POWERPOINT

Dr. Lemstrom showed the possibility of drawing auroral energy down through passive systems. His apparatus did not produce consistent available outputs of the energy, a frustrating attribute. Dr. Tesla showed the active means by which energies which produce the auroras could be drawn from outer space at lower-than-polar latitudes. These effects have not been duplicated. However, there have been strange effects produced by shortwave transmitters which have accidentally stimulated certain auroral dynamics, effects which produced anomalous radio echoes and other such “energy storage” phenomena within the auroral envelope. Several noteworthy observers noted the “long-delay echoes” produced when north latitude shortwave transmitters were keyed. In this phenomenon, signals which were being sent out, each “returned” to their transmit site after several seconds of time. These delays could not be rationalized by those models which modelled the ionosphere as a variable altitude series of fixed shells. Three dots were sent out, the time between echoes counted. Echoes exceeding 12 seconds were repeatedly demonstrated, a path of 12 light-seconds (Hals, Stormer, van der Pol, 1928).

The echoes were always strong, clear, and coherent. Considering the speed of radiowave propagation, these shortwave echoes required that signals were being launched along tremendous arcs through interplanetary space. A signal path of 12 light-seconds is a path exceeding 84 earth circumferences. The distances represented here are truly astronomical, requiring a reflective layer averaging some 6 times further away than the moon! But there were complications to the notion that this was a fixed reflective shell which the signals had managed to reach. The successive testing of the IDE (Long Delay Echo) effect did not produce clock-consistent results. Echoes returned at varied intervals, always longer than 3 seconds, but not always of the same interval. These experiments were conducted with some consistence within a small period of time, so it is unlikely that the “shell” notion would represent a viable model. No reflective shell could vary its concentrated density that much to produce such echo-variations.

Where did these signals go, and how did they return with such strength, clarity, and coherence? Were they somehow “stored” within the geomagnetic field, launched along such a line and stored in an interplanetary plasma? An auroral plasma? Each instance of the effect required a north polar proximity, locations which placed the transmitters in that zone where geomagnetic field lines emerge from the ground and depart toward deeper space. Such is not the case at lower latitudes, where the geomagnetic field lines aie nearly parallel with respect to the ground surface. Extraordinary radiowave signals launched firom an equatorial city might take a circumferential orbit, requiring perhaps one or two tenths of a second to “echo-return”. But the phenomenon of signal storage is an important one to the devising of modern means for an experimental derivation of auroral energy.

There have been accidental instances in which applied radio “pumping action” has actively influenced the aurora itself The action begins when a high latitude radio station of very moderate power is broadcasting during an auroral condition. Each alternation from the station carrier exerts a strong deforming action on the aurora. Passing overhead like a band across the sky, these deformations produce a “bunching action” in the auroral body, not unlike that action which occurs in Klystron Tubes (see CHAPTER 5). VLF stations often displayed peculiar amplifying phenomena, where applied signals were mysteriously strengthened by an unknown energetic source. These amplifications always occurred when VLF transmissions were “immersed” in auroral activity, the obvious effects of solar-derived pressures. VLF modulation is regularly exercised between poles, where VLF signals at Siple Station, Antarctica creates audio disturbances at Roberval, Quebec (Brett).

Transmitter impacts are stored in this plasma, the successions reappearing over the transmitter sites within a given period of time. The auroral clustres maintain their relative disposition as they pass overhead. Signals thus directed to the auroral ring current, are stored there as charge clustres. The auroral electrojet is a hypersonic plasma body which travels around the pole with regularity. These successive returns over the station offer an opportunity for energy absorption. These deformations will grow with continued carrier pumping action. Each deformation is stored in the auroral electrojet. As this rapidly advancing auroral plasma streams repeatedly over the station, successive previous deformations reappear. These deformations can be distorted to the point that the auroral streamers can actually and forcibly be drawn down to the transmitter. The literal “drawing down” of the aurora requires a repetitive application of force with the overhead appearance of each previous deformation, each previous clustre. When sufficient deformations are applied with periodicity, auroral streamers can touch ground. It is at this point that usable power may be drawn from the aurora.