Re: Spark-gap sparks vs. solid-state sparks

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz>

Hi Bert, all,
               A thought occurs:

On 24 Apr 01, at 11:26, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Bert Hickman by way of Terry Fritz
> <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <bert.hickman-at-aquila-dot-net>
> 
> Malcolm and all,
> 
> Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's seen this! I suspect that few
> coilers have actually observed this because the required conditions
> are somewhat unique. First, the coil and topload must be near the
> verge of breakout, but the topload must not actually break out. The
> light from the main gap should be shielded so that the dim corona and
> streamer flashes can be more easily observed. And, while it's not
> essential for your eyes to be dark-adapted, it helps considerably when
> trying to observe the faint outer region of the discharges. I
> accidentally stumbled upon this phenomenon while making a change to a
> larger toroid, and the system then no longer achieved breakout. After
> seeing something strange (the outer portion of the toroid was sort of
> "glowing"), I then purposely reduced the light to see what was really
> going on. I couldn't believe the level of activity that was going on
> around the toroid - it was surprisingly bright and quite beautiful!

I would describe the events as the closest thing to "ghostly" that 
I'm ever likely to see. I've noticed in time exposures of normal coil 
operation that there is invariably a blue haze surrounding streamers 
and in fact, many otherwise "invisible" discharges are shown up. 
Early on I wondered whether this was an artifact of ????  Now I know 
what's really happening. I think a unique photo would result if this 
event was captured over several seconds of firing. The ones I 
observed were during some single shot testing so multiple shots would 
be required for the exposure. It was quite amazing. I expect a ball 
of blue haze would be the result of such a photo since the ghosts 
would meld together with shots*time. The next step up in this would 
be breaking out of multiple rooted air streamers causing the currents 
to follow just a (comparatively) few paths. I wondered whether the 
streamers were effectively repelling each other leading to the 
"global" appearance. There were far too many to be accounted for by 
secondary oscillations as Tesla once speculated. It seems they must 
be largely simultaneous.

Regards,
malcolm
<snip>