So it sort of seems as though there are actually two methods for wireless power distribution described in Tesla work. One involves using the ionosphere as a conductor to transmit power and the other method uses the earth itself as the transmission medium.

They may be to halves of the same system but I just don’t know and they both have stumbling blocks in their practical application that relate to information Tesla never published.

Method 1) Using the earth as a giant capacitor ie: Two conductive bodies, the ionosphere and the earth itself separated by an insulator (the lower atmosphere) requires a method of bridging the insulator (in a normal capacitor this usually this takes the form of a spark gap.

One simplistic way to think of this is to imagine lightning as the bridging spark that discharges the potential built up in the upper atmosphere into the earth.

So how does one "bridge the gap" of the lower atmosphere to charge and discharge (supply and consume power)using this earth sized capacitor without losing all the energy as lightning? Metal is an insulator not a conductor at lower air pressures and high voltage potentials so a big antenna will not work.

Tesla never explicitly explained how to overcome that bit, or if he did its locked up in the FBI files stolen from his residence after he died.

Most people think that Tesla was planning to use another of his inventions to ionise a stream of air to such an degree that it becomes highly conductive and use that to bridge the spark gap. In this way he could charge the ionosphere with a power generator and a similar setup could be used to receive power anywhere else on earth.


Method 2) This involves the massive induction coil Tesla built at Colorado Springs when he tested his theory that the Earth could be electrically "tuned". Unfortunately this coil was never described in enough detail to replicate it.

The idea is to set up an electrical resonance in the earth by discharging the huge “undescribed” coil into the earth at regular intervals to create a big/strong wave. (Just like in a bathtub you can make big waves by pushing a little bit at just the right time)

Like the tub of water once you have the electrical oscillations tuned to where you want you only need very small inputs to keep the resonance going. Power can be drawn from the earth by using these electrical oscillations to charge the primary winding of a Tesla Coil at the receiving end thus providing power anywhere in the world.

Tesla is still credited with the world record for man made lightning for the lightning that was produced by the receiver in this experiment.. So it does work. No questions about it. This system is so efficient because you only have to input frictional losses to the system, ie: the “small tap at the right time” rather than constantly pouring power in like powerlines.



Oh well, looks like someone would have to basically reinvent the whole lot, but I bet it would be easier today with transistorised electronics and powerful computers to determine the length of tuned coils etc.

No way I've got the smarts or funds to do it, but damm I’ve had fun reading about it.

Tesla himself claimed to be a psychic and that his inventions came to him in dreams, so maybe the secrets or "missing links" to his work hides within our disbelief of systems previously thought impossible.

The one thing I do agree with Beardon is his comments about Telsla's discoveries being so fundamental, so simple that its almost as if it were right under our noses the whole time.

Its a real "Men who stare at Goats" scenario, when the military starts investigating eastern mysticism, is this based on some kind of evidence...or sheer desperation?

I agree Wurzel!!!

I was reading this article that talks about the links between Indian Vedic Philosophy and Tesla's worldview.

Apparently the 4000 year old Indian teachings describe the physical world in a very similar way to Tesla and allow for the same conclusions to be reached.

This is just like the way "Pythagoras Thorem" was also well known to the Babylonians several thousand years before Pythagoras was born.

As Bearden says Tesla's discoveries are of such a fundamental nature that it would be silly to think no one else had ever come up with them before.

For us in 2010 I think the problem is SCIENCE itself.

Science knows everything; anything not known by scientific methods is not scientific and thus useless, or at least only useful to Arts graduates.

Science comes along and all of a sudden anything that doesn't meet the reductionist worldview is discarded as useless. (This view of science as infallible comes down to the influence of Aristotle’s philosophy on modern scientific method, a peculiar quirk of history that resulted in the current universal acceptance of THE scientific method)

But there are other ways of knowing the world, and they can be just as powerful, if not more so, than the scientific method.

Eg: Now we have big pharmaceutical companies sending people into remote jungle communities to mine knowledge of local plant properties. Those primitive savages need uplifting into modern civilisation, but wait they have more sophisticated medicines than modern science, #OOPS#, better get their knowledge, make a chemical extract and make more money, in the process clearing the jungle for raw ingredients and removing the local populace to towns. BAM all that knowledge will be gone in a generation.

Look at Australia. 60,000 years... let me say that again so it sinks in….
SIXTY THOUSAND years of accumulated local knowledge almost completely eradicated in 200 years, Although to be fair in Australia we actively tried to destroy Aboriginal cultural knowledge in order to "civilise" them so 200 years could be seen as quite an achievement in culture destruction, maybe even a world record.

I look at the land degradation we have caused in Australia in 200 years - makes me wonder if civilisation aint just another word for rape.

There's so much history that gets wiped out and we are forced to re-learn old lessons over and over.

Oh well, I guess it would be boring if we were able to sustain ourselves off the land we lived on rather than destroying other cultures for their land and resources.

Then we wouldn’t have Datsuns either so I guess it would be REALLY boring!!!!!

Quote:
Which has zip to do with power generation.

About as secret as Area 251

"Which has zip to do with power generation.

About as secret as Area 251"

Hmmmm... Do I detect a little cynicism DD?

Ok so bear with me here... its no big secret, just physics.

As I said above - "The idea is to set up an electrical resonance in the earth by discharging the huge “undescribed” coil into the earth at regular intervals to create a big/strong wave.
Just like in a bathtub you can make big waves by pushing a little bit at just the right time”

So yes, you need some initial input and enough energy to provide the little push at the right time. It is immaterial if this first push comes from coal or from hydro or geothermal or solar.

The point is once resonance is achieved the inertia inherent in the system has magnified the original input by many orders of magnitude and the output of the system can be used to continue the resonance at the correct frequency.

Ie: It can power itself.

How is that not generating electricity that would not otherwise exist?

Or perhaps it could be more accurately described as Tesla's electricity amplification system???

On a related note just read an article in Septembers WME (Water/Materials/Energy) Magazine (Vol 21, No.8, p44) about a trial of Tesla's induction lighting system as a low energy maintenance free alternative for street lighting in some councils around NSW here in Australia.

Apparently we already have them here in Canberra along ANZAC parade. (I didn't know that till I read this article today, they've been there since 2001)

Also San Diego City has already implemented a project to upgrade 145,000 street lights with a mix of Tesla induction lights and LED lights as both technologies offer 30-40% energy efficiency improvements over current street lighting methods.

In fact in terms of energy efficiency Tesla’s induction lights are slightly more efficient than LEDs putting out 90-120 lumens per watt with LEDs typically generating from 80-90 lumens per watt.

So to put it another way – it’s been over 100 years and our best, most efficient form of lighting to date is still just not quite as good as what Tesla came up with.

You are talking about Tesla's idea for simultaneous power generation & distribution.

Yep indeedy.

I have been and continue to do so.

Well except where I went on a big athropological rant re: Colonial impacts on indigenous cultures. But that was in order to elaborate on Wurzels point that perhaps our current view of the world might be "binkered" by scientific preconceptions.

I think I'm missing your point DD.

Is what you're describing the same theory as Zero Point Energy Devils?
I'll have to talk to my sparky mate who lives in ACT about those lights. He works for Ecowise so I'm sure hed know something about them.

I dunno about the term "zero point energy" but that would make good sense as there's no physical connection to the light globe itself. There is no filament carrying electricity into a vacum tube to excite gases of varying physical properties.

From the article:

"Induction lights have an induction coil inside an antenna within the glass bulb. It is this coil that excites the mercury vapour atoms."

Now if I'm up to scratch on my Tesla theory the article is wrong here. It is actually the air paritcles in the vacum tube conducting electricity (via high freq oscillations) to the mercury atoms causing them to glow. Thus the air itself becomes the filament/conductor eliminating the need for a traditional filament connected to mains power.

Hey Wurzel, I'd be really interested to hear an industry perspective on the inductive lights!!!

Also just did a bit of reading about Zero Point Energy and as far as I can tell Zero Point Energy is a term used to describe the lowest amount of energy a defined system can have. I guess this means the magnetic resonance of a system with no external inputs, including the ambient heat of the atmosphere etc.

So at absolute zero (-273 deg C??? long time since high school science) the components of a system will still vibrate at a certain frequency because of their atomic structure, I tink that is their zero point energy.