I remember hearing (a long time ago) that Tesla invented some kind of electrical arc, or something, that could cause all sorts of damage from really far away. Well, I really never thought too much about it, but a friend of mine recently said he heard about it and was really curious.
As the story goes, Tesla invents doomsday arc, tries to sell it to a bunch of different countries, no one believes it will work, Tesla demonstrates and misses his point (taking out part of Siberia), U.S. takes info and classifies it to keep us from killing ourselves. Or something like that.
I’ve never really considered how much truth/fiction this is, but I can find remarkably little info on the story/urban legend.
I’ve checked the archives (HAARP story is close but not what I remember) and I’ve checked http://www.snopes.com and could find nothing.
Could someone direct me the right way to the info or at least clarify the urban legend.
Well, the only thing I’ve ever found that has anything even remotely to do with this is a plot line (and I use the term in its broadest possible sense) in Spider Robinson’s new book, Callahan’s Key. Ahhh, Spider. Love his puns, hate his ‘plots’.
During a search from Google, I found two pages that deal with this, so it appears he didn’t make it up out of whole cloth. First is a page dedicated to Catastrophism, so take what ever it is with a grain of salt. (The author does go out of his way to note that the cause of the Tunguska blast is speculation, so he gets points for that.)
The second comes from the Parascope website, and comes with a history of Tesla’s rather checkered career.
Personally, I think it’s an amusing story, but hardly a credible theory. Although previous explanations have included comets and a natural (?) nuclear explosion, the current model of a ice/rock meteorite, perhaps the remnant of a comet’s nucleus exploding between 4 and 6 km above the ground matches the blast zone. The current effort is in finding remnants of that object through isotope ratios.
I found this site that recounts the tale in somewhat more detail. It should go without saying that the story should be taken with a grain of salt. Reputable scientists believe the 1908 Tunguska event was most likely caused by a comet fragment exploding in the atomosphere above Siberia.
Besides the Tesla story, other far-out explanations of Tunguska involve black holes, antimatter, atomic bombs, and exploding UFOs. See sci.skeptic FAQs for the run-down.
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I had a teacher in 6th grade realte a similar story. Sorry, I have no sites, so I can’t vouch for any of this being correct. He told a story about Tesla inventing a device of that sort. He gave a demonstration of the device, but missed his target. Whoever he was giving the demonstration to liked the device, but wanted it to be perfected. Tesla asked for, and was granted, another chance, but was never able to duplicate the effect.
Again, I have no idea if there’s any truth to this.
My favorite account of Tesla is pure fiction (fantastic fiction, naturally). Andrei Codrescu’s 1999 novel Messi@h has a lot of spirits of famous dead people coming to New Orleans for a convention early in the year 2000. When Tesla materializes there, he occupies an abandoned warehouse and installs tons of potted plants. He hooks them all up and builds an energy generator using plant power; when the occultist climax comes in the story, Tesla’s green power takes out the bad guy. It was one of the coolest books I read last year.
