Nikola Tesla

[Nowhere-Man]

Wow....

Lawrence

There you are! The Tesla Radio of legend. Marconi also claimed to have received inexplicable transmissions and was likewise dismissed as a crank over his statement.

[pwdrive]

Apparently there is a lot of debate regarding the SETI Wow signal that was detected in 1977, close to the Hydrogen line apparently.

As to communicating with other "civilizations" out in the wide yonder I take the sobering view of probability:

"Advanced civilisations may tend to destroy themselves, through war or environmental catastrophe. If not, a disaster like an asteroid strike might wipe them out"

On the other hand some might remember the intial discovery of the Pulsar signal....

Lawrence.

[Aerodyne]

There seems to be doubts expressed on one or two entries on this thread regarding Tesla and radio transmission/reception.In fact his development of radio is well documented, as a quick Google will show. Here's one interesting link:
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ins/lab_remotec.html

Tony

[Nowhere-Man]

Apparently there is a lot of debate regarding the SETI Wow signal that was detected in 1977, close to the Hydrogen line apparently.

As to communicating with other "civilizations" out in the wide yonder I take the sobering view of probability:

"Advanced civilisations may tend to destroy themselves, through war or environmental catastrophe. If not, a disaster like an asteroid strike might wipe them out"

On the other hand some might remember the intial discovery of the Pulsar signal....

Lawrence.

There is a lot of excitement in some circles over Zecharia Sitchin and the ancient astronauts theory. This is all tied in with the enigmatic Sumerian texts on which the Biblical Creation account was based. Sitchin's theory was astronauts had already visited the Earth around 3500 B.C. I uploaded a pic of one example of some of the strange archaeological relics of this period.

Apparently, Tesla had many views on this:

I can readily demonstrate that with an expenditure not exceeding 2000 horse-power signals can be transmitted to a planet such as Mars with as much exactness and certitude as we now send messages by wire from New York to Philadelphia.." 

[Alan Douglas]

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ins/lab_remotec.html

I don't see any references there.  Carlson on the other hand devotes thirteen pages to the radio-controlled boat.

I can readily demonstrate

But he never did.

[Nick]

There is a lot of excitement in some circles over Zecharia Sitchin and the ancient astronauts theory. This is all tied in with the enigmatic Sumerian texts on which the Biblical Creation account was based. Sitchin's theory was astronauts had already visited the Earth around 3500 B.C. I uploaded a pic of one example of some of the strange archaeological relics of this period.

We're venturing into fairly dodgy territory here - the "Ancient Aliens" theory is firmly rooted in pseudo-science -  there are also a lot of very well informed folk who believe that Sitchin is just plain wrong, e.g. http://sitchiniswrong.com/index.html, and like some others his understanding and scholarship of the Sumerian texts is weak and incorrect. Bit like von Däniken...

The photo posted is one from Val Camonica, Italy,a UNESCO World Heritage site that has over 200,000 catalogued petroglyphs spanning some 8,000 years. If the ancient aliens theory was more prominent in ancient times, wouldn't there be more of these rather than the common handful that are always trotted out?

It possible to cherry-pick data to advance any argument - look and the bigger picture(s!) and it soon becomes clear what the real story is...

This is not really a forum for pseudo-science...

[ppppenguin]

There's a useful test: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There's plenty of genuine science that fails this test, just look at the history of legitimate medical research. Ben Goldacre's books are very useful for helping distinguish truth from bunkum in this field.

Another useful tool is Occam's Razor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor This test isn't guaranteed to get at the truth but it's a useful start.

[Aerodyne]

The reason I suggested the link covering Tesla's remote controlled boat was simply to point out that the historical record shows he did indeed create and demonstrate radio control. He is also documented as demonstrating radio transmission a few years earlier. I haven't read the Carlson book Alan is clearly in favour of but there is ample evidence of Tesla's involvement in early radio development, as any quick search on the net will prove. It is there for us all to see. That is, unless we consider every entry and photograph on the internet to be biased, suspect and fabricated (as no doubt some may be).
Tony

[Alan Douglas]

Frankly I wouldn't put much store in anything I read on the internet without seeing the reference to the original publication. All too often each of these sites repeats bits from other sites (or books) without any fact-checking. The PBS link above, for instance, casually credits Tesla with devising a coherer for his radio-controlled boat, as if he had invented it. There are also claims that he received radio signals thirty miles away, but I don't believe I have ever seen a contemporary reference for that. Somebody took one of Tesla's claims at face value (like being able to signal Mars whenever he felt like it) and assumed it was true. Talk is cheap.

[Nowhere-Man]

There is a lot of excitement in some circles over Zecharia Sitchin and the ancient astronauts theory. This is all tied in with the enigmatic Sumerian texts on which the Biblical Creation account was based. Sitchin's theory was astronauts had already visited the Earth around 3500 B.C. I uploaded a pic of one example of some of the strange archaeological relics of this period.

We're venturing into fairly dodgy territory here - the "Ancient Aliens" theory is firmly rooted in pseudo-science -  there are also a lot of very well informed folk who believe that Sitchin is just plain wrong, e.g. http://sitchiniswrong.com/index.html, and like some others his understanding and scholarship of the Sumerian texts is weak and incorrect. Bit like von Däniken...

The photo posted is one from Val Camonica, Italy,a UNESCO World Heritage site that has over 200,000 catalogued petroglyphs spanning some 8,000 years. If the ancient aliens theory was more prominent in ancient times, wouldn't there be more of these rather than the common handful that are always trotted out?

It possible to cherry-pick data to advance any argument - look and the bigger picture(s!) and it soon becomes clear what the real story is...

This is not really a forum for pseudo-science...

Apparently Tesla was dismissed as "unbalanced" when he made his opinions public on interplanetary radio signals and also many of his more "far out" ideas. There are quite a few articles online that focus on Tesla as being a talented crackpot. From what I read and, based on Tesla's own statements, he doesn't seem at all deserving of much of the ridicule he attracted at the time. I also think he'd have found Sitchin's theories fascinating, which they are. Who cares if the established circle of academics dismiss imaginative ideas as heresy - they said the same thing about flight, lunar landings, the earth not being flat and so on?

Not wanting to go too off-track but ancient societies always tended to embrace polytheistic belief systems. They believed in gods. If you read the original Sumerian creation account with a totally open mind, it becomes clear that Sitchin hasn't just pulled his ideas out of a hat.

P.S. what's strange is not too long ago Stephen Hawking made his own views known and it seems to tie in closely with what Tesla had been stating years ago.

Anyone who wants to see a thought-provoking and entertaining film on this line ought to check out Contact with Jodie Foster. I like the way she was portrayed as a serious scientist who was alienated by the scientific community, yet on making her discovery on a SETI receiver, others moved in to take the credit.

Another good film worth checking out is Frequency.