Using the Air As a Wire-Was Nikola Tesla Right? 

Well, in a way amateur radio operators have been doing this for some time now. I was able to transmit 20 watts of power using CW (Morse code) and was picked up 5,590 miles away at a receiving station. Granted, it’s microvolts by the time my signal got that far, but the concept is the same and it does indeed work.

From what I understood is that Tesla wanted the capacitance between the ionosphere and the Earth to form a resonant tank circuit with the tower´s coil. He thought that the same setup with the same resonance frequency anywhere else on Earth would pick up the energy efficiently.

Something really interesting happened to me at 1:47. When I first watched it, he talks about how the spark grows but I saw nothing but complete darkness in the tube. When I replayed 1:47 again, however, I saw the spark grow despite seeing nothing there previously. I knew the video wasn't frozen because I could see the blue part at the left side of the screen still flashing. After a lot of trial and error, it turns out that the sparks are flashing completely in sync with the framerate, and because I was watching the video at 2x speed, RU-vid was skipping every other frame, so depending on which frame you start on, you either only see the frames where there are no sparks at all, or only the frames where there are only sparks. Go ahead and try watching 1:47 at 2x speed multiple times to see the difference!

The concept of the tesla coil is misunderstood. The atmosphere is a capacitor and the ground is the wire and in a best case scenario the transmitter would not leak any coronal discharge but instead just cause the ions in the atmosphere to oscillate at the frequency of the coil in order for it to be received anywhere on earth. The key is grounding and tuning through capacitance.

This is easily one of the coolest experiments I've ever seen. Absolutely awesome.

About 15-20 years ago.... there was a group working on this. I forget who. But I saw a live demonstration. It was a several 100s sqft room. I forget how big. I think it was around 500. It was large but not massively larege. It was powered through wireless power. Lamps. Vacuums. Tvs. Etc. Everything in the room. They were trying to scale up. But they got it to work with reasonable power loss in a normal size room or smaller house.

If someone did make a "wire" in the upper atmosphere to transmit electricity, how would that interact with the static electricity already in the atmosphere? Would it make lightning more frequent, or less? Change where it hits?

Granted it has been sometimes since I researched this, but my understanding was it wasn't about setting up a low resistance to plasma. My understanding was when the tower was big enough. It set up an electromagnetic wave that traveled through that atmosphere with the other half traveling through the ground at a frequency that was in resonance with the planet. I don't remember all the details but I don't think what you show here was as it all what he was trying to do.

I like how you reinvented wires, and also fluorescent lighting, worse, in the same tool! Fascinating video!

This video literally shocked me. Your videos are more intriguing and exceptional. Waiting for more Nikola Tesla videos.

There is another thing, if you use a sharp top load you loose more energy. If you use a ball shaped or toroidal shaped top load it could go even further.

Earth was the wire, the atmosphere an insulator and the ionosphere was the outer conductor. He was trying to make a giant coaxial cable with his coils being either feeding elements dumping energy into the air or as resonant taps drawing energy! Do you guys even read his patents? The down-side would be the total elimination of all radio-communications...his system would have been the perfect 'radio jammer', dumping megawatts of RF into the air.

In addition to the inefficiencies, theres the inherent RF noise that tesla coils are notoriously known for that would have the FCC in all a tizzy

Bro i fell in love with this channel ever since i first saw it. Keep up your work man❤️ you really helping alot of people learn interesting stuff ❤️

One other thing is that arcs waste energy which is why you typically want to try and suppress them when optimizing for wireless power. Next time try using a much higher frequency wile also avoiding sharp spikes

Texas Tech University was working on this behind closed doors, my professor's colleague and friend was one of the researchers on the project. We didnt get details but he did say this is what they are working on. That was 5ish years ago.

Wow the frame rate of the sparks at 2:00 matched exactly twice the playback frame rate (at least on my iphone), so i was just watching a black screen (it was only playing the black frames) until i rewinded and it synced with the spark frames

This is an extremely brute force approach to wireless energy transfer and I'm fairly certain it's not what Nikola Tesla had in mind. I think his idea was closer to the idea of using tesla coil like devices to convert electricity to a specific high intensity radio frequency that an antenna could receive and convert back into electricity to power a device (kind of like how a crystal radio is powered) but I think he wanted to use just the right frequency so that it not only resonated with the atmosphere but was also internally reflected by the atmosphere so the transmission wouldn't be impeded by the horizon (and wouldn't be lost to space ethier). He wanted to have many of these devices in specific places around the world and have them synced up in such a way that each device's signal generated constructive interference with the signals of the others, basically converting the entirety of Earth's atmosphere (or at least the troposphere) into a lased radio resonance cavity the anyone, anywhere could siphon power from.

What was more interesting to me is that the arcs when from the classic erratic lightning shape to basically a straight line. I've never seen a straight lightning so it was cool

Wow, *The Action Lab* just re-invented the fluorescent tube!

To Action Lab: How much UV light was generated by this, if any, and if so, did you have to wear UV filtered eyeglasses to look at it, and also any special camera settings to record it?

With the tides on earth, you would think we would have made some tide dams that fill up during high tide and slowly drain and spin tubines till next tide. Or geothermal vents? Or are both of these not viable?

It was called RC current. It required receivers in every device used. Each device had a transformer in it at whatever potential needed

The problem with wireless power transmission is the spread. At further distances, you can only recover the power available from the total area of reception. The radiation pattern does not focus itself toward random receivers. It can be optimized for fixed locations, but ultimately, distance will still affect the recoverable signal. There will be much power loss, and some power unavailable due to lack of coupling, being reflected back into the transmitter. A tuned receiver is just an impedance matching device which transfers the most power possible to a load, but make no mistake, it cannot "suck" more power from an area than is available.

Well you also have to contend with the inverse square law. It's simply not practical for so many reasons. Some people think it's because it would be about free energy and that's why they won't do it. And although that would be a factor, that is by far not the only factor as to why this won't be done.

I have heard a few things about this wireless energy idea. one was that teslas coils were going to operate at schumann resonances, natural glabal resonant frequencies in the atmopshere. another thing, and probably part of the same idea, is that the towers would create standing waves of energy in the area.

Simply change the frequency of the tesla coil to the resonate frequency of the material your transmitting. Tesla was big on finding the resonate frequency of everything, he had a box he would use to shake an entire building just to show off the power of resonance.

Styropyro made the biggest testa coil/plasma ball and powered big lights from long distances

With all the hysteria over the supposed dangers of 5G cellular networks, I can't imagine the real environmental concerns over pumping lots of bulk energy into the environment would get much traction.

You should look up zenneck surface waves, truly wireless power transmitted across the surface of the earth.

Tesla intended to transmit currents through the earth and not air. Read "The True Wireless" by Tesla Universe.

now! That is a LIGHT SABER!

0:08 Someone should make a movie based in this reality

Resonant coupling can improve efficiency as well. A high freq spark gap with consistent freq can then have tuned receiver

Thanks for making science popular and ubiquitous. Should look up the special water and metal base tesla used for his large cools

I like the video. Although towards the end when you said the he “imaged” it isn’t a true statement. He actually got the idea from studying the Egyptian pyramids. The Great Pyramid to be exact. After looking at the design of the inside to it. He notice that it was built out of granite and limestone witch are natural conductors of electricity while the white limestone that was used for the outermost layer is a natural insulator. He was the first to say that the pyramids where not tombs but power plants. This theory was supported years later when a research team took a closer look at the two shafts inside the queen’s chamber. They found trace amounts of zinc and a type of acid(can’t remember the exact type). When mixed the two chemicals make hydrogen. Add the natural vibrations from the underground chamber(witch was found to have immense water erosion) with the hydrogen and you can make energy. Gets even crazier when you add the fact that the kings chamber as granite beams that are tuned to an F# cord. They found that out by adding vibration to them. Also inside the great entrance leading towards the king’s chamber they found evidence that an explosion happened inside the pyramid. The walls are pushed out slightly and they have scorch mark to support the claim.

Tesla wasn't using the air as a wire, he was using the ground as a wire... I distinctly remember a story of him walking over a mile from his Wardenclyffe Tower and plugging bulbs into the ground and they lit up.

It's not resistance because of low conductivity but rather resistance from going against the natural flow of electricity. Clouds demonstrate this as they actively contain terawatts of electrical energy and are capable of maintaining its structure as they travel over land or sea using telluric currents. What we do is force electricity into this dense electricity and then say when it doesn't travel that we need more power. Another example of an energy dense phenomenon is flame, it is an electromagnetic field that generates heat.

Even if you did this in the upper atmosphere where it could get the range, the energy transmitted to any particular point would drop off as 1/r^2 (and worse due to losses), so it would be really inefficient.

this is one of the best videos explaining the possibility of Wireless power transmission. Of course we have vacuum tubes all the times. But this video is fantastic demonstrating live that such a solution is possible, although not practical since it is not efficient.

I once made up a superhero that could control energy through his ability to manipulate electricity and the electromagnetic field. I made up this move he could do called "perfect lighting" where he would manipulate the air in a straight beam and create a vacuum for essentially as long as he wanted, and then he would generate electricity and a bolt of lighting would shoot directly through it. The lack of thermal resistance caused the lighting to connect with his target with greater efficiency, I guess. But I didn't know this could actually be possible! Cool video.

Finally someone who understand the Tesla´s idea and did not discarded quickly as "inefficient". In my opinion, Tesla had two solutions (as far as I know) to increase the efficiency. First one would be choosing a frequency that could make the ionosphere-earth to act as a capacitor and with the plasma´s "wire" inductance to bring the whole setup to resonance. The second one would be to create a network/web of such energy injectors (TC) so the ionosphere could saturate and maybe at a critical point could self sustain the plasma. That way you need only to inject the amount of energy that is lost to maintain the whole grid. And to remember that aurora can contribute too to the ionosphere plasma layer. Try doing the same experiment in a 4 vacuum chambers (3 on a triangle shape and the 4th in the middle) connected by tubes like this, with 3 tesla coils and one receiver in the fourth chamber. Another setup can be with 3 chambers, with 2 TC and a receiver (load). If the setup is well tuned, I think you can fill all the chambers with plasma and the receiver can be able to extract energy from the plasma field. That way you can see the influence of the frequency match of the TC.

Congratulations! It looks like you have invented tubelights. Is this how tubelights work?

I would like to see you do this experiment again, but use a spectrum analyzer to find out what range of frequencies are actually passing the power to the load. Also, how is the load connected and what is the power used by both the Tesla coil AND the load.

You should ask styropyro to test that experient a hit one of his Tesla coils

The community you cultivated is nothing short of a mass collective of geniuses.. the people in this comment section are exceptionally talented.

Make a vacuum tube Tesla coil for next video.

He wasn’t ever able to tell people how. Lost his funding due to greedy money machines, and was attacked and oppressed by those same people.

I think you should put a flashing light epilepsy warning for this..

Don't forget he was also using the aquifer under the tower as a massive dump (Layden jar) paired with the atmosphere...

We are living in times when actual experiments are uploaded on youtube while classrooms continue to teach dry theory. And practical sessions are just for measuring academic performance, not to answer curious questions.

You are also on your way to reinvent the neon / fluorescense lamp. 😅 Also, I hope you were wearing UV protection.

The electrical engineers who were working on it 20 years ago came to the conclusion they needed to build a tesla coil the same size as the one he used in Colorado, so they might see what is was that tesla figured out.

Ah yes, vacuum tubes. Used to be pretty popular long time ago.

This is great timing! I was telling my wife about this yesterday. Free power

The sound makes it a perfect fit for lighting a bedside lamp.

That's a lot of flashing, you might want to put an epilepsy warning. How cool was that video, man? Thanks!!

Try sending the Sparks down a streak of argon coming out of a glass torch so the stream is sent forward with a laminar flow.

Tesla is the most underrated genius that we ever had

- 5 minute video on how to conduct electricity through the air. - 2:00 minutes in, makes a lightsaber

Imagine walking near and getting shock from nowhere

fluorescent bulbs work in nearly the same principle as the tube you used

Nikola tesla had more iq than albert einstein.

Nikola Tesla didn't use transvere electromagnetic waves for his wireless power transmission systems, he stated this multiple times, yet people seem to ignore that fact. His system generated longitudinal dielectric impulses (also called scalar waves) which are not electric in their nature. Transverse electromagnetic waves are lossy because of the magnetic field involved, but these longitudinal dielectric impulses are not lossy because there is no magnetic field involved. Statements of modern scientists that the Wardenclyffe Tower wouldn't have worked because of the losses over distance are ridiculous, because they assume Tesla was using transverse electromagnetic waves like we do nowadays in all of our wireless systems.

There is no doubt it can be done, the problem is you can't charge people for the electricity they use and who knows what the health effects of long term exposure.

The amount of sounds I heard in this video is insane

YOU ARE X-RAYING YOURSELF! Please review the safety concerns about putting high votlage across a vacuum. It is literally how we make xrays.

"It starts to grow, look at how long it gets." -ActionLab

If Nikola Tesla was funded with money and no one stopped him.He could made it and the world we see today will be at another level. With less harm to earth 🌎. I feel sad that there r few pages in history about him. He is a legend. Today's most of tech r based on his work.

One end of the small light bulb was of course connected to the spark coming from the Tesla coil, but to what was the other end of the small light bulb connected? To the ground?

Reminds me of a joke: if you steal a Tesla, does it become an Edison? 😂

Functionally, wireless power is how radio works. The task is to figure out a means of generating a wavelength that can convey that power with sufficient strength and not interfere with other devices.

I think there is a main misconception here. He was not up to send the energy via air but via ground. The Wardenclyffe tower structure was the cherry on the top of massive ground structure which ensured the lowest ground resistance as possible. My understanding of the thing is that he came up from the setup of two tesla coils where secondary windings were connected. Tesla coils were finetuned to the same resonance frequency and top parts were capacitors. The setup was supposed to send the current from one Tesla secondary coil to the other Tesla secondary coil via single wire because the energy was oscillating between capacitors on the tops. Then he could extract the energy from the "primary" coil of the second Tesla coil. Now if the distance is increased between these two coils the single wire will be longer and it can be replaced by some other conductive material such as Earth. In case the Earth is used the natural frequency needs to be measured which Tesla did and designed the tower L and C to be tuned to Earth (not just a single wire, it's a dynamic system). I imagine it as if the Earth is ball of water (incompresible fluid) and there are two pistons connected to it. One is full of extra water (extra energy) and the other is empty. If the piston is pushed the extra water wants to go out and pushes to the other piston (which is finetuned to do exactly this thing) and it does not matter where the second piston is on the ball. In case of Earth there would hotspots based on the natural frequency of the system or higher harmonics. The energy of lighting comming out of the capacitors were a loses in the system not the actual transmission of the energy. Tesla did not finish his vision because he was a good inventor but a really bad business man. He had a big debt (10000USD which was quite a lot in that time) in the Waldorf Astoria hotel he was living in and he lost the land with the tower in execution. He watched the demolition of the tower executed by new owners of his properties. He tried many times to get money from J. P. Morgan who Tesla provided >50% ownership to his patents as the act of the trust for the money he lent him. But the guy had a lot of money in copper mines and transmission lines so he was not interested in "wireless" technology. Moreover, Tesla didn't deliver him a product he ordered, so he let Tesla fell into the poverty and die in cheap hotel. Sad story. If Tesla had a manager our world would be even more advanced by now for sure.

Collecting energy from atmosphere was what ppl think he was trying to do wireless energy. He was collecting + from air - from the ground to have free energy to be received anywhere

*Breathes *Gets shocked

This is one of the best channels on RU-vid

I thought Tesla was using the ground/Earth also in these experiments? There is unlimited electric energy in the ground and atmosphere if we can harness it.

I suspect it gets better when one considers Pierre de Chardine's Noosphere. Tesla once said, "If your hatred could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world." Replace hatred with chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility and light up the world for our Lord. This is what free energy is all about. ❤

Wow thanks, it sure reminded me those knowledge acquired at college. Teslas was an awesome man. Oh just a little warning here when you use any high voltage generator that produces ions, they also make lots of ozone (O3) which is very toxic at ground level.

"It's only 5 inches but if you put it in a tube and pump some air out, it gets longer."

2:21 so guys presenting the real plasma light saber (ignor the glass tube)

Finally someone try this , befor 5 years im thinking what about if someone try to use tesla tower in center of home and all lights is neon , pravo friend you created a great job 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Without ads these videos are just perfect. Enjoying waching! By the way what is the name of this guy?

According to Veritasium, the energy travels through the electric fields not through the wires. It’s interesting to understand how the air inhibits the energy flow and why so much energy dissipates as light in the vacuum.

Wait, doesn't it produce x-rays when you make sparks in vacuum?

Here is my thought, the real purpose of the antenna it was not to transmit energy, but to establish a guide wave, a resonance wave that would induce a vortex around the antenna, that vortex would act as a vacuum of "energy states", transforming them into useful energy. Right now we think that energy is carried by electrons, but that would be only a perspective of whats really going on. Energy is everywhere, like a fluid that composes all. Energy in itself is "stateless", is the infinite power/possibility of states. The countable energy we conceive, is the result of interaction between energy states. We live in a determinated world, but this "world" is not separated from the indetermination. When we take something electrically charged (it has an energy state that deviates from the surroundings) and physically connect it to a different energy state "something", we make them interact so their energy states will change accordingly to the difference between the two things and also the surroundings. So energy in itself didnt change, the energy states changed. Energy didnt move, the states of energy moved. What Tesla discovered was a way to tap into this stateless energy which is everythere, static, unmutated, eternal. It seems, that by creating certain patterns, by the right secuence of changes in a controlated "structure" of energy states, we can create this negative entropy vortex (it is negative because it orders the energy states locally). This phenomena is naturally happening all around us, and it is in fact the cause of everything we can see, it is the cause of matter and it is the cause of life.

Thats such a great visual effect

can't wait to get my painting

i read somewhere that the plan had to do with transmitting power through the earth, not air. i forget the details but seemed more reasonable to me

Much of the loss in efficiency has to be because a Tesla coil sends current out in all directions. By concentrating it in one direction (as in the tube) it helps, but as you pointed out, inefficiencies happen because of heat and light being generated. If somehow the current could be transmitted without it ionizing the atmosphere, wouldn't that improve the transfer efficiencies? Also, I wonder how it is that we see a plasma in the presence of a vacuum. Would a perfect vacuum make the plasma invisible?

Tesla was thinking about air defense dome.

Didn't want to offend the Internet by saying Tesla's plans were never going to work?

i thought the big hold up with wireless power transmission wasn't technological so much as financial. dielectric strength of "air" can be overcome easily no?

This is not how he was working on this after the early days. His ultimate system avoids longditudinal EM emission/electrons as much as possible (some can argue what you show isn't a tesla coil), the effects are very interesting, for example culmination when powering wirelessly over time and far higher efficiencies when grounded.

The idea is that by using high frequency high voltage and the atmosphere and ground a conductor, a tuned reciever becomes a "shortest" current path to ground for the current. Unlike a magnetic field, which will spread out and be lossy for wireless power. A voltage field will seek the path of least resistance. Because of resonance, a receiver coil will resonate with a transmission tower and the voltage gradient between the reciever and the transmission tower will become larger than the gradient between the tower and ground, or the tower and anything else for that matter, even over very large distances. Because the power will be transmitted as hundreds of megavolts at pico to micro amps, the power loss over the ionised plasma of the air is relatively small. That's the idea. Wireless electromagnetic power isn't that great because the power spreads out as an emitted magnetic field. Wireless electric power is different it requires super high voltage and resonance and the voltage between the tuned transmitter and reciever becomes greater than the voltage between the transmitter and anything else, so current flow gets shunted to the reciever.

That is such a wonderful exercise. Thanks a bunch.

The lightsaber. This channel is so underrated

I agree with paulkocyla1343 and zachcrawford5 comments Tesla was considering using radio signals and resonance to send power wireless from one tower to another. But there is also the solid state tesla coils or Slayer Exciters is what they are also called. These devices produce a very low pulsating DC signal that makes a high voltage wireless radio signal that is able to power low wattage light bulbs and such. This is more what I think Tesla had in mind was to generate a wireless power radio signal and use resonance to send and receive them at long distances. Now 1 thing I have wanted to try is to take the wireless power radio signal produced by a Slayer Exciter and to use vacuum tube AM radio amplifiers and amplify the wireless power radio signal same as an AM radio station would do with a audio signal that its broadcasting. In other words this would be exactly the same thing as AM radio station sending out a signal and being picked up by a crystal radio receiver without a battery. If an AM radio broadcast signal can send enough power to make a crystal radio receiver work be means of just an audio signal then what would happen if we did the same thing using a Slayer Exciter radio signal amplified to very high voltage and sent out a very large high powered antenna? I think the crystal radio receiver would act as a wireless power outlet if tuned to the same frequency as the Slayer Exciter broadcasting station. Maybe "The Action Lab" could give this experiment a shot, it would seem like they have access to all the needed equipment to try it. I know I would try it if I had the equipment to test it....

🔥🔥🔥 These fires came while listening 🎧....

I've heard he was not trying to transmit power but was trying to extract the energy from our plants magnetic field. Apparently the investors abandant the project when they found out his true intentions was to provide cheap energy to the population and the investors didn't see it profitable. No idea if this is true or possible. But still interesting. Would be cool to see if the is atmosphere energy/magnetic field could provide enough energy with a experiment