Re: 7.1Hz, how the heck did Tesla succeed?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Bill,

On 14 Jul 2005, at 17:07, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Tesla list wrote:
>
>  > Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>  >  > building up, you'd have to hit the frequency exactly.  Also, >
>  > Sutton/Spaniol note that the resonance frequency changes from
>  moment >  > to moment, causing a misperception that the Q is low when
>  in fact it's >  > high (but the peak moves around randomly which
>  screws up the >  > measurements.) > > I'd interpret what is
>  effectively a wide bandwidth as low Q or am I > missing something?
>
> This issue is also mentioned at:
>
>    Earth Resonance
>    http://www.pupman.com/listarchives/1995/january/msg00002.html
>
>
>  >  > But this brings up a big issue.  If Tesla accomplished it, HOW
>  DID HE >  > DO IT?  The Earth's resonant overtones supposedly die
>  away above >  > 10KHz, so high-freq Tesla coils won't work.  Maybe
>  Tesla built a huge >  > 2KHz coil? Driven by a multipole generator?
>  I don't recall the >  > Colorado Springs frequencies offhand. > > To
>  me the real question is "did he?". There is scant evidence that he >
>  did other than anecdote.
>
> Yes, but think about it:  his claims were originally dismissed because
> radio waves don't go around the earth, so resonance is impossible,
> Tesla's objections to the contrary.  Then science advanced, soon
> finding that radio waves do go over the horizon.  Then fifty years
> later Schumann rediscovered the resonances Tesla was always talking
> about.  Is Tesla vindicated?  No, his claims were STILL dismissed.

I have never dismissed his claims on those grounds. Those who did can answer
for themselves. However, he is on record as stating that he did not intend to
transmit energy by means of radiation, a mode of transport which he
considered rather inefficient.

> After all, if you're sending out high power VLF (at hundreds of HZ?),
> you can't receive it, since you'd need a quarter-wave antenna 100
> kilometers long in order to intercept significant energy from the
> fields.  But this objection turns out to be wrong too.  An ideal short
> antenna can absorb the same energy flux as a full size quarter-wave
> antenna.  That's assuming ideal zero-ohm inductors with infinite Q
> tank circuits.  Real inductors make short antennas behave much larger
> than their physical length, but not 1000KM large.  But received power
> depends on receiver Q, and isn't fixed by antenna length.

That is news to me. Energy has to be collected and the bigger the
collector....  I thought received optical power depended on the amount of
light intercepted (e.g. solar cells to put it into an electrical context).

> So now what's the objection to Tesla's "world system?"  Tesla failed
> to make it work, but that was because wall street turned against him
> before it was up and running.  Contemporary experimenters have failed
> to power any distant devices via Earth resonance transmission, but
> this may just mean that Tesla didn't reveal the necessary details (or
> it may just mean that it's difficult to accomplish, and nobody has put
> major funding into an attempt.)

I think the onus is on those claiming it _can_ be done to demonstrate it.

>  >  > Or could he even have made a 60Hz extra coil?  With such low >
>  > frequencies a non-resonant air-core transformer could easily be
>  driven >  > by mechanical AC generators, and only the "extra coil"
>  would need to >  > be resonant.  But the wandering Earth-resonance
>  frequency would still >  > be a problem. > > Why should it wander?
>
> Why should it remain fixed?

Tesla considered the earth to be a spherical conductor of "limited
dimensions" and those dimensions do not substantially change. The Schumann
cavity is something I thought wasn't known to Tesla but I may be wrong. In
the context of his considerations nothing should have changed much if at all.

  The real question is *how much* does it
> wander (a tiny percentage, or a significant amount?)  I've seen papers
> that mention significant frequency changes over spans of months, so
> these changes are possible.  If there were significant random changes
> over a span of seconds, then this would appear on spectrum
> measurements as an artifact: a falsely wide resonance band, and a
> falsely low Q.  See
> http://www.pupman.com/listarchives/1995/january/msg00002.html

I have included a quote from that post:

"In this note we discuss the issue of low Q for the Schumann cavity and its 
effect on global power
distribution. We deter- mined that the observed Q is attributable to shunt 
atmospheric conductivity, and
as such is equivalent to the excitation loss of conventional power 
transformers. We conclude that low Q
is not an issue of substance for global power distribution in Tesla's system."
RQ>To accurately paraphrase, they included excitation and resistance losses 
and determined that even
though the earth is far from "perfectly conducting" it conducts resonate 
current rather well.

The reference to "resonate current" in the commentary is interesting to say
the least. Current is current in my book. And where is the experimental
evidence to back up the claim being commented on? I've been holding my breath
on this one for too long.

>
>  > A big problem I see with transmission schemes proposed by Tesla and
>  > others is that you would really want to supress lightning to avoid
>  > periodic shorting and loss of power in the system and the global >
>  frequency of lightning is a lot higher than 7-odd Hz (more like 100Hz
>  > IIR).
>
> But we already know that lightning doesn't short the system.  We have
> simple evidence that no shorting occurs: the Earth's vertical E-field
> changes only slowly over 24 hours, with no enormous sudden shorts (or
> sudden upward jumps.) Since the resonant cavity is 50 odd miles thick,
> lightning doesn't come even close to reaching up to the conductive
> layer and causing shorts.  Now "sprites and jets", they might have a
> chance of causing a short.  But e-field meters would immediately tell
> us if this was happening.  I think the main loss is because of air
> conductivity; because at altitudes higher than a few hundred feet the
> air is ionized by cosmic background radiation.  But as the
> Corum/Spaniol paper points out, this loss appears across the
> transmitter.  It doesn't appear in series between transmitter and
> receiver.  All continent-wide power grids have similar losses because
> of corona and surface leakage across insulators.

In fact lightning excites the cavity like a giant spark gap. But that is not
the same thing as having it present while trying to transmit substantial
amounts of energy in an orderly fashion. The effects of lightning on such a
system are not known because the system doesn't exist so perhaps lightning
wouldn't affect it. I have to admit that perhaps I postulated too much -
however, my postulation remains unfalsified.

>
>  >        I thought the Corums were supposed to have had some kind of
>  > scheme happening several years ago. Personally I am not as
>  optimistic > as some. Somebody please prove me wrong.
>
> I've seen Corum papers about this, but hadn't heard that they'd
> actually tried sending out VLF power.  (How do you make a tesla coil
> transmit 100Hz?)  If they had sufficient funding, and they tried and
> failed, then that's more evidence that the task is impossible (or
> perhaps only difficult.)   On the other hand, did they figure out how
> to send out 100Hz radiation?    If they didn't use my "pulsed UV
> beams" idea, how did they do it?

I don't think they actually have. I had understood from a source close to
them that they would be doing it somewhere around the last turn of the
century but........   All I can say is to those who claim it can be done,
"bring it on".

Malcolm