Canada Man's Sandbox

International students, who are no longer eligible for postgraduate work permits and will be slated for deportation from Canada, are now protesting in large numbers against provincial and federal governments to let them stay in the country. New rules put in place by the P.E.I government last year means that permits are only being given to students with qualifications in construction and healthcare. The reality is, Canada does not need anymore service workers. There are too many temporary residents in Canada and even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged that. However, when this exact same protest happened in Manitoba a few months ago, the federal government granted the students a 2-year extension. Will the same thing happen again in P.E.I or will these people have to go back home? Watch the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner!

BY CHARLOTTE HU | PUBLISHED NOV 10, 2023 10:00 AM EST

If you live in and around Gulkana, Alaska and recently saw some eerie lights in the sky—don’t worry; they were all part of a science experiment. Earlier this week, researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and several other US institutions created artificial auroras by sending radio pulses into the Earth’s ionosphere using HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) transmitters on the ground. The frequencies of these transmissions were between 2.8 and 10 megahertz.

These transmitters act as heaters that excite the gasses in the upper atmosphere. When the gasses “de-excite,” they produce an airglow between 120 and 150 miles above ground, according to a notice about the project issued by the HAARP team. This is similar to how charged particles from the sun interact with gasses in the upper atmosphere to create natural auroras; the charged particles are steered by the Earth’s magnetic field to the north and south poles to form aurora borealis and aurora australis. Compared to those light displays, the artificial auroras are much weaker.

So why did the researchers do all this? Studying this artificial airglow may provide insights on what happens when real aurora lights appear.

If you noticed a faint red or green splotch in the sky above Alaska between November 4 and November 8, chances are good that you saw the experiment in progress. HAARP also notes in its FAQ that these ionosphere-heating experiments have no detectable effects on the environment after 10 minutes or so.

Additionally, the team also wants to understand how these superheated gasses in the ionosphere interact with each other. Insights into these dynamics could inform collision detection and avoidance features for satellite systems. Gathering more intel on auroras and other upper atmosphere phenomena like it can help scientists see how weather and particles from space are interacting with the environment around Earth, and how energy is transferred during these events.

Disturbing the ionosphere is not the only way to study auroras. Launching rockets into the ionosphere, which sits just at the edge of space, is another popular approach.

The goal of HAARP is to research the physical and electrical properties of the Earth’s ionosphere as it pertains to surveillance, military and civilian communications, as well as radar and navigation systems. Outside of studying auroras, HAARP has used its antenna array to peer inside a passing asteroid, observe solar storms, and conduct other tests related to space physics. Beyond the Earth, the team’s ambitions extend to the moon and to Jupiter.

HAARP has had an interesting history. Despite conducting serious science, around 2014, controversy and conspiracy brewed around the program’s mysterious antenna field, then run by the US military, prompting scientists to host open houses with the public explaining what they can and can’t do with their technology. Its image problem remains despite the changes in ownership over the years.

https://www.popsci.com/technology/haarp-artificial-aurora/

Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025

Abstract:

In 2025, US aerospace forces can own the weather by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war fighting applications. Such a capability offers the war fighter tools to shape the battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities to impact operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is pertinent to all possible futures. The purpose of this paper is to outline a strategy for the use of a future weather modification system to achieve military objectives rather than to provide a detailed technical road map. A high risk, high reward endeavor, weather modification offers a dilemma not unlike the splitting of the atom While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather modification offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. Some of the potential capabilities a weather modification system could provide to a war fighting commander in chief CINC are listed in table 1. Technology advancements in five major areas are necessary for an integrated weather modification capability 1 advanced nonlinear modeling techniques, 2 computational capability, 3 information gathering and transmission, 4 a global sensor array, and 5 weather intervention techniques. Some intervention tools exist today and others may be developed and refined in the future.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA333462