In 1988, OMNI magazine raised concerns about the environmental consequences of a bizarre electromagnetic invention. According to OMNI, ARCO, the US oil giant, found itself wondering what to do with the estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that it hoped to extract from Alaska's North Slope. While this was enough energy to supply the US for a year, the gas fields were too far from any potential customers. ARCO concluded that it would be too expensive to liquefy the gas and ship it thousands of miles to urban centers. What was needed was a client that wanted access to vast amounts of energy on-site -- in the wilds of Alaska.
Bernard Eastland, an MIT and Columbia University physicist with eight years experience with the Atomic Energy Commission, came to the rescue with an extraordinary plan to use the energy "at the point of production."
Eastland, who soon became president of ARCO's Production Technologies International Company in Houston, proposed burning the vast Alaskan gas fields to power a huge electric generator. The resulting power would be directed into a huge antenna complex, 40 miles on a side. The antennae would be used to focus an intense beam of electromagnetic energy into the upper atmosphere where it would collide with the ionosphere to create a phenomenon called the "mirror force." Eastland was granted a US Patent (# 4,686,605) for this invention on August 11, 1987.
"You can virtually lift part of the upper atmosphere," Eastland told OMNI, "You can make it move, do things to it." One of the tricks Eastland envisioned involved "surgically" distorting the ionosphere to disrupt global communications. Pushing the upper atmosphere around might also generate high-altitude "drag" that could heat and deflect enemy missiles or surround them with "high-energy electrons" that might cause the missiles to detonate in mid-trajectory.
The proposal appealed to the Pentagon, which invested several hundred thousand dollars "evaluating" Eastland's work. Eastland maintained that there were "peaceful" uses for his technology. In one scenario, he explained how beams of electromagnetic power could lift portions of the upper atmosphere and redirect the jetstream to alter global weather patterns. Using "plumes of atmospheric particles to act as a lens or focusing device," Eastland proposed redirecting sunlight and heat to different parts of the Earth's surface, making it possible to manipulate wind patterns, cause rainstorms in Ethiopia, drive hurricanes out of the Caribbean, incinerate airborne industrial pollution and sew up the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer.
"Because the upper atmosphere is extremely sensitive to small changes in its composition," OMNI cautioned, "merely testing an Eastland Device could cause irreversible damage."