[Hoplite]

Hmmm...

This has somewhat of an 'inside joke' feel to it, to my non-technical, somewhat skeptical mind.

[RightWhale]

The space tether will probably do something as advertised. At least it will draw charged particles out of their magnetic bottle so they can participate in the auroral display. But it also might act like a piece of steel roofing blown across the high-tension lines during a windstorm. The question might be not how long it will take to drain 99% of the charged particles, but how bright the flash will be when the tether is smoked.

[boris]

"This has somewhat of an 'inside joke' feel to it, to my non-technical, somewhat skeptical mind."

The problem is that they are completely serious.

Forward once gave a talk which I attended. He advocated making lots of anti-matter, and made the interesting claim that a pound of anti-iron would be relatively safe. "If you dropped it on the ground, it would just sizzle and melt," he said.

"Yeah, but the sizzling is releasing GAMMA RAYS," I reminded him, and the total energy in the pound of anti-iron might just destroy the earth. Melting it is bad because the surface area increases exponentially.

"Forward" thinking indeed.

--Boris