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Re: HV + laser beams

Subject:  Re: HV + laser beams
  Date:  Tue, 20 May 1997 11:36:07 -0600 (MDT)
  From:  JACK HERRON <JHERRON-at-BASIX.COM>
    To:  Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>


At 01:38 AM 5/20/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Subject:     Re: HV + laser beams
>      Date:  Mon, 19 May 1997 16:51:33 -0700
>      From:  David Trimmell <dwt-at-efn-dot-org>
>        To:  Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>References: 
>           1
>
>
>Alfred, All,
>
>"David, I don't think that uch power is required. I remember hearing 
>back around 1973 that some students at MIT used a U.V. laser of a few 
>watts (Nitrogen laser I think) to conduct the output of a small Tesla 
>coil several hundred feet to an isolated terminal and draw several 
>inches of spark from the isolated terminal to ground. I remeber that 
>when the news relayed the info they concluded that these students 
>were bringing Tesla's idea of wireless power to reality. Well not 
>quite, Tesla's wireless power experiments didn't use a laser, he was
>using the schuman (Sp.?) resonant frequency of the earth."

All,
        If I might intrude a bit here, the term power is being a bit
mis-interpreted.  The smallest nitrogen gas laser emits its power in 8
nano-second self-saturating and extinguishing bursts of 50 to 100
kilowatts
of peak optical power.  The gas will not lase while warm, so time must
pass
while the gas filling either cools, or is swept out of the cavity.  Such
a
laser emits a train of pulses of high power, separated by much longer
times
of no power.  It IS correct to refer to such a device as emitting a few
watts of AVERAGE power, but it is easy to let such a specification
conceal
the fact that the ionization (which must occur to provide a conduction
path)
is being created by very high power pulses.  It should also be noted
that
the wavelength of such a laser is in the UV, which has enough energy
inherently to cause ionization in the atmosphere.  It can be refered to
as a
form of "ionizing radiation".  The red light of a solid state or HeNe
laser
is not an ionizing radiation, and it would be reaching a bit to expect a
few
milliwatts of non-ionizing light to accomplish the feat just because
100,000
watts of UV are capable of doing so.
-----------------------------------------
Jack Herron - Editor
Society for Amateur Scientists
8118 E. 20th St.
Tucson, AZ 85710 USA
jherron-at-basix-dot-com
520 885-6933