I have been finding out about shortwave radio, and it is truly beautiful, because it sounds like technology, but is inter-related to natural phenomena and the solar system in a grand way not normally typically assumed of signals pertaining to electrical equipment.

If you get a shortwave radio you will be able to hear faint radio broadcasts from all over the world; broadcasts from conspirators and illegal commentators, and so-called 'numbers' broadcasts, which might be spy codes, nobody really knows. You might hear someone lost on a ship calling for help.

The reason these shortwave signals can reach you, though you are the other side of the orb, is because they reverberate off an outer layer of the Earth's atmosphere, called the ionosphere. The ionosphere was discovered about a hundred and fifty years ago, and is way above the ozone layer. It is ionised by solar winds (sometimes called solar radiation).

You might remember electrons from school, and how they disconnect and fix on to things, because they are negatively charged and the things they attach to are positive.  Well in the ionosphere, as far as I can tell, the environment is such that they are always slipping apart and breaking off and re-fixing, creating a kind of charge. Like a swingers party. I think that the northern lights (Aurora Borealis) happen in the ionosophere because things are a bit different, electro-magnetically speaking, over the poles.

Every time there is a fluctuation in the ionosphere, this influences shortwave radio. So: Lightning, the northern lights, and any influence climate change is having on the area. The shortwave signal is also influenced by the time of day, because the sunlight causes certain different reactions in the ionosphere. It is influenced by the seasons, and by other solar phenomena like meteorites and natural explosions of heat.

Wikipedia lists 'The dependence of shortwave radio on atmospheric conditions' as a disadvantage of shortwave radio, but I think this is amazing, making shortwave a little like a plant, and an icon for our times.

In connection with this I have been reading about HAARP.

You already have an inkling, because acronym is the first lodging of evil.

Funded by the USA air force, navy, and some others, HAARP apparently exists to 'provide a research facility to conduct pioneering experiments in ionospheric phenomena... used to analyze basic ionospheric properties and to assess the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for communications and surveillance purposes.'

That's right, they're 'investigating' the ionosphere, playground of the shortwave radiowaves, amongst other things. They've worked out how to artificially heat it up, causing bits of it to move about, a facility that some people worry could be used as a weapon, in what they call geophysical warfare. This has generated some outrage; the Americans could now use radiowaves to influence the atmosphere, though they say that the ionosphere is like a giant etchosketch and any artificial alterations are 'erased' immediately after.

Have a listen to the shortwave radio, and disentangle it from your category of objective machinery; it might die too! But maybe it will fight back. Think about the beauty of it bouncing round our earth, variable and dependable on the fluctuations of the sun's rays.

If there are laboratories which are dismantling and instrumentalising the outer atmosphere, then it is important to remember that they are not just powerhouses of intelligence, surveillance and climate-politics, but also potential small-time back-street abattoirs of amateur, long-distance communications.