(no subject)

[arethinn]

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=703

Wireless electricity (mentioned a couple times) always sounds cool, but wouldn't it mean constantly bathing in EMF fields even way more than we already do? I don't think that could be good for a body.

Comments

[skatche.livejournal.com]

Seems like the kind of thing we should test out once we've colonized another planet or two. I imagine it would be particularly suited to Venus (should we ever manage to terraform the place) by virtue of the greater amount of solar power available.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, no. Tesla's idea appeared to involve creating one charge high in the atmosphere, and an opposing charge deep in the earth, and then connecting the two in customer's homes with a high antenna and a deep buried ground. The electricity should only travel between the two in the presence of a conductive setup similar to that, since it would basically involve turning the earth itself into a giant leyden jar. I personally tend to think there may be a lot of repercussions to such an idea, but he may have already thought of most of the obvious ones.

[cudubh.livejournal.com]

ah, but it's non-obvious ones that come and bite you in the ass. :)

[arethinn]

Oh, so constantly bathing the Underworld in EMF. Heh.

Less tongue-in-cheek (although I suppose there really could be spiritual implications), I do wonder what effects it might have on movements of magma or suchlike. At least if it were really put into practice all over the Earth and not just one-off as proof-of-concept.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, it would only be really effective if done world-wide. You'd be charging layers of atmosphere and layers of the earth, and I don't think you can effectively charge just a small region of something like that, it would tend to bleed off into the uncharged remainder of the layer. It's like trying to make just part of a horse-shoe an electromagnet. And personally, I'd be much more worried about the possible atmospheric effects.