Re: just wondering (Schumann resonance)

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

Original poster: "Dr. Resonance" <resonance-at-jvlnet-dot-com> 


Tesla's "death ray" worked on a totally different principle.  It used a
large electrostatic generator to accelerate small particles to very high
velocity.  In principle, this might have worked.

You're right on the Schumann resonance --- high loss factor and attenuation
of signal.


Dr. Resonance


 > I have a couple of thoughts about the Schumann resonance.
 >
 > As a radio ham I know about propagation and stuff. And I understand the
 > Schumann resonance is a standing wave caused by a radio wave that, in
 > wavelength terms, fits exactly once (or a whole number of times) round the
 > earth. (please correct me if I'm wrong.)
 >
 > Now, if my "standing wave" analogy is correct, I would imagine the
 > propagation path for the wave that forms the Schumann resonance is pretty
 > lossy. When talking to very high powered foreign stations on the HF band,
I
 > could often hear a distinct "echo" on their signal, which is of course
 > caused by their radio waves reaching me twice, the short way round the
 > world, and the long way.
 >
 > Anyway, from observations like these, I would estimate the loss for a trip
 > round the world is over 100dB. I was working at 10s of MHz, it would of
 > course be lower at the 10s of Hz where the Schumann resonance happens. But
 > even assuming the loss goes down in proportion to the frequency, it's
still
 > a 40dB loss (40dB= 1/10000) at 10Hz.
 >
 > So how on earth you could ever excite a resonance in such a lossy system,
 > using even the most powerful transmitter ever made, I don't know.
 >
 > If these loss figures are ballpark, it blows all that "wireless death ray"
 > cr*p out the water too: For instance, Tesla couldn't have caused the
 > Tunguska explosion ;) without causing an explosion 40dB bigger at his
 > transmitter site, and I think folks would have noticed New York missing
:)))
 >
 > Steve C.
 >
 >
 >