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

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Mddeming@xxxxxxx 

In a message dated 7/16/05 7:51:29 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
In my opinion, this discredits Tesla's plans to resonate the earth as a
conducting sphere with standing waves. But he also planned an alternative
mode where he would "tap into" the ionosphere using a very tall coil to
send a streamer right up there. The whole ionosphere would then become part
of his "topload".

Again we now know the ionosphere is a pretty lossy conductor. It would
probably be the equivalent of running your coil with a topload made of
slightly dampened string :-/ I don't know of any data that would confirm or
deny the possibility of doing it though. After all, the ionosphere might be
a poor conductor but it has a huge cross-sectional area for passing current.

    Unfortunately, Tesla never contemplated using the ionosphere. Tesla's 
power transmission patents were based on upper tropospheric conduction 
(8-10 miles) , not the ionosphere (50-100+ miles), the existence of which 
was not even verified until a year after Wardenclyffe was dismantled. This 
is a pleasant little myth that was created by disciples reading later 
discoveries back into history where they didn't belong.

    Since it is apparent that many advocates know far less about the 
structure of the atmosphere than they do even about EM theory, I dug out 
some of my old grad school books to create this chart:

Altitude    Layer        Pressure    Common Phenomena
0            Sea level     1.0 atm.        us
~5 km    Troposphere                    Cumulonimbus clouds
~10 km  Troposphere                   Cirrus clouds, Mt. Everest peak
~12 km  Tropopause    0.1 atm.    Temps < -100 C
~14 km  Stratosphere
~30 km  Stratosphere                "Mother of pearl" clouds
~40 km  Stratosphere                  Ozone layer
~50 km   Stratopause 0.001 atm.   Temps > +100  C
~53 km   Mesosphere
~70 km   Mesosphere 0.0001 atm   Significant cosmic rays
~80 km   Mesopause                        Noctilucent clouds, Temps <-130 C
~84 km    Ionosphere 0.00001 atm
~100 km  Ionosphere 0.000001 atm     Meteors become visible, Aurora
~110 km  Ionosphere                            Aurora
>140 km "Space"

There are some seasonal and latitudenal variations. As you can easily see, 
ionospheric pressure are four to five orders of magnitude below what Tesla 
mentioned in his patents. A system requiring a 50 mile vertical 
transmission line for sending and another one for receiving would have been 
blatantly impractical to Tesla, even in his later years.

Matt D.