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ASK DR. SEIFER is a running dialogue of often asked questions about Nikola Tesla. These last two questions first appeared in Extraordinary Science. Find the answers to the last two questions on the right December 1, 1998.
Additional questions [email protected]
1. Please explain Tesla's "Death Ray" machine he spoke about in the 1930's. Was it a laser or a particle beam accelerator?
Tesla's work on particle beam weapons can be traced all the way back to 1893 with his invention of a button lamp, and again to 1896 when he replicated the work of William Roentgen, discoverer of X-rays. At that time, Tesla was "shooting" X-rays over considerable distances, creating photographs of skeletons sometimes as far away as 40 feet from the source of the gun. Tesla was also involved in experiments with shooting cathode rays at targets. This and similar work from one of Tesla's British colleagues, J.J. Thompson, led to the discovery, by Thompson, of the electron. During that period in the mid-1890's, Tesla conversed often with Thompson, particularly in the electrical journals.
At about the year 1918, Tesla apparently had a laser-like apparatus that he shot at the moon. From studying his great 1893 work THE INVENTIONS, RESEARCHES AND WRITINGS OF NIKOLA TESLA, it is apparent that the button lamp discussed above had all of the components necessary to create a laser beam.
This lamp was so constructed so as to place a piece of matter such as carbon, or a diamond or a ruby, in the center, and bombard this "button" with electrical energy that would bounce off the button onto the inside of the globe and bounce back onto the button. If this were a ruby, and Tesla specifically worked with rubies, then then is exactly how a ruby laser is created. Tesla refers in INVENTIONS to a "pencil-thin" line of light that was created with this device. It is my belief that Tesla not only invented the ruby laser in 1893, but he also demonstrated it and published it's results. The problem with the device was that it was set up so as to "vaporize," or destroy, the button, so that the laser effects were probably short-lived.
However, if we jump ahead to the 1918 story, which was told to me by Coleman Czito's grandson's wife, it is very possible that Tesla used the same or similar kind of apparatus to send laser pulses to the moon.
Now, to get to the particle beam weapon, this is an entirely separate invention and evolved from, all things, a pop gun that he used as a boy. The pop gun works by pumping air into the barrel and causing the cork to come barreling out. This gun could be used to shoot targets and small animals, and Tesla discusses this gun in his autobiography.
What Tesla realized was that a "ray" would not have the energy requirement to be destructive. Also, even if he had a laser, or laser-like ray, it would still disperse somewhat, over long distances. So Tesla came to the conclusion that instead of shooting a ray of light, he would shoot microscopic pellets. The stream could not disperse because, theoretically, it would be one pellet thick.
After studying the Van deGraaff electrostatic generator, which used a cardboard belt to generate the high voltages, Tesla came to utilize the same essential set-up to generate tremendous charges, but he replaced the belt with an ionized stream of air and then used this electrified stream to "repel" the small pellets which were made out of tungsten. These pellets were shot out of an open-ended vacuum tube which was shaped in the form of a cannon.
It is my belief that this device, which was presented to the International Tesla Society by the late Dr. Andrija Puharich at the 1984 Tesla Centennial Symposium (and published in that proceedings as, essentially, Tesla's 1937 top secret patent application), was designed to be as large as the tower at Wardenclyffe. The shaft, which could have been as tall as 100 feet, would contain the "belt" of ionized stream of air. The round bulbous part of the tower would continue to circulate the ionized stream and hold the charge, and out the top of the tower there would be the long barrel of the gun. Such a machine, which Tesla tried to sell during World War II to the United States, England, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, would be able to shoot down incoming planes at distances of about 300 miles.
Proof that this device was given to the Soviets has been established by such individuals as Colonel Tom Bearden, who points out that the May 2, 1977 issue of AVIATION WEEK, displays a picture of a Soviet particle beam weapon, (along with the accompanying 7000 word article) that is almost a carbon copy of the picture in Tesla's 1937 patent application, which, as stated above has been published in the ITS 1984 proceedings.
A question remains as to whether or not Tesla actually constructed a particle beam weapon. I believe that when looks at this question from a historical standpoint, we see that he had been working on this and similar devices for over 30 years. Thus, it is my opinion that Tesla did, indeed, construct a working model. At the age of 81, at a luncheon in his honor, concerning the Death Ray, Tesla stated, "But it is not an experiment.... I have built, demonstrated and used it. Only a little time will pas before I can give it to the world."
2. Was Tesla actually killed, or did he die of natural causes? How can we know either way for sure?
Tesla was always a very thin man, and even as far back as the 1890's, he drove himself to exhaustion on many occasions. In 1893, speaking at the Chicago World's Fair, the dignitaries attending were so concerned about him that he said the following: "A number of scientific men asked a group of electricians to deliver a lecture. A great many promised that they would come [but] when the programme was sifted down, I was the only healthy man left, and so I have managed to take some of my apparatus and give you a brief outline of some of my work."
Katharine Johnson also, on many occasions, worried about Tesla's health and refusal to eat a substantial meal.
Through the years, Tesla began to give up meat, and eventually some time in the 1930's, he just about gave up solid foods altogether. He drank bowls of warm milk and a combination potion made from the hearts of numerous vegetables such as artichokes and celery. He also ate honey.
By the time he was in his 80's he was cadaverously thin. The last published photo of him when he was 86 is clear that he was close to death. It is such a scary picture that I have refused to display it at any of the lectures. He is much thinner in this picture than the famous one taken just a few months before when he met with his nephew, Sava Kosanovic, ambassador from Yugoslavia, and the exiled King Peter, of Serbia. It is my belief that Tesla simply died of old age. He was 86. But I also think that he hastened his death through his anorexic eating style.
3. Did Nikola Tesla cause the explosion in Tunguska, Siberia in 1908?
According to Tesla's recollection in the Leland Anderson edition of Tesla's testimony to his lawyer in 1916 (Nikola Tesla and His Work in Alternating Currents), the tower was used in some fashion until 1907. However, its larger functions actually became disoperational in 1903 when the Westinghouse company came in to remove vital equipment. Therefore Tesla did not have the equipment to create such an explosion five years later. Further, according to Dr. James Corum, in a recent phone interview, (June 5, 1997), the tower had the capability of producing only about 300 kilowatts (six times what many radio stations produce) and delivering 10 kilowatts of power to the opposite side of the earth. This would be approximately enough energy to light a lightbulb. A tremendous feat in its own right, however, nowhere near the amount of power required to create the Tunguska explosion. Corum stated that the problem in transmitting the kind of tremendous power required is that the air around the transmitter breaks down thereby rendering the machine inoperable. Recent estimates in the book The Day The Sky Split Apart by Roy Gallant, (1995, Simon & Schuster), state that the Tunguska explosion created devastation in an area which approximated the size of Rhode Island, and released energy 2,000 times greater than the atom bomb that was dropped at Hiroshima. According to Corum, it would be essentially impossible to transmit energy to achieve this result. However, Corum went on, if Tesla had the capability to release merely 1% of the earth's magnetic charge, that could create the amount of energy to achieve a Tunguska-like explosion. He did not think that Tesla did this, however.
Photos taken from the site of the Siberian explosion reveal numerous trees flattened, much like the trees looked after the volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helens, which occurred recently in Washington. I do not believe that Tesla had the technology or the inclination to use Wardenclyffe to deliver the kind of energy necessary to create such a disaster. Tesla certainly discussed the idea of using a Wardenclyffe like tower to shoot down incoming aircraft, via a particle beam weapon, and as a completely separate concept, he also discussed the idea of creating earthquakes, which could be engendered in a variety of ways, e.g., by bringing buildings down by placing oscillators on their main support beams, or by setting off gigantic dynamite charges timed to a resonant earth frequency.
So where did the idea that Tesla caused the explosion in Tunguska originate? (His name is not mentioned in the highly credible Gallant book.) The answer is probably threefold: (1) Through Tesla's own writings whereby he says on May 3, 1907, in the New York World, just one year before the Tunguska explosion, that his "magnifying transmitter" has already produced 25 million horse power, and that "a similar and much improved machine now under construction, will make it possible to attain maximum explosive rates of over 800 million horse power." Tesla also states in this article and in an article the following year in Wireless Telegraphy & Telephone, 1908, pp. 67-71, that he will be able to direct electrical energy "with great precision" to any point of the globe. (2) Through Col. Tom Bearden's writings and through the speculations of Bearden's associate, (3) through the statements of the late Dr. Andrija Puharich. It is Bearden's contention that a so called "Tesla wave" disturbs the very fabric of space-time. Therefore, it could, potentially, create an instantaneous disaster at some distant point. Bearden has also suggested that the Russians during the cold war, experimented along these lines. Realistically, I would think that it would still be highly unlikely for such a weapon to presently exist. Rather, a large Wardenclyffe type tower might be able to disrupt the electrical grid at some prescribed target causing a blackout, or some similar phenomena. And even that technology is probably still decades or generations away.
Bearden, however, is not alone in these kind of speculations. A September 14, 1973 article in Nature by A.A. Jackson and M.P. Ryan speculates that the Tunguska event might have been due the earth's interaction with a mini black hole.
Influenced by Bearden's writings and similar theories, and also influenced by Tesla's own assertion that a Wardenclyffe like tower could be used as a death ray, apparently Puharich was the first to suggest that Tesla caused the Tunguska explosion. At least, that is the contention of Tad Wise, author of the recent novelized Tesla biography. Wise told me last year, that he was greatly intrigued by Puharich's suggestion and therefore placed it in his Tesla book. As Wise's book is part fiction, this was completely acceptable. However, it was taken as fact, particularly when Wise had the same story aired on FOX TV on a show on Tesla. See also, Oliver Nichelson quoted in The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla by D.H. Childress, pp. 255-257.
It is my belief that the explosion at Tunguska was probably caused by a meteor or small comet. This view takes into account the eye-witness reports by local tribesmen of a fiery object with a long tail hitting or passing by the area in June of 1908. In 1986, Louis Frank from the University of Iowa, theorized that the oceans that make up the planet were caused by comets that bombard the earth over tens of millions of years. Comets are mostly ice, and they would melt when entering the earth's atmosphere. Although the theory was initially laughed at, according to the June 9, 1997 issue of US News & World Report, NASA has been able to photograph "between five and 30 comets [some as large as a house] hitting the upper atmosphere every minute." They then break up and eventually reach the earth as rain.
Nickolai Vasiliev, in his introduction to the Gallant book, hypothesizes that the Tunguska comet, actually skipped along the atmosphere like a rock on a lake, which created an explosion two or three miles above ground, and that the object never actually hit the earth. He notes that in 1989, an asteroid traveling at 40,000 mph, missed the earth by a mere four hundred thousand miles. The moon is 240,000 miles from the earth. As no meteor or comet fragment has been found at the Tunguska site, Vasiliev's theory holds merit, although it may have been an asteroid instead of a comet.
