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The Tunguska+Tesla event is quite fascinating (the whole life of Tesla is actually). People love to make up a lot of theories and conspiracies, it's nothing ne

The Tunguska+Tesla event is quite fascinating (the whole life of Tesla is actually). People love to make up a lot of theories and conspiracies, it's nothing new. What is particularly worrisome is that Tesla was a very brillant man and that he believed himself to have caused this. From the information that we have, it wasn't a marketing stunt by his entourage. The guy himself was working on this particle-beam for some time and claimed to have triggered it that night. He tried to sell the technology for more almost 3 decades. Was this made up, was this a coincidence, or did it actually happen? It's been over 100 years and no one is certain.

greglindahl 11y ago
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. "No one is certain" is not the right way to approach the possibility that Tesla actually caused Tunguska. edit: clarified what "this" means
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Its reasonable to speculate on whether Tesla himself believed he'd caused the incident.
- alexandre_m 11y ago
  I don't think it's plausible that Tesla is responsable for it, but we can raise some questions surrounding the event. Apparently there's still no scientific consensus (is that even possible?) on the Tunguska explosion and NASA seems to acknowledges that. Taken from: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30jun_tunguska/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30... "A century later some still debate the cause and come up with different scenarios that could have caused the explosion," said Yeomans" No remains of the asteroid, no impact crater and the claims from Tesla together is what is fascinating to me.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
And Tesla did nothing of note from that time onward. Did the suspicion that he was responsible for thousands of deaths, and that he'd invented a weapon too terrible to contemplate, cause him to retreat from his work? Hard to think otherwise.
krapp 11y ago
This site[0] appears to provide a referenced timeline and breakdown of the feasibility of Tesla's particle beam weapon. The author's conclusion seems to be that, while the principle may be sound (particle beams do exist), in actual practice the energy required to meet Tesla's claims would be infeasible even in the modern era - and certainly would have been impossible in Tesla's day. However, The "death ray" proper only appears to have been developed decades after Tunguska (Tesla mentions working on it in 1934, Tunguska was 1908[1]), so it seems to be out of the running as a possible catalyst. The Tesla Society, predictably, has a page on this[2] that links to a number of articles from the time[3] describing Tesla's claims about wireless energy transmission and its potential as a weapon. Could Tesla's energy experiments have caused the Tunguska Event? That probably depends on the plausibility of his ideas about long-range power transmission. Wireless tranmission of electricity is possible, however, that alone doesn't mean the idea scales. Unfortunately, because Tesla, finding an objective, scientifically grounded discussion of Tesla's ideas and technology given modern knowledge on the internet was difficult. Quora[4][5] implies that Tesla, for all his genius, simply didn't realize his process would have been too inefficient to work at the scales he envisioned. As with the "death ray," it seems the energy required would have been impossible[6]. Nikola Tesla also claimed to have created an earthquake generator - which was debunked on Mythbusters[7][8]. He also claimed to be in contact with aliens[8]. The truth about Nikola Tesla is, while he was an unparalleled genius, he was also sometimes spectacularly wrong. [0]http://www.danielcelton.com/2015/01/13/is-teslas-particle-beam-weapon-practical/ http://www.danielcelton.com/2015/01/13/is-teslas-particle-be... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event [2]http://www.teslasociety.com/tunguska.htm http://www.teslasociety.com/tunguska.htm [3]http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tunguska.htm http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tunguska.htm [4]https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-attempted-to-rebuild-the-Wardenclyffe-Tower https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-attempted-to-rebuild-... [5]https://www.quora.com/Does-this-project-to-rebuild-Teslas-Wanderclyffe-Tower-using-2014-technology-seems-plausible https://www.quora.com/Does-this-project-to-rebuild-Teslas-Wa... [6]https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14869/is-there-any-data-on-how-efficient-tesla-wireless-power-transmission-was https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14869/is-there-... [7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_oscillator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_oscillator [8]https://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-show/earthquake-machine/ https://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-sh... [9]http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_11.htm http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_11.htm

greglindahl 11y ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. "No one is certain" is not the right way to approach the possibility that Tesla actually caused Tunguska. edit: clarified what "this" means

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Its reasonable to speculate on whether Tesla himself believed he'd caused the incident.
alexandre_m 11y ago
I don't think it's plausible that Tesla is responsable for it, but we can raise some questions surrounding the event. Apparently there's still no scientific consensus (is that even possible?) on the Tunguska explosion and NASA seems to acknowledges that. Taken from: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30jun_tunguska/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30... "A century later some still debate the cause and come up with different scenarios that could have caused the explosion," said Yeomans" No remains of the asteroid, no impact crater and the claims from Tesla together is what is fascinating to me.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

And Tesla did nothing of note from that time onward. Did the suspicion that he was responsible for thousands of deaths, and that he'd invented a weapon too terrible to contemplate, cause him to retreat from his work? Hard to think otherwise.

krapp 11y ago

This site[0] appears to provide a referenced timeline and breakdown of the feasibility of Tesla's particle beam weapon. The author's conclusion seems to be that, while the principle may be sound (particle beams do exist), in actual practice the energy required to meet Tesla's claims would be infeasible even in the modern era - and certainly would have been impossible in Tesla's day. However, The "death ray" proper only appears to have been developed decades after Tunguska (Tesla mentions working on it in 1934, Tunguska was 1908[1]), so it seems to be out of the running as a possible catalyst. The Tesla Society, predictably, has a page on this[2] that links to a number of articles from the time[3] describing Tesla's claims about wireless energy transmission and its potential as a weapon. Could Tesla's energy experiments have caused the Tunguska Event? That probably depends on the plausibility of his ideas about long-range power transmission. Wireless tranmission of electricity is possible, however, that alone doesn't mean the idea scales. Unfortunately, because Tesla, finding an objective, scientifically grounded discussion of Tesla's ideas and technology given modern knowledge on the internet was difficult. Quora[4][5] implies that Tesla, for all his genius, simply didn't realize his process would have been too inefficient to work at the scales he envisioned. As with the "death ray," it seems the energy required would have been impossible[6]. Nikola Tesla also claimed to have created an earthquake generator - which was debunked on Mythbusters[7][8]. He also claimed to be in contact with aliens[8]. The truth about Nikola Tesla is, while he was an unparalleled genius, he was also sometimes spectacularly wrong. [0]http://www.danielcelton.com/2015/01/13/is-teslas-particle-beam-weapon-practical/ http://www.danielcelton.com/2015/01/13/is-teslas-particle-be... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event [2]http://www.teslasociety.com/tunguska.htm http://www.teslasociety.com/tunguska.htm [3]http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tunguska.htm http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tunguska.htm [4]https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-attempted-to-rebuild-the-Wardenclyffe-Tower https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-attempted-to-rebuild-... [5]https://www.quora.com/Does-this-project-to-rebuild-Teslas-Wanderclyffe-Tower-using-2014-technology-seems-plausible https://www.quora.com/Does-this-project-to-rebuild-Teslas-Wa... [6]https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14869/is-there-any-data-on-how-efficient-tesla-wireless-power-transmission-was https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14869/is-there-... [7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_oscillator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_oscillator [8]https://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-show/earthquake-machine/ https://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-sh... [9]http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_11.htm http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_11.htm