Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time

http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/tesla/tesla5.html

by iamelgringo • 18 years ago

19 10 18 years ago

Hexstream3• 18 years ago

"Tesla generates a powerful pulse of electricity, and drains it into the ground. Because the ground is conductive, it doesn't stop. Rather, it spreads out like a radio wave, traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second."

And all this time I thought only light travelled at the speed of light :/

While I read that article, I was thinking, what if we found a way to 1. direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably and 2. managed to represent bits accurately within that current? Free international communication, without networks of cables ;P

kirubakaran2• 18 years ago

Radio wave is electromagnetic wave (aka 'light' in a range of frequency). But "speed of light" in non-vacuum is lower.

"direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably" Earth is not homogenous. I wonder if pointing a low frequency laser into the ground will accomplish anything. It most likely will be refracted in an unpredictable inconsistent way.

Hexstream3• 18 years ago

Well, what if we transmit known data in a strong signal from one end to the other and then compare what was received to what was sent... (insert big hand waving) if we replicate those steps x times, we might be able to map the "interference structure" of the Earth and compensate for that somehow...

This is admittedly almost impossibly complicated.

DaniFong• 18 years ago

Also, an electromagnetic wave is not current, the bulk of which actually travels many many orders of magnitude slower.

dhimes• 18 years ago

If we're going this way on hackers, I'd go for Galileo as #1 (although a great case could be made for Archimedes).

dmoney• 18 years ago

This gives new meaning to "hack the planet".

mhartl• 18 years ago

Check out the movie "The Prestige" (http://imdb.com/title/tt0482571/), which (among other things) features David Bowie as Tesla during his time in Colorado Springs.

msteigerwalt• 18 years ago

I was a little worried about Bowie's performance of Tesla before I saw the movie. In the end, however, I was very pleased.

Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time

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