A gravel road runs along the edge of HAARP’s array – that matrix of giant radio antennas on the tundra that’s been blamed for everything from the 2010 Haiti earthquake to chronic fatigue syndrome. On June 14, Fairbanksan Carl Triplehorn stood by that road crafting a hat out of tinfoil. Then Jessica Matthews, HAARP’s director, handed him a big picture frame to pose with.
It’s fair to say that HAARP’s staff is in on the joke.
“Some of the best calls I get are from people that tell me, ‘I have a wedding that's coming up. Can you guys help us out with the weather?’ Matthews said.
Scientists at the Gakona-based High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program — known everywhere as just HAARP — open their doors once a summer to show the public what they’re up to.
It wasn’t the facility’s first open house, but it was the first since the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Geophysical Institute took complete possession of HAARP from the military this year — a process that started a decade ago.
The military built HAARP in the 90s to conduct atmospheric defense research. These days, scientists mostly use it to look into things like space weather, and how gravity acts on the ionosphere, the highest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
Matthews said security around there used to be much tighter, which probably fed the intrigue.
“Back in the Air Force days, when you came up to that gate, you saw that scary, big red warning sign: ‘No Trespassing,’” she said.
HAARP’s shadowy reputation has been hard to shake
Speculation about what happens there runs pretty wild. Some believe the facility is trying to do everything from reversing Earth’s magnetic poles to trapping people’s souls.
And sometimes those ideas are endorsed by public figures. Like last year, when prominent far-right activist Laura Loomer accused HAARP of creating a blizzard to blow then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s chances in the Iowa caucuses.
Matthews said the open houses pull the curtain back on what they’re really doing.
“Events like this give them an opportunity to actually ask some of those hard questions of the researchers and get an answer,” she said.
The people who work at HAARP are more than happy to talk about their research and day-to-day grind — when the mics are off. Most are wearing buttons that say, “No photos, please.” All of that is to safeguard against harassment and credible threats — which they do get from time to time.
“I take very seriously my obligation to protect our staff to the best of the ability that we can in every discussion that we have, in every meeting that we have,” Matthews said.
Taking off the tinfoil — and teaching the public about space physics
The idea behind the event isn’t just about clearing up dangerous misunderstandings. The scientists want to share what they’ve been learning about the upper atmosphere by beaming massive amounts of radio waves at it.
UAF physicist Craig Heinselman said the facility is like the “world’s best screwdriver” to poke at nearest space.
“Being able to steer the beam in various directions in very short time frames, transmitting at different frequencies,” he said. “The radio waves that are transmitted can also be polarized — kind of like polarized filters on your glasses — and they have different effects.”
He and his colleagues are looking into things that have practical applications, too. They’re studying how space weather interacts with the ionized layer of the atmosphere, which can sometimes disrupt GPS signals.
“We're working on the basic research to get to there, but eventually we hope to get there and have better space weather prediction,” he said.
For Triplehorn — the guy with the tinfoil hat — that educational aspect was the biggest draw. And that’s true for most of the hundred or so guests, like UAF chemistry student Aggy Boldt.
“I think I'm just trying to explore my options, like what kind of career I could go into with chemistry,” she said. “I think it's just cool to see what everyone else is doing and learn more about it.”
After a day packed with science talks, drone demonstrations, and walking tours that wound through the facility’s cavernous engine room and up to the array, Matthews, the director, said it was another successful outreach event.
“I'm thrilled that we had young kids that were asking for balloons and asking if they could steal two or three cookies for their siblings,” she said. “This is what I want to see.”
She says that she hopes each open house event makes the facility a little less frightening to the public.“It's just Alaskans that are helping to do some really cool science,” she said.
