, which is
Speaker 1: where all the weather happens, right that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: all the storms and everything that we think of that
Speaker 1: happens in the troposphere. Then you've got the stratosphere, which
Speaker 1: we've all heard about. That's where a lot of these
Speaker 1: weather balloons that are going even higher up to study
Speaker 1: uh effects above the troposphere, that's where they are. It's
Speaker 1: also where you hear about things like Google's Project Loon.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different bands of air moving at
Speaker 1: different speeds there, so you can kind of catch those
Speaker 1: to get your stuff where you want to, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of different bands, but they
Speaker 1: tend to behave in a very predictable way. Much less
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the troposphere, things can get a
Speaker 1: little a little crazy, you know, it gets party time
Speaker 1: in the troposphere and the stressphere, it's a little more predictable.
Speaker 1: Then you have the miso sphere, and then you have
Speaker 1: the ionosphere. So it's way out there and some like
Speaker 1: like eight kilometers or fifty miles above the surface at
Speaker 1: its starting point. Yeah, yeah, So the ionosphere isn't at
Speaker 1: the exact same altitude over every point of the Earth.
Speaker 1: So I hear the word ion in the prefix of
Speaker 1: io sphere. Yeah, what does the ionosphere have to do
Speaker 1: with ion? Well, that would be exactly where you would
Speaker 1: expect to find charged particle that's ions. It's you know,
Speaker 1: an ion is essentially an atom that is either lost
Speaker 1: or gained an electron, and in this case we're talking
Speaker 1: about particles that have been zapped by the Sun's energy.
Speaker 1: This is the part of our atmosphere that's absorbing some
Speaker 1: of the more harmful rays coming from the Sun, like
Speaker 1: X rays for example. Now, as it absorbs that, the
Speaker 1: particles that absorb it get more energy and become ions.
Speaker 1: Thus you have the ionosphere. And so you've got these
Speaker 1: magnetic fields that the Earth has, and you have these
Speaker 1: ions that are essentially trapped in that layer, this thin
Speaker 1: layer called the ionosphere. So it's an interesting um part
Speaker 1: of the Earth's atmosphere. It's really useful because it helps
Speaker 1: block some of the stuff that would otherwise harm us.
Speaker 1: It also allows us to do stuff like have long
Speaker 1: range radio communication. You know, when uh, when Mark Coni
Speaker 1: wanted to send a message across the Atlantic, how are
Speaker 1: you going to do that? Because after two miles the
Speaker 1: curvature of the Earth will prevent line of sight, won't
Speaker 1: it right, And you would think radio waves travel on
Speaker 1: the straight line. How the heck could you get a
Speaker 1: radio wave to go? It just hit the water and
Speaker 1: that's it. Now I've actually turns out that the radio wave,
Speaker 1: when directed toward the sky would bounce off the ionosphere
Speaker 1: and reflect back down to Earth, thus allowing a transatlantic broadcast.
Speaker 1: And the first broadcast was three dots, which represents the
Speaker 1: letter S in Morse code. So that was the reason
Speaker 1: why that was possible was because the ionosphere, which at
Speaker 1: the time no one really truly understood, and we're still
Speaker 1: learning about the ionosphere because it's so far out there
Speaker 1: that our weather balloons don't get to it and our
Speaker 1: satellites are kind of above it for the most part.
Speaker 1: So that means that you know, to study it directly,
Speaker 1: we'd have to find some other means of doing it.
Speaker 1: Enter harp as a long introduction for this for this facility,
Speaker 1: but it it warrants it right because you have to
Speaker 1: understand that really the goal here was to learn more
Speaker 1: about radio waves, about the ionosphere, about the interaction between
Speaker 1: radio waves and the ionosphere, about what causes things like auroras,
Speaker 1: which are those beautiful lights that you could see that,
Speaker 1: you know, the northern lights are what we often call them, uh,
Speaker 1: and southern southern lights in fact also happened. Uh. So
Speaker 1: this is the layer where that stuff happens. And this
Speaker 1: is why it was you know, kind of an important
Speaker 1: way of important thing to to build to study that.
Speaker 1: But wasn't this all funded partially by the military largely?
Speaker 1: Why would the military want to know about science? An
Speaker 1: excellent question, Why would the military be interested in funding it? Well,
Speaker 1: let me guess telekinesis wrong, so uh, you know. Although
Speaker 1: we'll get into how the military was sold on this
Speaker 1: later on this podcast, which again ties into some of
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory stuff, but in general, really what the
Speaker 1: military was interested in was finding ways to make more
Speaker 1: effective communication systems. A couple of different reasons for this. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties, so the University of Alaska started
Speaker 1: building equipment to study effects of radio waves in the
Speaker 1: ionosphere during heavy ionic activity. So for example, or yeah,
Speaker 1: like when auroras were active. Alaska's far enough up there,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Aurora's come because of solar flares, right, you
Speaker 1: get this crazy ionic activity, You get this beautiful light show.
Speaker 1: And one drawback for communications is that sometimes radio waves
Speaker 1: get absorbed rather than reflected back. And in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: if you if it meant that you couldn't have a
Speaker 1: long distance communication active in the Arctic region. That was
Speaker 1: bad news for the United States, which at the time
Speaker 1: was engaged in what we call the Cold War with
Speaker 1: the then Soviet Union. And the idea was that if
Speaker 1: you if you can't have reliable communication, would say, an
Speaker 1: aircraft carrying nuclear weapons that's flying towards the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: in the case of worst case scenario, that could be bad.
Speaker 1: So there were there was a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of need to study this this effect and figure out
Speaker 1: ways around it. So there was that. There's also the
Speaker 1: Navy that was interested in this because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: radio waves like our our average radio waves that we
Speaker 1: tend to use for communications, are not good at penetrating seawater.
Speaker 1: Seawater is conductive, it can cause some scintillation, you get
Speaker 1: this weird changes and amplitude and frequency, and in other words,
Speaker 1: you cannot reliably use radio communication for something like a
Speaker 1: submarine that's submerged. So what do you do well, it
Speaker 1: turns out extremely low frequency and very low frequency radio waves,
Speaker 1: which have much longer wavelengths and very low frequencies, can
Speaker 1: penetrate seawater much more deeply than your average high frequency
Speaker 1: radio waves can. So if you were able to build
Speaker 1: something that could transmit these uh, these waves to a submarine,
Speaker 1: then you could issue commands that without having to worry
Speaker 1: about making them surface first. Uh are some downsides. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to have two way communication because, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, you have to have an antenna that
Speaker 1: kind of matches the length of the wavelength we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, at least in some form of ratio. Right.
Speaker 1: So ideally, if you want to resondent antenna, your antenna
Speaker 1: should be the same length as the wavelength of the radio.
Speaker 1: And so if we're talking extremely low frequency radio waves,
Speaker 1: you're talking of a wavelength of around a hundred thousand kilometers,
Speaker 1: which is not practical for your average submarine. Even even
Speaker 1: if you were to go with a fraction, it would
Speaker 1: still be so huge you could never use a submarine.
Speaker 1: You can never have that attached to a submarine. So
Speaker 1: you might be able to use the Earth itself as
Speaker 1: part of your antenna and thus be able to eat
Speaker 1: up some of that distance that is necessary for you
Speaker 1: to be able to transmit. But you wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to put that on a submarine so it could it
Speaker 1: could talk back, you could send messages to it. They
Speaker 1: couldn't talk back unless they then surface so that they
Speaker 1: could use regular high frequency media waves. Okay, so all
Speaker 1: of this is making sense. So we've got this data
Speaker 1: station and and research facility that has been sponsored by
Speaker 1: the Office of Naval Research, UM, the Air Force Research Laboratory,
Speaker 1: and DARPA and uh I believe it came online originally
Speaker 1: didn't really hit full strength until something like two thousand
Speaker 1: seven when it got the full array. Yeah, the full
Speaker 1: array of antenna's. Yeah. They had an initial smaller array
Speaker 1: of antenna's active in ninety nine and it took almost
Speaker 1: a decade for them to get up to what was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the full facility. Uh So two thousand
Speaker 1: seven is really when they get fully operational and death
Speaker 1: Star standards. Um. But but but but it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the military. There were a lot of research facilities, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, lots of universities were part of this and
Speaker 1: have been part of it from the beginning. University of
Speaker 1: Alaska of course is a big one. They've been very
Speaker 1: peer Yeah. Yeah, a lot of their work was stuff
Speaker 1: that went into the Shoal approach. Uh. You also have Stanford, Cornell, U, C,
Speaker 1: L A, M, I. T. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: different universities that have been part of this project. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's there's a lot of valuable science that's
Speaker 1: going on now. From the military standpoint, they want things
Speaker 1: that are applicable, right, they want things that they can
Speaker 1: use as soon as possible to make their operations more effective. Uh.
Speaker 1: The scientists, they it's not that they don't want that,
Speaker 1: but they also want to do exploratory science. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we can never predict what all of the applications
Speaker 1: of exploratory science are going to be. I mean, when
Speaker 1: we learn things about the natural world that might just
Speaker 1: seem like, you know, pure information with no technological application,
Speaker 1: a lot of times, ten years down the road, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: good thing, we know that, because now we can make
Speaker 1: this thing that cleans your bathtub with the power of
Speaker 1: of puppy magic. Yeah, that's that's almost exactly how I
Speaker 1: would have raised that. Yeah, oh no, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Exploratory science by its very nature, gives rise to developments
Speaker 1: that we could not anticipate because we're exploring, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: exploring is one of those things I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: in just about every avenue because you never know what
Speaker 1: you're going to uncover and what could potentially become not
Speaker 1: only useful, but maybe it's gonna be the the core
Speaker 1: of some new technology that makes lot you know, it
Speaker 1: could completely transform life, um as we knew it. So Okay,
Speaker 1: So so we've talked a little bit about some of
Speaker 1: the parts that that HARP includes, but what exactly is
Speaker 1: on the list here? Alright? So we gotta let's let's
Speaker 1: let's run down a list of some of the equipment
Speaker 1: at this facility. We've talked about how there are a
Speaker 1: lot of these antenna arrays, but what is exactly does
Speaker 1: that mean? Well, first, you've got your high power, high
Speaker 1: frequency phased array radio transmitter which has the name the
Speaker 1: ion A Sphere Research Instrument or i are I, and
Speaker 1: that's specifically used to stimulate small, well defined volumes of
Speaker 1: the ionosphere regions uh nor more or less directly above
Speaker 1: the HARP facility. Yeah, it can't really range out of it.
Speaker 1: It's working sort of like a magnifying glass of the
Speaker 1: way that the array is set up so that it's
Speaker 1: just pinpointing a very small amount of ionosphere. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the most in the simplest terms here, you're talking about
Speaker 1: aiming radio waves up at the sky to do stuff
Speaker 1: in the ionosphere. Essentially, you're exciting the particles up in
Speaker 1: the ionosphere, adding energy to them. So in in many
Speaker 1: cases you'll hear a phrase like the I an ionosphere heater,
Speaker 1: where they're heating the ionosphere. Now in this case, it's
Speaker 1: not like they've got a whole bunch of hair dryers
Speaker 1: and they're pointing them up at the sky. They're exciting
Speaker 1: particles exactly. They're using radio waves to excite particles. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're exciting particles, you're adding energy, they start moving
Speaker 1: around faster. Heat is essentially the movement of molecules. So
Speaker 1: really it's not that it's um misleading or anything. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of I think a lot of us think
Speaker 1: of heating like you've added some sort of heating element
Speaker 1: up there, but that's not really what's going on. The
Speaker 1: heat is really a byproduct of everything else. The study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the idea here is that they use this to
Speaker 1: excite certain small regions of the ionosphere directly above the
Speaker 1: Hart facility. Uh, and then run various experiments on. Now
Speaker 1: this this does do cool things, like it creates plasma.
Speaker 1: So you get ionized gas, which is a conductive gas. Right,
Speaker 1: it's got free ions running through it. You can actually
Speaker 1: run an electrical current through plasma. So uh. And there
Speaker 1: already are plasma bands in the ionosphere. It's not like
Speaker 1: we're introducing something that isn't already there. This is just
Speaker 1: kind of a way of studying that. So they also
Speaker 1: have a high frequency ion a sonda, also known as
Speaker 1: a chirp sounder. I love that term. And this is
Speaker 1: a type of radar. Yeah, it's they chirp at the sky. No,
Speaker 1: I wasn't laughing at the chirp. I was laughing at
Speaker 1: the first words. So that again, I on a Sanda dessert. Yeah, monsieur,
Speaker 1: the Yeah, I'm sure, be very Uh. What does a
Speaker 1: chirp sounder do. So, it's a radar. It emits high
Speaker 1: frequency radio waves over a very wide range of frequencies,
Speaker 1: and it's specifically used to examine the ionosphere, as you
Speaker 1: would expect from iona sanda um. Uh, And so engineers
Speaker 1: would use these to find the ideal operation frequencies for
Speaker 1: two way radio communications in most cases. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you might use this to see, all right, well, this
Speaker 1: particular frequency band is going to be the most effective
Speaker 1: considering the distance between the two communication points. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: of course HARP is using it to really study the
Speaker 1: effects that there are other instruments have upon the ionosphere itself.
Speaker 1: Then you've got the extremely low frequency and very low
Speaker 1: frequency receivers. Uh. So, yeah, ELF and VLF. These are
Speaker 1: those frequencies I was talking about the If you're looking
Speaker 1: at the extremely low frequency range, typically we say that's
Speaker 1: three to thirty hurts, but in atmospheric science, it actually
Speaker 1: is three hurts to three killer hurts. And then and
Speaker 1: then very low is three killer hurts to thirty killer hurts.
Speaker 1: And this is where we get into those crazy long wavelengths.
Speaker 1: So um, on the short end, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: thirty killer hurts, you're talking about around ten kilometers for
Speaker 1: your wavelength. And on the long end, if you're going
Speaker 1: all the way down to three hurts, you're talking about
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand kilometers. So these are incredibly long uh.
Speaker 1: Radio waves, and um, this is that stuff that's going
Speaker 1: to possibly do better than than or that does do
Speaker 1: better than regular radio in in like submarines and things.
Speaker 1: It's also one of the other and this is something
Speaker 1: else the military was very interested in. One of the
Speaker 1: other things that can do is penetrate the ground and
Speaker 1: potentially discover things like the location of an underground bunker,
Speaker 1: which you could probably understand the military would think, hey,
Speaker 1: that's handy. Those They also another reason why they have
Speaker 1: these receivers is because they discovered that by agitating the ionosphere,
Speaker 1: you could create these frequencies of radio waves up in
Speaker 1: the ionosphere. And so the thought was, maybe you could
Speaker 1: do that instead of building those incredibly huge antenna to
Speaker 1: to broadcast summary, maybe you could just use the ionosphere itself. However,
Speaker 1: that hasn't really panned out. Um, then you have magnet magnetometers,
Speaker 1: or magnetometers as I like to call them. These are
Speaker 1: not used to measure supervillains, but rather to measure magnetic fields,
Speaker 1: their their strength and their direction. I think it's technically
Speaker 1: magnetom eaters. Magnetom eaters. Okay, thank you Joe, always keeping
Speaker 1: us on task. And then uh, we have rio meters,
Speaker 1: which I was going to make a nineteen eighties new
Speaker 1: wave reference. But yeah, I'm not gonna I'm gonna back
Speaker 1: off of that. But no, that's that stands for the
Speaker 1: good job avoiding that if only. Uh No, but this
Speaker 1: is a relative ionospheric opacity meter, and that measures electromagnetic
Speaker 1: wave absorption in the ionosphere. Now that was originally developed
Speaker 1: by researchers at the University of Alaska. This was what
Speaker 1: I was talking about when they wanted to find out
Speaker 1: the effects of aurora on radio waves. This is the
Speaker 1: sort of technology they were developing. Then you have a
Speaker 1: uh F diagnostic radar, which is a radar that works
Speaker 1: at ultra high frequency radio wave frequencies if I can
Speaker 1: be a little repetitive and redundant. And then you have
Speaker 1: finally optical and infrared spectrometers and cameras which are used
Speaker 1: to observe the complex natural variations of Alaska's ionosphere as
Speaker 1: well as to detect artificial effects produced by the I
Speaker 1: R I. So that's kind of a rundown on the
Speaker 1: general equipment that they're using over at HARP, or that
Speaker 1: they have been using at HARP and uh and what
Speaker 1: that stuff is supposed to do. So there you go. Okay,
Speaker 1: we we've covered a bunch of the different ways that
Speaker 1: this equipment is being used. But um, I think I
Speaker 1: think the ones that we haven't covered so far involve
Speaker 1: uh space applications. Yeah, there are a couple of different
Speaker 1: space applications. Well, one is is just figuring out how
Speaker 1: to how to handle things like solar flares more effectively.
Speaker 1: So when a solar flare uh impacts the Earth, you're
Speaker 1: talking about a lot of these high energy particles interacting
Speaker 1: and energy interacting with our ionosphere, making it more um
Speaker 1: aggravated active. Maybe we can say, like you probably have
Speaker 1: heard stories about so giant solar flare storms that caused
Speaker 1: spectacular aurora. Right, there was a solar storm in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds that I believe they said caused all kinds
Speaker 1: of electrical malfunctions around the world and there and supposedly
Speaker 1: people as far south as Cuba could see the northern lights,
Speaker 1: which is phenomenal. I mean normally can't see those if
Speaker 1: yourself of say Canada. I mean, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I want my laptop to continue working, but I but
Speaker 1: that would be really cool now, it would be kind
Speaker 1: of pretty to see but I'm actually willing to travel
Speaker 1: up there to see it rather than have it zapped
Speaker 1: the entire power grid, because, yeah, that it can cause
Speaker 1: electromagnetic interference, which is a major problem in today's technology.
Speaker 1: We didn't have orbital electronics back then, and we had
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would have been a really bad scene
Speaker 1: for them. One of the other things that that I
Speaker 1: think they say can sort of like pump the the
Speaker 1: ionosphere like like a solar storm, would also be a
Speaker 1: high altitude nuclear explosion. Sure, so if you had, like
Speaker 1: a somebody detonate a nuclear bomb way up high up
Speaker 1: off the surface of the Earth, it could set off
Speaker 1: this chain of reactions that could it could do the
Speaker 1: same thing. It could cause major atmospheric e m P. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of charge particles bouncing around that would interfere with
Speaker 1: electronics and potentially damage satellites that we depend on for
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. So there's the potential of using
Speaker 1: HARP to at least study ways where we can mitigate
Speaker 1: that as much as possible, should that ever happen. There's
Speaker 1: also the idea of using I mean the some of
Speaker 1: the experiments they they've done is uh, they've created plasma
Speaker 1: and optical emissions using this high frequency radio beams to
Speaker 1: excite the ionosphere, which is this is part of the
Speaker 1: exploratory science, right they're just kind of zapping it to
Speaker 1: see what happens, which I'm I'm oversimplifying, so I do
Speaker 1: apologize if any of the folks out there have actively
Speaker 1: worked on these projects. But it's really to kind of
Speaker 1: learn more about these interactions and find out exactly what
Speaker 1: are the the the mechanisms behind it, and you know,
Speaker 1: are there any useful applications. It's kind of a secondary consideration.
Speaker 1: We're really just learning about basics of our atmosphere here.
Speaker 1: There's also a study of the Moon's surface using HARP,
Speaker 1: which I thought this was super interesting. They were using
Speaker 1: ground based radar and firing it at the Moon essentially,
Speaker 1: so you're you're shooting radar waves towards the Moon, so
Speaker 1: they're trying to blow up the Moon. They're looking at
Speaker 1: the Moon. They're just looking at the Moon. But these
Speaker 1: radio these radar waves rather are hitting the Moon and
Speaker 1: then they would reflect off and instead of trying to
Speaker 1: collect this information back on the Earth, where you would
Speaker 1: run into problems where there's this effect called scintillation scintillation
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you but suddenly become incredibly interesting in conversation.
Speaker 1: It means that it actually can change the amplitude and
Speaker 1: frequency of waves so that you get corrupted data when
Speaker 1: it comes back through atmosphere. Yeah, and so you end
Speaker 1: up having a problem there. So how do you get
Speaker 1: around that? Well, in this case, Heart was partnering with NASA,
Speaker 1: so a NASA satellite was receiving the reflected the echoes
Speaker 1: of that radar transmission and getting the actual data of
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface. So they were able to study the
Speaker 1: Moon's surface from the Earth using radar and using a
Speaker 1: satellite to collect the information, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: cool thing. In fact, according to to the folks at HARP,
Speaker 1: it's the first time anything like that had ever been
Speaker 1: done using ground based technology to do a radar study
Speaker 1: of a celestial body that was then collected by a spacecraft, which,
Speaker 1: you know the way, if you phrase it like that,
Speaker 1: it sounds like that's a the plot line in a
Speaker 1: Star Trek episode. So I thought that was really cool.
Speaker 1: So that kind of covers the basic uh uses of
Speaker 1: HARP so far. But there've also been a couple of
Speaker 1: others that have been mentioned as potential uses. We've covered
Speaker 1: one with the nuclear the dealing with a nuclear situation
Speaker 1: where you're trying to contain particle. Yeah, there's also in May,
Speaker 1: the National Academies they had a workshop in Washington where
Speaker 1: they basically just talked about the future of HARP. Are
Speaker 1: we going to fund it? What uses it? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: And so they had a report that came out on
Speaker 1: this workshop and that listed some of the potential practical
Speaker 1: uses that the scientists attending the conference talk about. One
Speaker 1: of the ones that I thought was really interesting was
Speaker 1: about space to breathe. They imagined using something like HARP,
Speaker 1: or at least research that came out of HARP, to
Speaker 1: help de orbit old satellites and spacecraft that have become
Speaker 1: space to breathe. So we know the problem of space
Speaker 1: to breathe. Jonathan did a video on it one time,
Speaker 1: We've done a podcast. But basically, a satellite outlives its
Speaker 1: usefulness or it stops working or something like that, and
Speaker 1: we don't have a pulsterring to bring it back down
Speaker 1: to Earth. So it's basically just up there until it
Speaker 1: loses orbit, right, And the worry is, oh, well, we
Speaker 1: don't want it crashing into anything, and especially not in
Speaker 1: space like currently working satellites. Yeah, exactly so, but it's
Speaker 1: speculated that you could send HARP signals that might be
Speaker 1: able to trigger an ion outflow, and what that would
Speaker 1: do is increase the drag on a targeted space vehicle.
Speaker 1: So you'd have a satellite that you want to de
Speaker 1: orbit and this ion outflow could help slow it down
Speaker 1: so that it's a bit decays quicker and it burns
Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere. Yeah, So essentially you're you're like
Speaker 1: creating an electro magnetic drag on this thing which is
Speaker 1: parachute behind. Obviously also hypothetical right now, It's not something
Speaker 1: that we've necessarily done, right, this is a speculation about
Speaker 1: possible future applications of HARP. Well, and this was last
Speaker 1: year obviously when it's future was less certain, but it
Speaker 1: could still apply to research along the lines of HARP. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and keep in mind, like the reason why we're
Speaker 1: saying while we're couching all this is because currently it
Speaker 1: looks like HARP is going to be completely defunded in
Speaker 1: the near future. It already shut down once in the
Speaker 1: summer of actually at the towards the end of May,
Speaker 1: and it was only reported on by around July that
Speaker 1: UH that HARP had shut down. There was that the
Speaker 1: facility was empty, all the generators had been turned off,
Speaker 1: like the website was down because no one could pay
Speaker 1: the University of Alaska to keep it up. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: that's pretty serious right there. I mean, I think I
Speaker 1: think the first website I ever made is still up
Speaker 1: somewhere on the internet. But took mine down. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's a it's a it's a let me guess,
Speaker 1: let me guess, genesis, middies. I'm not gonna I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna dignify that with a response at any rate. So,
Speaker 1: at any rate, the it's shut down at the the
Speaker 1: explanation was that was actually changing hands, that a different
Speaker 1: UH group was coming in to take over the facility,
Speaker 1: and it came back online briefly anyway, But it's already
Speaker 1: this is the beginning of two thousand fourteen when we're
Speaker 1: recording this podcast, and at the moment, it sounds like,
Speaker 1: once the Department of Defense is done with a series
Speaker 1: of final experiments, UH, this facility may shut down unless
Speaker 1: some other group comes in and takes it over because
Speaker 1: it's really expensive to run yeah. I mean I have
Speaker 1: a vague feeling that someone's going to be interested in
Speaker 1: keeping this thing going, um, exactly, yeah, or the interdimensional reptilian. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I already have a good theory as to why
Speaker 1: the interdimensional reptilians are a no go in terms of
Speaker 1: explaining this. But we can get into by not existing
Speaker 1: into the into the conspiracy theories. Now. Yeah, but here's
Speaker 1: my thing on the reptilian. We all know that they
Speaker 1: live in underground chambers, right and secretly rule the world
Speaker 1: from these vast underground caverns. What is one of the
Speaker 1: things that HARP can do help us detect underground bunkers.
Speaker 1: The reptilians don't want to have their bunkers, they're the
Speaker 1: ones controlling it. Then they can just pointed at all
Speaker 1: the places where the bunkers aren't. Okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: none of us believe about these these reptilians. Let's make
Speaker 1: that clear. We're all being very facetious. Let's discuss all
Speaker 1: of the bizarre stuff we've seen people saying about HARP
Speaker 1: on the Internet. Let's let's be fair. Okay, So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of conspiracy theories about HARP, fringe theories,
Speaker 1: please thank you. Conspiracy theories about HARP on the fringe,
Speaker 1: and um, these fringe theories are there's there's a seed there.
Speaker 1: I can understand why the seed had been planted and
Speaker 1: grown into a beautiful fringe flower in some people's minds.
Speaker 1: So if you look back at the history of HARP,
Speaker 1: there was a fellow physicist by the name Bernard Eastland
Speaker 1: who patented several different like he filed for several patents
Speaker 1: and and got patents for these ideas that he had
Speaker 1: about exciting the ionosphere. So he was looking at using
Speaker 1: this big natural gas deposits have been found in Alaska
Speaker 1: as means to fuel an ionosphere heater, so the same
Speaker 1: sort of technology we're talking about to study the effects
Speaker 1: on the ionosphere. But he also hypothesized about some other
Speaker 1: things that this device might possibly do. And these are
Speaker 1: things that have taken hold in the minds of people
Speaker 1: who really subscribe to these fringe theories. So here are
Speaker 1: two and these these are direct quotes from the one
Speaker 1: of the patents. One was whether modification is possible by,
Speaker 1: for example, altering upper atmosphere wind patterns or altering solar
Speaker 1: absorption patterns by constructing one or more plumes of atmospheric
Speaker 1: particles which will act as a lens or focusing device.
Speaker 1: Another is and again I quote as alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: missile or aircraft destruction, deflection, or confusion could result, particularly
Speaker 1: when relativistic particles are employed. Also, large regions of the
Speaker 1: atmosphere could be lifted to an unexpectedly high altitude, so
Speaker 1: that missiles encounter unexpected and unplanned drag forces, with resultant
Speaker 1: destruction or deflection of same. I would like to put
Speaker 1: in at this juncture that when, um, the government approves
Speaker 1: a patent, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're stamping it
Speaker 1: with with something that just says science fact. Um, this
Speaker 1: is all theorization. Yeah, it was completely hypothetical. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: there was no need to actually roof that it works
Speaker 1: in order to get a patent. Yeah. I mean this
Speaker 1: is something tons of people take advantage of. You. You
Speaker 1: just you have an idea and your patented that that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it works, right yeah. Yeah. So And and
Speaker 1: in fact, when the Department of Defense decided to do
Speaker 1: a feasibility study based on these ideas, uh, they looked
Speaker 1: at a bunch of different companies to you know, contract
Speaker 1: out and and try and build stuff to do this.
Speaker 1: And one of those companies had a consultant named Dennis Papadopoulis,
Speaker 1: and uh Papadopoulis ended up looking at these these projected
Speaker 1: ideas of East Lends and said, yeah, that's not that
Speaker 1: would not work. I mean, it wouldn't work even if
Speaker 1: you had this place at an ideal location, which the
Speaker 1: area in Alaska was not ideal for these particular applications
Speaker 1: like weather modification and destroying a missile um. He said,
Speaker 1: even if it were in the best position on the planet,
Speaker 1: it's still wouldn't work. However, important science could be done
Speaker 1: using this kind of technology. So if we can just
Speaker 1: figure out a way to sell it to the military,
Speaker 1: then we can get the money to build it, and
Speaker 1: then we can actually do research. And his point was
Speaker 1: saying that radio research had really taken a back seat
Speaker 1: for a really long time since the nineteen fifties, really,
Speaker 1: and that in order to get back to doing you know,
Speaker 1: groundbreaking research, you know, you have to figure out how
Speaker 1: you're going to fund it. And he didn't want to
Speaker 1: create false reasons, right, he didn't want to give them
Speaker 1: a false sense of this is what this device can
Speaker 1: possibly do, of course not. But I mean but the
Speaker 1: military and the government, especially a couple of decades ago,
Speaker 1: had a great deal of money to to throw at
Speaker 1: scientific pursuits like this and just you know, angling it
Speaker 1: so that they would pick up on that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in this case, he the way he angled it was
Speaker 1: rather than talk about whether modification and missiles being destroyed,
Speaker 1: he would talk more about the extremely low frequency and
Speaker 1: very low frequency bands and the possible applications that could
Speaker 1: be those could be used. And that's what got the
Speaker 1: ball roll rolling. And so um, there's another interesting conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory about HARP besides weather modification. So so the weather
Speaker 1: modification thing doesn't really pan out. It's just there's no
Speaker 1: way that HARP could really do it. They can't direct
Speaker 1: any sort of energy to lens the atmosphere. Plus the
Speaker 1: weather happens in the troposphere, and the ionosphere is really
Speaker 1: far away from the troposphere. One thing I do want
Speaker 1: to clarify. I think what you're saying is that it's
Speaker 1: not just that, hey, this isn't what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: It's that even if they wanted to, they probably couldn't
Speaker 1: control the weather. I guess they might be able to
Speaker 1: change a little bit of parts of the atmosphere directly
Speaker 1: above their own. I think that I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: that would. I think the most they could do is
Speaker 1: maybe change how much, like how much radiation gets gets in.
Speaker 1: So that because because you know, weather patterns are largely
Speaker 1: affected by changes in heat, that's the main that's the
Speaker 1: main thing that changes these weather patterns. Right, So in theory,
Speaker 1: if you were able to change the amount of energy
Speaker 1: coming in to the earth, you would therefore change the weather.
Speaker 1: But it would not be in a necessarily predictable or
Speaker 1: controllable way. So even if that was the purpose of HARP,
Speaker 1: it would it It would be like, you know, just
Speaker 1: turning on a switch and having no idea what the
Speaker 1: effect was going to be. It's not like you can
Speaker 1: have any sort of controlled experience, even if that was
Speaker 1: what you had intended. Well, intertermentional reptilians are chaotic evil,
Speaker 1: so they don't really care. How would you know you're
Speaker 1: not chaotic evil? According to the test we all took. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm lawful, good as it turns out, and a liar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you haven't read my you haven't read my. My alignment
Speaker 1: read out it's hilarious. So another conspiracy theory was that
Speaker 1: HARP could possibly create earthquakes. We mentioned that at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, right, that it could somehow create earthquakes.
Speaker 1: There are two ways I have heard about this happening,
Speaker 1: and both of them are not really feasible. Now. One
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting in that some scientists say that
Speaker 1: before an earthquake happens, you you might be able to
Speaker 1: detect e l F or vlf frequencies because the pressures
Speaker 1: in the ground are compressing minerals that will give off
Speaker 1: these frequencies just naturally through that compression. So if you
Speaker 1: had a detector somewhere nearby, you could in theory detect
Speaker 1: those variations and thus predict when an earthquake is going
Speaker 1: to happen. So thereby by a like piece of electric
Speaker 1: kind of effect, maybe if you put those frequencies into
Speaker 1: those minerals, you could trigger an earthquake. That's that's the
Speaker 1: That's one of the hypotheses, which I I hesitate to
Speaker 1: even call it that. Uh, it is not necessarily realistic.
Speaker 1: But that's not the chief one about how people thought
Speaker 1: HARP was somehow creating earthquakes. Here's here's what they were
Speaker 1: really thinking, and this one is what I don't know
Speaker 1: it just to me it seems completely unfeasible. Um, So
Speaker 1: imagine that you are lifting part of the atmosphere up,
Speaker 1: like you're actually raising up the ionosphere, and then you
Speaker 1: let it slam down, and somehow the press sure of
Speaker 1: its slamming back down is what induces an earthquake to happen.
Speaker 1: It This theory does not seem to to to explain
Speaker 1: what would happen to the rest of us on the
Speaker 1: surface of the ground if if this was actually powerful
Speaker 1: enough for it to induce an earthquake. Nor does it
Speaker 1: explain the fact that any energy it would exert coming
Speaker 1: down would be equivalent to the amount of energy used
Speaker 1: to raise it up. Right, that's basic physics. If I
Speaker 1: raise a a one one kilogram mass to a certain
Speaker 1: distance off the ground and drop it, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like it's going to exert more energy than it
Speaker 1: costs to raise it up that high. It's going to
Speaker 1: be exactly the same. That's physics. So what you're talking
Speaker 1: about is this facility doing this would have to be
Speaker 1: able to create enough energy to essentially shake the ground
Speaker 1: exactly right. You wouldn't need to shoot it up at
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. You have essentially some sort of earthquake button
Speaker 1: right there at your disposal. And the energy that HARP
Speaker 1: is putting forth is something like three point six megawatts, which,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, but it's not enough to create
Speaker 1: an earthquake. So that was another one. Also, I think
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when we're talking about all of
Speaker 1: these conspiracy theories and HARP, is that so radiation from
Speaker 1: the Sun is hitting the ionosphere all the time, continually,
Speaker 1: and a lot more than HARP is capable of producing
Speaker 1: UM like orders of hundreds of thousands. Yeah, yeah, we're talking.
Speaker 1: We're talking like you know, I mean, the Sun's energy
Speaker 1: is what makes the ionosphere happen in the first place, right,
Speaker 1: And HARP is only able to excite a relatively teeny
Speaker 1: tiny region of that ionosphere, like a sliver of it.
Speaker 1: So you know, the fact that the Sun is doing
Speaker 1: this naturally all the time is another kind of mark
Speaker 1: against HARP doing anything that would affect you know, things
Speaker 1: on a global scale, right, or even on a weaponized
Speaker 1: kind of scale. UM. And further, for further, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean some of these some of these theories are
Speaker 1: talking about moving sections of the ionosphere, and even if
Speaker 1: harp could move a section of the ionosphere that was
Speaker 1: not directly above itself, and I don't think it wants
Speaker 1: to cause itself to experience an earthquake. Um, the the
Speaker 1: ionosphere undulates all the time. It expands and contracts based
Speaker 1: on the degree of the Earth's tilt and whether it's
Speaker 1: nighttime or daytime. I mean this happens constantly, right, So
Speaker 1: it's not like, yeah, yeah, I think I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the theories of the fringe theories are based
Speaker 1: on just misunderstandings of science. I mean, it's just you
Speaker 1: don't have a full understanding of what's going on, and
Speaker 1: so you're you're oversimplifying in your mind how things work.
Speaker 1: And thus when you do that, then suddenly everything becomes possible.
Speaker 1: Right if if you oversimplify everything and don't don't acknowledge
Speaker 1: how complex and difficult some of these problems really would
Speaker 1: be to do for real z s then obviously this
Speaker 1: this secret facility in Alaska, which by the way, wasn't
Speaker 1: really secret, although it was very much restricted because they
Speaker 1: were doing lots of of scientific study that didn't you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't need people. Uh well, I read at least
Speaker 1: one account of some amateur ham radio enthusiasts who just
Speaker 1: went on up to the facility and walked around, and
Speaker 1: the policy was supposed to be it's a closed door
Speaker 1: facility that very rarely was open to the public. It
Speaker 1: was only opened a couple of times years. And then
Speaker 1: of course they would let you know, college students could
Speaker 1: go up there and work on it because they were
Speaker 1: parts of research programs. You know, you don't typically Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm basing this off bias, but the college students, I remember,
Speaker 1: are not necessarily the ones you and you invite into
Speaker 1: your super secret headquarters for world domination and weather control.
Speaker 1: It's i they're all part of the theory and all
Speaker 1: the other research about the ionosphere is is uh bad material.
Speaker 1: They're only allowed in the pain pong room. They're not
Speaker 1: allowed to see the real facility. It just gives the
Speaker 1: facility credit credibility as a research. College students tend to
Speaker 1: be reptilian collaborators. Okay, enough with the reptiles. Geez alright,
Speaker 1: So anyway, you read one comment off one article and
Speaker 1: suddenly at all, No, it's true. I'm sorry, folks. This
Speaker 1: came from the fact that I was reading an article
Speaker 1: from an Alaska publication about HARP, and one of the
Speaker 1: comments was like, yeah, reptilians are behind this. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course, like I said, when I did the
Speaker 1: episode about weather control, we got a lot of comments
Speaker 1: about the HARP facility. UM. And again most of it's
Speaker 1: just misunderstandings. You know, things that you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: reading a report of a report of a report of
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory um and uh, you know they're they've
Speaker 1: been pervasive and they've really they certainly have uh a
Speaker 1: level of um like they're enticing, right, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of uh, some sort of secret organization or secret
Speaker 1: part of our government being in control of these massive powers.
Speaker 1: There's a weird attraction to that idea. Well, even if
Speaker 1: you did think HARP was something that was a secret
Speaker 1: government plot to control the weather, earthquakes, tsunamis whatever you need,
Speaker 1: worry no longer, Yeah, because it's it's it's pretty much
Speaker 1: done government facility. So what's the status on the facility?
Speaker 1: I mean, any day now it could close for good.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's really it's running through those last few
Speaker 1: experiments and uh, as of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: there have been no plans to hand over the facility,
Speaker 1: Like there's there's not been an organization that step forward
Speaker 1: and say said we will fund this. I mean it
Speaker 1: costs millions of dollars to run this this facility because
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of power to actually do these
Speaker 1: um uh, these experiments. It's not and it's not a
Speaker 1: cheap endeavor. So if some research facilities or private company
Speaker 1: comes in to take over, then we could see it
Speaker 1: continue in action. Otherwise it may just become an abandoned,
Speaker 1: forgotten site. And uh, I mean it was abandoned for
Speaker 1: a little while in it might become permanently so inten,
Speaker 1: We'll have to wait and see. So anyway, that kind
Speaker 1: of wraps up this discussion about HARP. We just wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of take a closer look at it and
Speaker 1: demystify it for everybody. Yeah, and and send out our
Speaker 1: good mojo into the universe, possibly by earthquakeer, reptilian whatever
Speaker 1: you know, to to hopefully someone will pick this thing
Speaker 1: back up. Well. Yeah, the good feelings I do have
Speaker 1: is that I think there is a bright future for
Speaker 1: more radio research. I mean, it's the thing, it's the
Speaker 1: kind of research we don't often think about, but that
Speaker 1: really does yield important discoveries that figure into the kinds
Speaker 1: of technologies we use every day. Sure, yeah, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: here's hoping that this exploratory science continues in some form
Speaker 1: or another. And guys, if you have been enjoying our
Speaker 1: show and you haven't visited f W Thinking dot com,
Speaker 1: go and go and do that. Go do the thing
Speaker 1: I just said. Go visit FW Thinking dot com. And
Speaker 1: the reason why I say that is because that's where
Speaker 1: we have videos, we've got podcasts, we've got blog posts,
Speaker 1: we have other material that relates to the stuff we
Speaker 1: talk about. It's all about science and technology in the future,
Speaker 1: and it's really exciting stuff. While you should go check
Speaker 1: it out. And remember you can interact with us on
Speaker 1: social networks because we are present on Facebook, on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Google Plus with f W Thinking. Come be part
Speaker 1: of the conversation. We actually had a a suggestion recently
Speaker 1: pop up on the Facebook page that I'll be revealing
Speaker 1: to the other podcasters shortly as after we go off
Speaker 1: the air because it's kind of cool. So be one
Speaker 1: of those, you know, let us know what you want
Speaker 1: to hear, because that's really what we're here to to
Speaker 1: talk about, have an interesting conversation about the future, and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward
Speaker 1: thinking dot com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places,