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?

[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?

[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.

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?