The discovery of Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter - part 5
We now move on to “the Problem of Increasing Human Energy”, the crown jewel of Tesla’s theoretical work.
In case you have missed the earlier parts of this series, you can find them here
In the introduction of this article we read:
Modern science says: The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future. From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom. Lord Kelvin, in his profound meditations, allows us only a short span of life, something like six million years, after which time the sun's bright light will have ceased to shine, and its life giving heat will have ebbed away, and our own earth will be a lump of ice, hurrying on through the eternal night. But do not let us despair. There will still be left upon it a glimmering spark of life, and there will be a chance to kindle a new fire on some distant star. (1)
This is reason why he wrote this article. In case he could not complete his work, this article is the “glimmering spark” that will kindle a new fire in some future scientist.
The article is divided into 5 parts, 4 theoretical and 1 practical);
- an introduction; in which Tesla talks about the nature of electricity,
- THE FIRST PROBLEM: HOW TO INCREASE THE HUMAN MASS; different sources of energy with special attention to our atmosphere,
- THE SECOND PROBLEM: HOW TO REDUCE THE FORCE RETARDING THE HUMAN MASS; how to collect and distribute this energy,
- THE THIRD PROBLEM: HOW TO INCREASE THE FORCE ACCELERATING THE HUMAN MASS; the ultimate source and the overall plan,
- Tesla’s solution that he has been working on (starting at “A DEPARTURE FROM KNOWN METHODS”)
In this series I already have written a lot about his theories, so let’s jump straight to the fifth part.
When I began the investigation of the subject under consideration, and when the preceding or similar ideas presented themselves to me for the first time, though I was then unacquainted with a number of the facts mentioned, a survey of the various ways of utilizing the energy of the medium convinced me, nevertheless, that to arrive at a thoroughly satisfactory practical solution a radical departure from the methods then known had to be made. The windmill, the solar engine, the engine driven by terrestrial heat, had their limitations in the amount of power obtainable. Some new way had to be discovered which would enable us to get more energy. There was enough heat-energy in the medium, but only a small part of it was available for the operation of an engine in the ways then known. Besides, the energy was obtainable only at a very slow rate. Clearly, then, the problem was to discover some new method which would make it possible both to utilize more of the heat-energy of the medium and also to draw it away from the same at a more rapid rate. (1)
If you have not yet read the first 4 parts in this series -especially part 3 and part 4- you will not understand what Tesla meant with this last sentence. So if you haven’t, please do take a moment to catch up.
Tesla continues:
I was vainly endeavouring to form an idea of how this might be accomplished, when I read some statements from Carnot and Lord Kelvin (then Sir William Thomson) which meant virtually that it is impossible for an inanimate mechanism or self-acting machine to cool a portion of the medium below the temperature of the surrounding, and operate by the heat abstracted. These statements interested me intensely. Evidently a living being could do this very thing, and since the experiences of my early life which I have related had convinced me that a living being is only an automaton, or, otherwise stated, a "self-acting-engine," I came to the conclusion that it was possible to construct a machine which would do the same. (1)
Tesla refers to the apparent breaking of the first law of thermodynamics. But his scheme does not break this universal law, just like solar panels don’t.
As the first step toward this realization I conceived the following mechanism. Imagine a thermopile consisting of a number of bars of metal extending from the earth to the outer space beyond the atmosphere. The heat from below, conducted upward along these metal bars, would cool the earth or the sea or the air, according to the location of the lower parts of the bars, and the result, as is well known, would be an electric current circulating in these bars. The two terminals of the thermopile could now be joined through an electric motor, and, theoretically, this motor would run on and on, until the media below would be cooled down to the temperature of the outer space. This would be an inanimate engine which, to all evidence, would be cooling a portion of the medium below the temperature of the surrounding, and operating by the heat abstracted. (1)
In my previous post I mentioned how the Earth’s atmosphere conducts heat from Earth to outer space and how this could be interpreted as an electric current. In the above paragraph you see how Tesla played with this idea. In fact a single wire going up into the ionosphere would be a thermocouple producing at least 400,000 Volts. The IonPowerGroup is attempting various schemes in this direction. If they would only understand Tesla’s work they could be so much more successful.
But was it not possible to realize a similar condition without necessarily going to a height? Conceive, for the sake of illustration, [a cylindrical] enclosure T, as illustrated in diagram b, such that energy could not be transferred across it except through a channel or path O, and that, by some means or other, in this enclosure a medium were maintained which would have little energy, and that on the outer side of the same there would be the ordinary ambient medium with much energy. Under these assumptions the energy would flow through the path O, as indicated by the arrow, and might then be converted on its passage into some other form of energy. The question was, Could such a condition be attained? Could we produce artificially such a "sink" for the energy of the ambient medium to flow in? Suppose that an extremely low temperature could be maintained by some process in a given space; the surrounding medium would then be compelled to give off heat, which could be converted into mechanical or other form of energy, and utilized. By realizing such a plan, we should be enabled to get at any point of the globe a continuous supply of energy, day and night. More than this, reasoning in the abstract, it would seem possible to cause a quick circulation of the medium, and thus draw the energy at a very rapid rate. (1)
As impossible as this looks at first, this is what happens in a very common natural process. But let’s continue reading here.
Here, then, was an idea which, if realizable, afforded a happy solution of the problem of getting energy from the medium. But was it realizable? I convinced myself that it was so in a number of ways, of which one is the following. As regards heat, we are at a high level, which may be represented by the surface of a mountain lake considerably above the sea, the level of which may mark the absolute zero of temperature existing in the interstellar space. Heat, like water, flows from high to low level, and, consequently, just as we can let the water of the lake run down to the sea, so we are able to let heat from the earth's surface travel up into the cold region above. Heat, like water, can perform work in flowing down, and if we had any doubt as to whether we could derive energy from the medium by means of a thermopile, as before described, it would be dispelled by this analogue. But can we produce cold in a given portion of the space and cause the heat to flow in continually? To create such a "sink," or "cold hole," as we might say, in the medium, would be equivalent to producing in the lake a space either empty or filled with something much lighter than water. This we could do by placing in the lake a tank, and pumping all the water out of the latter. We know, then, that the water, if allowed to flow back into the tank, would, theoretically, be able to perform exactly the same amount of work which was used in pumping it out, but not a bit more. Consequently nothing could be gained in this double operation of first raising the water and then letting it fall down. This would mean that it is impossible to create such a sink in the medium. (1)
This describes the main problem with this scheme, and the reason why normally this would be impossible. But our “medium” is not an ordinary medium…
But let us reflect a moment. Heat, though following certain general laws of mechanics, like a fluid, is not such; it is energy which may be converted into other forms of energy as it passes from a high to a low level. To make our mechanical analogy complete and true, we must, therefore, assume that the water, in its passage into the tank, is converted into something else, which may be taken out of it without using any, or by using very little, power. For example, if heat be represented in this analogue by the water of the lake, the oxygen and hydrogen composing the water may illustrate other forms of energy into which the heat is transformed in passing from hot to cold. If the process of heat transformation were absolutely perfect, no heat at all would arrive at the low level, since all of it would be converted into other forms of energy. Corresponding to this ideal case, all the water flowing into the tank would be decomposed into oxygen and hydrogen before reaching the bottom, and the result would be that water would continually flow in, and yet the tank would remain entirely empty, the gases formed escaping. We would thus produce, by expending initially a certain amount of work to create a sink for the heat or, respectively, the water to flow in, a condition enabling us to get any amount of energy without further effort. (1)
Tesla more or less repeats what he already said in the first example of the cylindrical enclosure T.
This would be an ideal way of obtaining motive power. We do not know of any such absolutely perfect process of heat-conversion, and consequently some heat will generally reach the low level, which means to say, in our mechanical analogue, that some water will arrive at the bottom of the tank, and a gradual and slow filling of the latter will take place, necessitating continuous pumping out. But evidently there will be less to pump out than flows in, or, in other words, less energy will be needed to maintain the initial condition than is developed by the fall, and this is to say that some energy will be gained from the medium. What is not converted in flowing down can just be raised up with its own energy, and what is converted is clear gain. Thus the virtue of the principle I have discovered resides wholly in the conversion of the energy on the downward flow. (1)
The last sentence is an obvious truth as this scheme would almost never work. Almost never, because there is one situation in which it does work. And we have seen it work many times. The voltage in a lightning discharge can only break through 20-80 meters of air, yet we see strikes that are many kilometres long. A high speed camera reveals how this happens: It starts with a 20-80 meter discharge, this creates a number of effects in the surrounding air that cause new charges to get funnelled towards the end of this first discharge, this builds up a new high voltage region from which a new discharge occurs. This happens many many times until an ionized channel is build that can discharge to the ground. Then the most loud and powerful effect in a lightning strike takes place; the emptying of this channel that is filled with ions from the air - not from the thundercloud as some people want us to believe.
To link this to the above story: electricity gets compressed in a high voltage region until it escapes in a discharge. This discharge causes a sharp drop of the pressure which in turn comes with a sharp drop in temperature. This cold electricity attracts heat from the environment which gets converted into electrical current. So the electricity remains cold and the attracted heat flows down the discharge as an electrical current, creating a new high voltage region from which a new discharge takes place.
At this point in the article Tesla starts talking about the development of this machine.
That seems a good point for a small break, so we can consume this new theory.
(to be continued)
Quotes from
- June, 1900: “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy”, by Nikola Tesla – or download as pdf from google docs