Thread: Serious question for people smarter than me.

No, he was using a coal fired generator to produce the "seed current" and then use the earth via these tunnels filled with liquid Nitrogen or something to then draw energy from the earth and amplify the power fed into capacitors which would then discharge into the air once they were full via his towers and the process would repeat itself forever. That's why he thought airplanes could draw this power from the air and run.

There have been folks investigating transmitting power and waves through the earth the way earthquake waves move through the earth but this is a pretty recent thing.

As to Radio that's a complex issue that went back and forth in the courts and in public opinion and involved politics. Marconi got the prize for it and Tesla initially lost the court case and patents but the Supreme Court ruled in his favor after he died. Really, Tesla invented the Tesla Coil which is part of the radio unit though Marconi developed the rest. You can argue if his work didn't go up in smoke maybe Tesla would have been first. Who knows.

As to A/C current Tesla didn't invent it. They were experimenting with it in Europe at least 10 years before Tesla started. He did further develop the idea and made A/C current production a reality with help from Westinghouse.

As I said earlier in this, no doubt he was a genius with a capitol G but he had zero people skills and had difficulty putting his ideas to use in a practical way. It was when he had backers and could hire assistants that his more well known ideas came to fruition. When he came to the U.S he was robbed on the ship and was destitute. he worked for Edison for a while and Edison thought he was the smartest guy he had ever met but was quite strange. Someone once asked Einstein if he was a genius and Einstein said, you want to meet a genius? Go talk to Tesla.

As to his secret ideas that were buried I would file that away with stories in the 1970s and 80s about a guy who invented an Internal Combustion Engine that ran on water and the oil companies bought him out and shut him up and buried that.

I would be very skeptical of anything I found online with very few exceptions. Getting info from that source is why this country is in the condition it's in.

Some of what you're saying is correct, however I really think you should watch the documentary on Amazon. The Einstein snippet is correct, never heard of him being robbed on a ship, but all this is way off the point. I wanted to know why the attraction and repulsion of magnets, once spun up to speed can't power a generator. There are plenty of videos on YouTube, but they are most likely faked, except maybe a few. Being that you have to overcome friction, the power from the magnets should be enough to power a small one. I'm pretty sure this is out of both our areas of expertise. I'm sure there's someone in here that has the explanation. As for the guy who also is on YouTube with the car that supposedly ran on water was just on the news a few weeks ago, apparently there's something to it, and his story is pretty suspicious as well. His car dissapeared for years and was recently found with all of his stuff stripped. I'm pretty sure that if you or I got one to work, something would happen to us also. Just my opinion.

The answer to your question lies in "How do you generate an electrical field"? Well, Magnets and magnetism are a "Force" but they generate no energy by themselves. You can spin them any way you want and no energy will be created. Of course magnets are used to control electricity and energy in general. They are used with other materials and forces to create electricity but not by themselves.

Even in the starship enterprise the plasma and anti matter is held in check by magnetic containment.

Now that is something I can understand. Startrek always knows.

Ok,but when you put north to north, isn't the repulsion of it force? And then when it's pushed toward the south side it is being pulled, correct? And according to the guys who build these things the only other force that is needed is to spin it up to a sufficient speed to overcome the friction. This is them now, at that point it's spinning a generator which is putting out enough to keep it running. Half of me knows that the conservation of energy says it's going somewhere, but if you watch one of the better models of these things it looks like it should work, and I'm not sure why it doesn't. Most are built with old alternators, but the better ones use an electric motor as the generator.

Yea, you be creating friction which can create a flow of electrons however the energy required to create the force will equal the energy produced so you basically get nothing. Now wrap some wire around the thing and then you be cooking with gas because then you have induction. Add more wire and you get more electricity.

The first law of thermodynamics states in a closed system energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but one form of energy can be converted into another. That means that there is no "free lunch" when it comes to energy. The interpretation of the 1st law is confounded by what is meant by "closed system".

If the closed system is defined as the entire universe, then there is no problem as the universe is a self-contained entity representing all matter and all energy. Generally, we confine ourselves to analysis of smaller systems, which may not be closed. For example, if we look at planet earth, it looks like it might be a closed system until you consider that radiation from the sun passes through the earth's atmosphere. Thus, it is an external souce of energy as far as planet earth is concerned. Remember though that the radiation emitted by the sun comes at a cost. The hydrogen atoms of the sun are reacting in a nuclear fusion reaction to form helium and releasing enormous amounts of energy that radiate throughout the solar system. One day, there will be no more hydrogen and the sun will go dark. Fortunately, none of us will be around to see that happen. If we were to consider the solar system to be our reference, it is much closer to being a closed system than planet earth, but it is still not completely closed as radiation from other solar systems reaches ours and radiation from ours reaches out into other parts of the universe. Even the gravitational pull of the earth's moon on the planet can be considered an external input of energy. Because of the interaction between the earth's gravity on the moon, the moon's gravity on the earth and the tidal movement, the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of 1 inch per year. There is no free lunch even in this instance.

The core of our planet is a nuclear fission reactor, perhaps largely due to radioactive potassium. Physicists believe the core of the earth is even hotter than the surface of the sun. However, due to the enormous pressure at the core, the innermost core is solid, primarily iron and nickel, covered by a liquid layer of molten rock. Occasionally, the molten magma finds it way through the earth's mantle and we get volcanic eruptions. Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano has become more active recently causing scientists to be concerned that a new eruption is possible in the near future.

There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. There is really no such thing as "renewable" energy. The best we can do is convert one form of energy into another as efficiently as possible. The 2nd law of thermodynamics addresses efficiency of energy conversion. Because heat always flows in the direction of hot to cold, no energy conversion is 100% efficient. Thus, the energy resources of the universe are constantly becoming less usable. Fortunately, the universe is so large that the rate of decay is small.

Perhaps we will one day learn how to harness the thermal energy from a volcano, the hydraulic energy of tidal movement, and the static electrical energy of lightning.

Responding only to your first post:

The simplest answer (which also has the least depth) is that generators have to have moving parts to "generate electricity." So a "closed system" that generates electricity would have to be a perpetual motion machine. That is not possible.

To expand just a little, the quotes above are because the process is actually a conversion of some form of energy into "electrical energy," which then leaves the system. The energy stored in permeant magnets simply because they are magnetized is very small, and thus, even if we had a way to convert it into "electrical energy," you wouldn't get much out before there was no more stored in the magnets.

But also generators ARE built with permanent magnets. The magnets are not, however, the source of energy that is converted to "electrical energy" - they are the mechanism through which this happens. When a wire is moved through a magnetic field such that the length of the wire "cuts" the magnetic field lines, an electric potential difference (voltage) is induced between the ends of the wire and charges flow (electric current) accordingly. If you yourself move enough wire through a strong enough magnetic field, you can actually feel the "resistance" - kind of like running while submerged in water - as the kinetic energy you input is converted into "electrical energy," which will slow the wire unless you keep it moving by inputting more of your own energy.

Now isn't that basically what I said? I guess when a Physicist says it, it sounds more authoritative.

Har har.

No,he actually explains that permanent magnets aren't permanent forever. Also part of the question was that once revved up to speed, they say that it would keep going, I never said that it didn't need some sort of power to get it going.