Ask Slashdot: Could Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower Have Worked?

dryriver writes: For those who are unfamiliar with the story, from 1901-1902, inventor Nikola Tesla had a 187-foot-tall experimental wireless electricity transmission tower called the "Wardenclyffe Tower" built in Shoreham, New York. Tesla believed that it was possible to generate electrical power on a large scale in one part of the world and transmit that electrical power to electrical receivers in far away parts of the world wirelessly, using parts of Earth's atmosphere as the conducting medium. Tesla had huge problems getting the project financed -- powerful banker J.P. Morgan didn't play along and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson didn't help a pleading Tesla either. An excerpt from a Wardenclyffe documentary shows the tower finally being dynamited and sold for scrap in 1917. The Wardenclyffe Tower never reached operational status; wireless electrical transmission between continents never happened; Tesla became an emotionally broken man who died regretting that he did not manage to finish his life's work; and to this day nobody knows exactly how the Wardenclyffe Tower was supposed to function technically. To the question: Do you believe that Tesla's dream of electrical devices anywhere in the world essentially being able to draw electrical power from the sky with a relatively simple antenna could have worked, had he gotten the necessary funding to complete his experiments?

Comments

Believe?

[NEDHead]

What is believe? Either the math / physics works or it doesn't. Science is not an opinion based enterprise

Re:Believe?

[Spazmania]

EM radiation from the wireless source drops off according to the inverse square law. This has been figured out in the time since Tesla. So no, Tesla's tower could never have worked. Beyond a short distance (like the inches between an RFID card and its reader) power transmission is not feasible because of, you know, physics.

Re:Believe?

[twms2h]

What is believe? Either the math / physics works or it doesn't. Science is not an opinion based enterprise

It's about a belief whether there might any physical principle for wirelessly transmitting electricity that Tesla knew about back then and we don't nowadays.

It might be possible, but I believe it unlikely.

Re:Believe?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yes but then these journalists wouldn't have been able to get their clickbait article featured on Slashdot.

Re:Believe?

[epine]

You stole my thunder.

Word to the wise: he also stole your lightening, which is a fine mode of atmospheric power transmission if you can buffer the surge.

Re: Believe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production. That implies that at least some production is going on.

"From each according to his ability" = you work in the capacity as far as you are able.

You may argue that no one will have incentive to work if what they produce is being taken away, but that is what is currently happening under capitalism: your boss and the government take the majority of value from what you produce. Yet you still keep showing up at that job.

Re:Believe?

[thegarbz]

Lasers are coherent and tightly focused beams of light. The Wardenclyffe Tower was an omni-directional transmitter. Both continue to obey the inverse square law. The existence of lasers in no way counter the GP's point that Tesla's tower could not possibly work.

Re: Believe?

[sjames]

No socialist ever said otherwise. The socialist contention is that overall we work less for the same things if we don't have rich dudes skimming off a heap of the productive effort so they can have a solid gold toilet seat and play golf all day.

The dudes with the solid gold toilet seats greatly appreciate your ignorance. At least in the abstract sense.

Re: Believe?

[postbigbang]

It's very possible to tap into the magnetosphere. The varying layers all have interesting phototropic controls as the earth spins on its axis. It's somewhat static, but changes as we go through the day (add in slight lunar-effect changes, too).

Screw it up, just a bit--- and neutralize it in some way, and watch the atmosphere become damaged beyond your wildest imagination. If you thought Climate Change was fun, strap on.

Gravity keeps the atmosphere and weather somewhat intact against the 1000miles/hr rotation of the earth, but we're also very happy with the shielding the magnetosphere provides, layer densities (so yeah, we can breathe), and the insulations it provides from solar winds.

There is a huge iron core inside the earth that moves around, which is why the north magnetic pole is moving. It plays a huge part in how the Van Allen Belt and the magnetosphere keep this planet's life intact. Muck with this at our peril.

Re: Believe?

[dgatwood]

That is from Time's 1939 Man of the Year [time.com] for Hitler. Compare that to the current "socialist" mantra of the Democrat party: ownership of companies, restriction on profits, nationalization of industries, wealth taxes. The Democrat party is literally the party of Nazism, and Hitler's platform is enshrined in their own platform, just with different names.

*blink*

I'm not sure if you are misusing the word "literally" or you just have no clue what the Nazi party stood for. The main thing the Nazis were known for is blaming immigrants for the country's problems and then using that as an excuse to try to eradicate the Jewish people. If any party is even approaching being literal Nazis, well let's just say that there's only one party in the United States whose leader has ever suggested that illegal immigrants are the cause of our crime problems and that we should ban people from entering this country based on their religion, and it ain't the Democrats.

But ignoring the Elephant in the room, the biggest thing you're completely missing is any sense of nuance. You talk about socialism and capitalism as though it's an either-or situation. That couldn't be farther from the truth. No economic system in its purest form works, period. All economically viable countries involve a combination of economic systems. They combine some aspects of socialism (e.g. public healthcare, public schools, public roads and freeways, etc.) with some aspects of capitalism (publicly and privately owned businesses in competition with one another, wealth accumulation, etc.). Government inherently is a balancing act between those two forces. Any government that goes too far in either direction will fail. Every. Single. Time.

Anybody saying that socialism is bad or equating it with Nazism or claiming that it can't work is wrong — not just subjectively wrong, but objectively, provably wrong. Every country requires some amount of socialism, because capitalism run amok results in erosion of the middle class and eventual devolution to a servant class and an aristocrat class. Similarly, every country requires some amount of capitalism, because socialism run amok results in no incentives to innovate, create, or improve the state of the world.

Take the arts, for example. There are two things that increase artistic output: Providing funds to pay artists enough money that they can create without having to "sell out" (this is socialism) and providing laws that guarantee that artists' creations cannot be freely copied without their permission (this is capitalism). The two exist in balance.

Or take our system of roads. Businesses and individuals alike depend on these roads. They are, by nature, socialist. However, there is a secondary capitalistic aspect to them in that taxes are charged based on road use to prevent the tragedy of the commons. So although the benefit is provided to all, those who benefit more also pay more.

Compare that to the current "socialist" mantra of the Democrat party: ownership of companies, restriction on profits, nationalization of industries, wealth taxes

In order:

Nobody is proposing that the government take over businesses en masse. At times, governments do have to buy out companies for various reasons, usually involving keeping them in business. What's wrong with that?

Nobody is proposing restriction on profits by businesses. The Democrats do, however, want companies to pay their fair share of taxes on those profits. What's wrong with that?

Nationalization of industries: See above.

Finally, what's your objection to wealth taxes? There are people who earn hundreds of millions of dollars per year or more. Surely two or three million is enough. It has been proven time and time again that the joy derived from making more money does not continue to increase much at all after your needs are met. Yet many people earn far more than is necessary to m

Freakout

[JBMcB]

People freak out about a few mW of RF being pushed though cell phones. Can you imagine the freakout if someone said they were going to build giant towers pushing millions of watts of low-frequency RF blasting out in all directions?