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Hi Dick,
1. Was there not a similar scare a few years ago
about ionospheric warming casued by HAARP experiments etc. ?
2. Pat g4gvw makes very valid objections
in his E-mail, matters which seem to be dismissed as "societal not scientific"
in the paper by C.J.Roger et. al. ...
"In the
extreme, and hopefully unlikely case of a HANE (High
Altitude Nuclear Explosion), the disruption caused during RBR operation would probably be viewed as acceptable.
However, this might not be the case for an RBRoperating
to flush an intense natural injection, although is
clearly a societal rather than a scientific
matter."
3. The supposed disruption to satelites caused by
a HANE seems to be based on what happened to Telstar and similar vintage
space-craft. Surely satelite design has progressed since then, with better
shielding and "radiation hardened" devices being used. If satelites are more
robust then much of the reason for using RBR evaporates.
4. There doesn't seem to be much discussion of
what effect such a high level VLF field would have directly, it all seems to be
about HF communication.
Just some thoughts ...
73
Hugh M0WYE
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:49
AM
Subject: LF: Alarming message
To All from
PA0SE
A friend of mine drew my attention to the following rather
alarming message:
Van: ARRL Web site [mailto:[email protected]]
Verzonden:
woensdag 16 augustus 2006 15:31
Aan: [email protected]
CC: Subscribed ARRL
Members:
Onderwerp: ARLP033 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP ARL
ARLP033
ARLP033 Propagation de K7RA
This is a special early
edition of the propagation bulletin, three
days before the regular
Friday publication schedule. The regular
bulletin will appear on
Friday, August 18.
A newspaper article on Monday out of New Zealand
reported a proposed
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
project that could
cause major worldwide disruptions to HF radio
communication and GPS
navigation. The ''Radiation Belt
Remediation'' (RBR) system is
envisaged as a method for protecting low
earth orbit (LEO)
satellites from damage caused by high altitude
nuclear detonations
or severe solar storms. Testing the system
would use extremely high
intensity very low frequency (VLF) radio waves
to flush particles
from radiation belts and dump them into the upper
atmosphere.
When I first heard of this on Monday morning, I thought
it must be
something from a fringe web site peddling dark conspiracy
theories.
But the newspaper reporting the news is real, and so is the
team of
scientists from New Zealand, the UK and Finland whose study
of
possible effects of the scheme is reported in a recent edition
of
Annales Geophysicae.
You can find the article here:
http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/research/space/ag-24-2025.pdf
A
web page from the University of Otago describing the research
is
here:
http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/research/space/RBR_Media_release_8Aug06.htm
I
contacted the lead researcher on the team reporting the
possible
effects of the project, Dr. Craig Rodger of the Physics
Department
at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He
proved very
cooperative, accessible and helpful, and told me RBR is a
serious
project, ''money is starting to appear to investigate it in
more
detail'', and ''U.S. scientists with military connections are
treating
it seriously''.
It is feared that testing the system
could shut down worldwide HF
communications for several days to a week,
rendering the ionosphere
a giant sponge for RF.
I sent Dr.
Rodger a comment from Ward Silver, N0AX, who speculated
''the sheer
energy needed to accomplish it would tend to rule it out
from the
start, and I don't know where they would erect the
necessary
antennas.''
Dr. Rodger responded, ''This would be true, but they
are hoping to
rely on some of the non-linear processes in space
plasmas, stealing
the energy from the radiation belts to get the
wave-amplitudes high
enough. We know this is possible (in
theory), as it happens
naturally already. We don't know how easy
it will be to get it
happening under our control''.
''Also, as
for erecting the antenna, there are two plans. One is to
fly VLF
antenna in space. This could be a power problem. But
for
ground-based systems, you probably already know that most
major
naval powers have big VLF transmitters dotted over the
globe. (Two
of the US Navy transmitters radiate one
megawatt). While these are
designed to keep the signals mostly
under the ionosphere, it shows
the possibility for building big
powerful antenna''.
You can read Monday's article from the New
Zealand Herald, here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1ObjectID=10396164
If
you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers,
email
the author at,
[email protected].
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