Science: Veil Around the World

It almost seemed impudence. Man, in cosmological terms an all but invisible presence on the surface of the earth, had flung aloft an apparatus which disturbed the order of the heavens themselves, made auroras flare in the skies, a hemisphere apart. Exploding nuclear bombs 300 miles above the South Atlantic, the men of Project Argus spun a veil of electrons around the earth, boldly using the atmosphere and nearby space as their laboratory.

Arching Lines. Project Argus began with a suggestion from Nicholas Constantine Christofilos, 42, a remarkable engineer-scientist of limited academic training...

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