# What Energy Source Was Tesla Trying to Tap? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 21, 2015, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186 "2015-11-21T15:46:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![botsgotme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@botsgotme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/botsgotme)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/1 "2015-11-21T15:46:04Z")
In reading about Tesla, he made many references to the enormous, free energy source ion the earth’s magnetic field. However, this field is very weak-indeed, Michael Faraday tried to detect the currents induced by the field (in the River Thames), and could not do so. Does anybody know what this mysterious source of energy was, that tesla proposed exploiting? ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/2 "2015-11-21T15:54:11Z")
People’s wallets. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/3 "2015-11-21T16:30:08Z")
WAG: Electromagenitc current produced by the Earth’s magnetosphere? ---
**Author:** ![halfreal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@halfreal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/halfreal)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/4 "2015-11-21T17:22:22Z")
I don’t know about the magnetic field, but there’s abundant electricity flowing in the atmosphere; and using it seems to be a legit, albeit tricky, concept. See “atmospheric electricity” and “radiant energy”. [Atmospheric electricity - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_electricity) [Google](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=tesla%20radiant%20energy) ---
**Author:** ![Nefario](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/59ef9b/32.png) [@Nefario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nefario)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/5 "2015-11-21T17:54:59Z")
Extraction of vibrations from the aether. Most people (like, those that aren’t Tesla) are incapable of comprehending this. 😉 I wish I could find a good technical critique of his work. He pretty much invented today’s alternating current power system but then went off the deep end with radiated power. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/6 "2015-11-21T18:10:46Z")
An imaginary one. ---
**Author:** ![Kedikat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed655f/32.png) [@Kedikat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kedikat)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/7 "2015-11-21T20:00:32Z")
In many ways, he was trying to make antennas that would take advantage of the various differences in energy potential between earth ground and what is available in the air. An antenna will absorb energy that is radiated through the air. Usually tiny amounts, in somewhat narrow bands of energy. He wanted to capture more. He succeeded in many ways. It is a possibility. But gathering such a wide array of energy is difficult. I believe they tried towing a conductive cable from a space shuttle once. To test if current would flow. Enough current flowed to melt the cable. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/8 "2015-11-21T21:58:45Z")
> [@Kedikat](#): > > I believe they tried towing a conductive cable from a space shuttle once. To test if current would flow. Enough current flowed to melt the cable. Yeah, nobody’s denying the electrical potential exists. It’s just that we have so many other potential and current sources of electricity which are so much more practical we just don’t really need that one. It would probably be more practical to capture the motion of the tides and use that to power turbines than to run massive wires up into the high atmosphere all over the place. The best critique of broadcast power as Tesla imagined it is the inverse square law: At a distance _r_ from the transmitter, the amount of power you get is proportional to _r_[sup]-2[/sup]. That is, your power gain is a quarter as much at two units of distance, a twenty-fifth as much at five units, and so on. This is intimately related to the fact we live in a three-dimensional universe, so it isn’t something we can engineer around while keeping the basic design. Practical wireless charging mats are, therefore, mats: They work by _not_ broadcasting power, but rather by getting the device being charged involved in a small electrical circuit which involves a relatively tiny air gap. More practical broadcast power designs aren’t broadcasting much at all, either, so much as narrowcasting, in that they presume they’ll have a practical way to aim beams of power to things. This is an interesting technical problem, but not nearly what Tesla imagined. Tesla was an amazing man for the latter 19th Century. He had a tragic personal life. A large part of that tragedy wasn’t due so much to Edison as the insanity which rendered him a crackpot in the early 20th Century. Even if he had remained entirely sharp and on top of things throughout his life, he still died decades ago, and science has moved on since then. The best way to honor the spirit of Tesla is to keep up with it. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/9 "2015-11-22T05:04:11Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > WAG: Electromagenitc current produced by the Earth’s magnetosphere? You mis-spelled “Electromagical” there? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2015, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/10 "2015-11-23T15:26:59Z")
While experiments have been done with power tethers on satellites, I have no idea why, because they’re a very impractical way to power satellites. That’s not free energy you’re harvesting; you’re just converting orbital energy to electrical energy. Which means that if you want your satellite to stay up for any reasonable amount of time, you’re going to need rockets (well, more rockets) to continually boost the orbit. And we all know how inefficient rockets are. If anything, you’d want to do the reverse: Use a conventional solar panel for power, and use that to force a current through the wire to increase the satellite’s orbital energy, as an alternative way to replenish energy lost to orbital decay. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/11 "2015-11-23T18:51:42Z")
And the use of electrodynamic tethers for propulsion isn’t some kind of theoretical notion; several companies, and most notably [Tethers Unlimited](http://www.tethers.com/microPET.html) are developing electrodynamic tether systems for satellite applications which not only allow stationkeeping but orbital adjustment or end-of-life retirement for spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit, and potentially even on-orbit servicing operations so a repair spacecraft or tug could service or reposition other satellites. This could be used for spacecraft of any size, albeit the low thrust levels limits the rate at which changes can be made, and is probably most practical for nanosats or picosats. Trying to extract this energy in a terrestrial, non-moving generator, however, is not very practical. There is a lot of energy stored in the geomagnetic field, primarily as charged particles emitted by the Sun, along with some particles produced by cosmic ray scattering and, in one instance, by the high altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon. However, extracting this energy is logistically difficult, and it isn’t at all clear what the effects would be of draining the Van Allen belts, as we only have a very incomplete understanding of how the belts interact with the upper atmosphere. Given that we can get solar energy in orbit at an average of 1366 W/m[SUP]2[/SUP], there would seem to be little utility in dragging large tethers through the belts to extract energy in exchange for the loss of orbital energy due to drag unless there was some limitation on the size of solar arrays a satellite could deploy. It probably makes more sense to used beamed power in that case with a base satellite beaming high frequency microwaves to a compact receiver on the host client satellite versus deploying a long tether system for power generation. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/12 "2015-11-23T19:21:23Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > People’s wallets. No – Tesla apparently believed in his notions. He wasn’t a con man. If you want someone who was trying to tap people’s wallets under the guise of tapping an inexhaustible electromagnetic power source, you want John Ernst Worrell Keely, con man extraordinaire. There are still people around who believe that he was onto something, despite revelations of his fraudulent setup: > **[John Ernst Worrell Keely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ernst_Worrell_Keely)** > > John Ernst Worrell Keely (September 3, 1837 – November 18, 1898) was an American fraudster and self-proclaimed inventor from Philadelphia who claimed to have discovered a new motive power which was initially described as "vaporic" or "etheric" force, and later as an unnamed force based on "vibratory sympathy", by which he produced "interatomic ether" from water and air. Keely's claims were highly disputed throughout his career and, in the 21st century, are generally considered to be pseudoscien... ---
**Author:** ![UncleFred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f0a364/32.png) [@UncleFred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleFred)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2015, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/13 "2015-11-23T20:54:43Z")
“If you want someone who was trying to tap people’s wallets under the guise of tapping an inexhaustible electromagnetic power source”… in the past you had to look no further than the Straight Dope website. For the longest time one of these Free Energy companies was running ads that showed up here in SD. As I recall because of the way web advertising is done it wasn’t the SD’s fault and there was no way they could shut it off. I haven’t seen it for a while now so maybe they either figured out how to get rid of it, or the advertiser just went away. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/14 "2015-11-23T21:26:10Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > No – Tesla apparently believed in his notions. He wasn’t a con man. > > If you want someone who was trying to tap people’s wallets under the guise of tapping an inexhaustible electromagnetic power source, you want John Ernst Worrell Keely, con man extraordinaire. There are still people around who believe that he was onto something, despite revelations of his fraudulent setup: > > [John Ernst Worrell Keely - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ernst_Worrell_Keely) And don’t forget [Joe Newman.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman's_energy_machine) ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2015, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/15 "2015-11-23T21:29:44Z")
> [@Nefario](#): > > Extraction of vibrations from the aether. There is no aether. Michelson and Morley took care of that. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/16 "2015-11-24T01:41:51Z")
No, M&M disproved the _ether_. The æther is something else entirely, as any proper mad scientist could tell you. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/17 "2015-11-24T02:22:38Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > No, M&M disproved the _ether_. The æther is something else entirely, as any proper mad scientist could tell you. Ah. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/18 "2015-11-24T03:35:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > No, M&M disproved the _ether_. The æther is something else entirely, as any proper mad scientist could tell you. Eh? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/19 "2015-11-24T19:19:07Z")
I guess I need to wait for **DrFidelius** to come explain the joke for everyone. (yes, it was my joke, but I’m sure he’d explain it better than I could) ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186/20 "2015-11-24T19:23:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > No, M&M disproved the _ether_. The æther is something else entirely, as any proper mad scientist could tell you. It’s not an æther/or proposition. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-energy-source-was-tesla-trying-to-tap/738186.md?page=2)