A straight shot west out of Boston on I-90 will carry you, in two hours or less, to Western Massachusetts, where the country still looks like it did twenty or even 40 years ago: college towns, I-91 tracing the same lazy ladder from Springfield up through Holyoke and Northampton, Amherst and Deerfield. Out there it's taken for granted that the houses will be drafty, the winters uniformly long, and that, on any given trip to the local supermarket, one might spot Thurston or Lou or Kim or J, on-and-off locals for more than twenty years. {audio}http://www.archive.org/download/DinosaurJrDrawings/07Drawerings_64kb.mp3{/audio} ... Drawerings Read More ...
By way of decrying a society that left its citizens unbearably restrained, Edith Wharton describes how in New York in the 1870s, women would order dresses from their Paris dressmakers and then leave them in tissue paper at least two years before wearing them in public; the thought of showing them "in advance of the fashion" was unforgivably vulgar. Social life has changed, but cultural life seems just as restricted now – even Animal Collective are held back by trends that seem a couple of years old (and that they helped to invent). When I think back on 2009, I’ll first remember how our impoverished aesthetic generation repeatedly scraped the resin from the cultural trash barrel. Every second person is wearing neon leggings, and the ones who aren’t rock a ‘70s aesthetic, with high-waisted jeans and moccasins. Christmas sweaters are getting impossible to find at the thrift store. Ska revival. Garage rock revival. It never ends. Read More ...
For just over 10 years, London's Guapo has been working in the world of avant and progressive rock. The band's past is a bit hard to track with its numerous lineup changes and guest musicians. The most recent change in roster was the resignation of Matthew Thompson, the founding member of Guapo, which occurred just before the release of 2005's Black Oni. The departure of Thompson has left Guapo with percussionist David Smith and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O'Sullivan. Though O'Sullivan is by no means a founding member of the band, but he was essential in honing the sound on Guapo's last two LPs: Five Suns and Black Oni. These two albums have been pivotal in building Guapo's following of fans, so it's hard not to credit O'Sullivan as an asset to the band.... {audio}http://www.neurotrecordings.com/artists/guapo/audio/Guapo-The%20Selenotrope.mp3 {/audio} ... The Selenotrope Read More ...
Basic Atari Teenage Riot iPhone app philosophy by Alec Empire + London gig+ 4CD, 1DVD free download
The free iPhone app features all ATR albums and songs, all videos, a photo archive, bio, news updates and also a ‘Riotsounds Produce Riots’ audioplayer. This audio player includes all the sounds/WAV files that ATR used at the May 1st 1999 demonstration (very low sub basses, square waves, noise sounds which trigger hysteria and panic within the audience) & would make them available to every political activisit out there. The idea being that you can hook up your iPhone to a speaker system if there is a rally: Apple/iTunes is arguing that they still need to investigate further, because it is legally a grey area and ATR has been indexed in Germany before (censored). Read More ...
The Swans - THIS IS NOT A REUNION - Message From Gira + free discography download (20 CDs)
Michael Gira's re-activated Swans will be undertaking their first U.S. performances in 13 years, celebrating the Fall release of the first new Swans album since Soundtracks For The Blind (1997). The album was recorded by Jason LeFarge at Seizure's Palace in Brooklyn and is currently be remixed by Gira with Bryce Goggin (Antony & The Johnsons, Akron/Family) at Trout Recordings. Read More ...
The Ex are one of those rare bands that, despite being around for 25 years, have neither gone soft nor stagnated. The 23 tracks on this album all date from their first decade of existence (1980-1990), and if you compare it with recent milestones like Starter Alternator and Turn, you’ll see that while many of the Ex’s virtues are long standing, much has changed. The Ex grew out of Amsterdam’s once-fertile squatters’ subculture, and have always been politically conscious; Singles. Period. includes screeds that oppose American cultural hegemony, Dutch apathy, and eugenics. Their most recent album Turn likewise includes protests against globalization, consumerism, and cultural erosion, but its lyrics are quite nuanced and in touch with the grey areas of the issues when compared with the black and white prescription of 1981’s “Weapons For El Salvador”: .............. {audio}http://www.theex.nl/mp3/The%20Ex%20-%20Trash.mp3{/audio} ... Trash Read More ...
Dirty HC Punk explosion - Bristol scene Rise up + Disorder 9 free CDs
From The Cortinas to Lunatic Fringe and Disorder, Bristol had a huge Punk scene that has influenced, affected and stimulated a vast range of artists that operate in the city. Many of these artists produce music that wouldn’t necessarily suggest a Punk heritage but scratch beneath the surface of a lot of the major players in the Bristol milieu and you will find a fondness for the times of `spikey barnets’, limited musical ability, a `F*** You’ attitude and disrespect for the music industry and its poseur hierarchy. Read More ...
A live album can be many things: a candid snapshot, a footnote to a scene, or even just a thrifty alternative to studio time. Antlers, a collection of live Bastro recordings from 1991, is the rarest kind of live album: it illuminates a side of the band that, in turn, casts their previous work in a new light as well.“1991 has been called the year that punk broke. Some of it broke into the mainstream, but some broke into more irregular shards.” David Grubbs’s observation, from the liner notes to Antlers, could also describe the varied musical paths that led from his former band Squirrel Bait to the disparate ’90s groups he and his ex-bandmates went on to found: Slint, Palace Brothers, King Kong, Bitch Magnet, the For Carnation, Tortoise, and of course, Bastro. Read More ...
Japan’s Annual Penis Festival – Celebrates Fertility
KOMAKI, Japan — It's springtime in Japan and that means one thing. Actually, two things. Penis festivals and vagina festivals. It may sound like a sophomoric gag. But these are folk rites going back at least 1,500 years, into Japan's agricultural past. They're held to ensure a good harvest and promote baby-making. Maybe they should hold more such festivals. Japan has one of the world's lowest birthrates (1.37 children per woman), which experts blame on stagnant incomes and changing gender relations. Read More ...
Black-lip Rattail ............ These sorts of rattails feed in the muddy seafloor by gliding along head down and tail up, powered by gentle undulations of a long fin under the tail. The triangular head has sensory cells underneath that help detect animals buried in the mud or sand. The common name comes from the black edges around the mouth. Read More ...
All world secret underground bases build for space travelers
The following material comes from people who know the Dulce (underground) base exists. They are people who worked in the labs; abductees taken to the base; people who assisted in the construction; intelligence personal (NSA,CIA,FBI ... ect.) and UFO / inner-earth researchers. This information is meant for those who are seriously interested in the dulce base. for your own protection be advised to “use caution” while investigating this complex.Does a strange world exist beneath our feet? Strange legends have persisted for centuries about the mysterious cavern world and the equally strange beings who inhabit it. More UFOlogists have considered the possibility that UFOs may be emanating from subterranean bases, that UFO aliens have constructed these bases to carry out various missions involving Earth or humans. Read More ...
"I forgot to remember to forget," Elvis Presley sang in 1955. I know that it was 1955 because I just Googled the title and clicked on the link to the Wikipedia entry for the song. How cool is that? Not long ago, I would have had to actually remember that Elvis recorded the song as part of his monumental Sun Records sessions that year. Then I would have had to flip through a set of histories of blues and country that sit on the shelf behind me. It might have taken five minutes to do what I did in five seconds. I almost don't need my own memory any more. That strikes many of us as a good thing: the costs low, the benefits high. We can be much more efficient and comprehensive now that a teeming collection of documents sits just a few keystrokes away. Read More ...
These days, with all the pundits preaching doom and the impending collapse of society into some kind of Mad Max style wasteland, it's easy for us to imagine that the economy is as unhealthy as it's ever been. But any historian would give you a hard backhanded smack for even saying that out loud. History is full of economic idiocy, and here are five economic collapses that make 2010 feel like the Renaissance. Read More ...
Island of Ghosts: Hashima Island - Japan’s rotting metropolis
Hashima, an island located in Nagasaki Bay, is better known as Warship Island (Gunkanshima). The island was inhabited until the end of the 19th century, when it was discovered that the ground below it held tons of coal. The island soon became a center of a major mining complex owned by Mitsubishi Corporation. As the complex expanded, rock brought out of the shafts was used to artificially expand the island. Seawalls created in this expansion turned Hashima into the monstrous looking Gunkanshima; its artificial appearance makes it looks more like a battleship than an island. Read More ...
Dreamachine - stroboscopic flicker device enter you to a hypnagogic state - try it right here in your browser
The dreamachine (or dream machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William Burroughs's "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain. In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing. Read More ...
The Peyote Way Church of God - believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life
The Peyote Way Church of God is a non-sectarian, multicultural, experiential, Peyotist organization located in southeastern Arizona, in the remote Aravaipa wilderness. It is not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Native American Church, or any other religious organizations, though we do accept people from all faiths. Church membership is open to all races. We encourage individuals to create their own rituals as they become acquainted with the great mystery. We believe that the Holy Sacrament Peyote, when taken according to our sacramental procedure and combined with a holistic lifestyle (see Word of Wisdom), can lead an individual toward a more spiritual life. Peyote is currently listed as a controlled substance and its religious use is protected by Federal law only for Native American members of the Native American Church. Read More ...
The Marijuana Conspiracy - The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal
MARIJUANA is DANGEROUS. Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people. The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies. Read More ...
Learn How to Pronounce the Iceland Volcano Eyjafjallajokull and remember; When He Erupted In 1821, it lasted 2 years
The last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it lasted 2 years stretching from 1821-1823. It also erupted in 920 and 1612. Eyjafjallajökull's eruption usually precedes an eruption for another Icelandic volcano called Katla, as it did in 1823. Katla's eruptions are usually more violent than Eyjafjallajökul's. Due to the second activity on Eyjafjallajökull volcano since April 14, there are thousands of flights have been cancelled not only in Europe but also some flights from Asia, America and other continents. More over, it was also reportedly more than ten thousands of air travelers still stranded after a plume of ash cloud spreading across thousands of miles. No need to repeat the same news in every single post, actually there’s an interesting thing from the Iceland volcano’s name Eyjafjallajokull. Pronunciation is so difficult for some of us. Even, many people still don’t know what’s the right pronunciation of Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Did you know that? Read More ...
The Drivers Of Tropical Deforestation Are Changing
A shift from poverty-driven to industry-driven deforestation threatens the world's tropical forests but offers new opportunities for conservation, according to an article coauthored by William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. "New Strategies for Conserving Tropical Forests" will be featured in the September issue of the leading journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Rhett Butler of Mongabay.com, a leading tropical-forest Web site, and Laurance argue that the sharp increase in deforestation by big corporations provides environmental lobby groups with clear, identifiable targets that can be pressured to be more responsive to environmental concerns. Read More ...
The CIA and the Nazis - Declassified archives document ties between CIA and Nazis - Where Is Hitler?!
The US national archives released some 27,000 pages of secret records documenting the CIA’s Cold War relations with former German Nazi Party members and officials. The files reveal numerous cases of German Nazis, some clearly guilty of war crimes, receiving funds, weapons and employment from the CIA. They also demonstrate that US intelligence agencies deliberately refrained from disclosing information about the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann in order to protect Washington’s allies in the post-war West German government headed by Christian Democratic leader Konrad Adenauer. Eichmann, who had sent millions to their deaths while coordinating the Nazis’ “final solution” campaign to exterminate European Jewry, went into hiding in Buenos Aires after the fall of the Third Reich. Read More ...
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution. They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent. Read More ...
The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago. In 1991, when the government of Somalia collapsed, foreign interests seized the opportunity to begin looting the country’s food supply and using the country’s unguarded waters as a dumping ground for nuclear and other toxic waste. Read More ...
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use. There are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every six people on the planet. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualized, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement. In many countries, squatting is in itself a crime; in others, it is only seen as a civil conflict between the owner and the occupants. "Squatters are usually portrayed as worthless scroungers hell-bent on disrupting society." Property law and the state have traditionally favored the property owner. However, in many cases where squatters had de facto ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Read More ...
9/11 has inspired a myriad of memorials who are scattered all across America. Some of them are of questionable taste, others contain strange occult symbolism while others simply piss people off. Here’s the five most offensive. Read More ...
The World's First Commercial Brain-Computer Interface + history of BCI
A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a brain and an external device. BCIs are often aimed at assisting, augmenting or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–computer interface in scientific literature. Read More ...
Seven theories of everything that pretend to describe the fundamental nature of the universe
We still don't have a theory that describes the fundamental nature of the universe, but there are plenty of candidates.
The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God". But theologians needn't lose too much sleep just yet. Despite decades of effort, progress has been slow. Rather than one or two rival theories whose merits can be judged against the evidence, there is a profusion of candidates and precious few clues as to which (if any) might turn out to be correct. Read More ...
The Secrets of Coral Castle and pyramids EXPLAINED by Leedskalnin's Magnetic Current theory
Coral Castle doesn't look much like a castle, but that hasn't discouraged generations of tourists from wanting to see it. That's because it was built by one man, Ed Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant who single-handedly and mysteriously excavated, carved, and erected over 2.2 million pounds of coral rock to build this place, even though he stood only five feet tall and weighed a mere 100 pounds. Ed was as secretive as he was misguided. He never told anyone how he carved and set into place the walls, gates, monoliths, and moon crescents that make up much of his Castle. Some of these blocks weigh as much as 30 tons. Ed often worked at night, by lantern light, so that no one could see him. He used only tools that he fashioned himself from wrecks in an auto junkyard. Read More ...
The T2K Experiment - From Tokai To Kamioka - Where is the anti-matter?
From the beginning of 2010, the T2K experiment will fire a beam of muon-neutrinos from Tokai on Japan's east coast, 300km accross the country to a detector at Kamioka. It hopes to investigate the phenomenon of "neutrino oscillations" by looking for "muon neutrinos" oscillating into "electron neutrinos". A million pound detector has been built at the University of Warwick as part of a vital experiment to investigate fundamental particles - neutrinos. Read More ...
The giant ALICE detector is already underway at CERN, and researchers are scrambling to add an electromagnetic calorimeter to capture jet-quenching, the newest way to look inside the quark-gluon plasma — the hot, dense state of matter that filled the earliest universe, which the Large Hadron Collider will soon recreate by slamming lead nuclei into one another. CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known mainly as the accelerator that will soon begin searching for the Higgs particle, and other new physics, in proton collisions at unprecedented energies — up to 14 TeV (14 trillion electron volts) at the center of mass — and with unprecedented beam intensities. But the same machine will also collide massive nuclei, specifically lead ions, to energies never achieved before in the laboratory. Read More ...
Vadim Chernobrov & Russian secrets experiments with time machines
A disturbing story in the March, 2005. 1 issue of Pravda suggests that the U. S. Government is working on the discovery of a mysterious point over the South Pole that may be a passageway backward in time. According to the article, some American and British scientists working in Antarctica on January 27, 1995, noticed a spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole. U. S. physicist Mariann McLein said at first they believed it to be some kind of sandstorm. But after a while they noticed that the fog did not change its form and did not move so they decided to investigate. Read More ...
If you're trying to buy happiness, you'd be better off putting your money toward a tropical island get-away than a new computer, a new study suggests. The results show that people's satisfaction with their life-experience purchases — anything from seeing a movie to going on a vacation — tends to start out high and go up over time. On the other hand, although they might be initially happy with that shiny new iPhone or the latest in fashion, their satisfaction with these items wanes with time. The findings, based on eight separate studies, agree with previous research showing that experience-related buys lead to more happiness for the consumer. But the current work provides some insight into why. Read More ...
It's not just a good idea, it's the law: 186,287 miles per second. The fact that sound waves travel at a finite speed--roughly 330 meters per second--has been known since ancient times. It's obvious, really, when you stand back a ways and observe the falling of a tree or the clapping of a pair of hands, and the sound arrives noticeably later than the sight itself. The fact that light waves also travel at finite speed is much harder to notice, because that speed is almost a million times faster. But by the end of the Renaissance, astronomers--viewing events much more distant than a few hundred meters--had begun to suspect the truth. Read More ...
It was nearly the end of WWII. At that same time, scientist Viktor Schauberger worked on a secret project. Johannes Kepler, whose ideas Schauberger followed, had knowledge of the secret teachings of Pythagoras that had been adopted and kept secret. It was the knowledge of Implosion (in this case the utilization of the potential of the inner worlds in the outer world). Hitler knew - as did the Thule and Vril people - that the divine principle was always constructive. A technology however that is based on explosion and therefore is destructive runs against the divine principle. Thus they wanted to create a technology based on Implosion. Read More ...
The Size Of Our World or How Insignificant the Earth Really Is in the Universe
Compared to you and me, the Earth is really big. But compared to Jupiter and the Sun, the Earth is pretty tiny. There are many ways we can measure the size of the Earth. Let's look at how big the Earth is, and then compare it to other objects in the Solar System. The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km. In other words, if you dug a hole down into the Earth, passed through the center of the Earth, and came out the other side, you would have dug a hole 12,742 km deep (on average). That's about 4 times longer than the diameter of the Moon. Read More ...
Strange Images from Space - Photos&videos of the Bizarre in Our Universe
Some weird and unusual objects are floating around in the cosmos. Space is always serving up something new, unusual, and unexpected. Here are images and explanations of obejcts that have amazed and delighted astronomers. Read More ...
Mysterious Radio Waves from Unknown Object in M82 Galaxy
There is something strange is lurking in the galactic neighborhood. An unknown object in galaxy M82 12 million light-years away has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before except perhaps by Ford Prefect. M82 is starburst galaxy five times as bright as the Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy's center. "We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK. But its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. This "superluminal" motion occurs usually in high-speed jets of material bursting out by black holes. Read More ...
Unsettled Mechanism of Supernova Detonation Gets a New Twist
Type Ia supernovae, often used to calibrate cosmological measurements, may arise from merging white dwarfs, after all
When stellar cataclysms known as type Ia supernovae flare up far across the universe, their brightness and consistency allow astronomers to use them as so-called standard candles to measure cosmological distances. Just over a decade ago, two teams used the supernovae to show that the universe is accelerating in its expansion due to the influence of dark energy, a shocking discovery that thrust type Ia supernovae into the astrophysical limelight. But how exactly did these cosmic mileposts come to be? Read More ...
Black Prince, alien space probe, orbits Earth watching humans
Alexander Kazantsev, a Soviet author of sci-fi books, once said that a mysterious “unaccounted” satellite called Black Prince was spinning around Earth. The writer believed the object might be an alien probe, a messenger from extraterrestrial civilizations. Some people including scientists paid attention to the writer’s hypothesis.U.S. astrophysicist Ronald Bracewell was the first to take the hypothesis seriously. In 1960, he published a study to back his conclusions with data of practical radio engineering. Read More ...
Secret Robotic Space Plane Launched By US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) has launched a secret space plane into orbit, carried in the nose of an Atlas 5 rocket. The USAF is not calling the X-37B a weapon or anything else, and the classified mission was broadcast live, but only for several minutes into the flight. The plane, built by Boeing, was originally part of a NASA programme but was later abandoned and turned over to a secretive USAF unit. There are no details on how much it costs or when it is coming back to earth, but when it does return the unmanned craft will land itself, using the onboard autopilot. Read More ...
Hubble telescope captures image of mysterious x-shaped object in space
Is that a smashed comet or an X-Wing fighter? Scientists are offering up their own theories as to what created the striking star-inspired image, which was captured by NASA's Hubble telescope in January. "Two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight," said principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. Read More ...
All Radio music can download from "free music albums"
Homescience The Lightning Foundry project - Wireless power transmission systems
The Lightning Foundry project - Wireless power transmission systems
The Lightning Foundry is a project based on 20 years of development. Lightning is electricity, but operates very differently from electrical discharges at the human scale. As lightning forms, it breaks through the air up to ten times easier than small-scale electric arcs, using tricks we don’t yet understand. The problem of understanding "lightning initiation" still confounds world experts in the field. However, recent theories and a bizarre experimental accident suggest that laboratory-scale electric arcs start to gain lightning-like abilities once they grow past about 200ft in length.
G. E. Leyh and M. D. Kennan, Nevada Lightning Laboratory
Our goal is to build a machine that can generate arcs beyond this critical length, and find out what happens. To accomplish this goal we plan to use two 10-story high Tesla Coils -- the largest ever built. At full output power [around four million watts] the coil towers will fill an area the size of a football field with a continuous display of electrical discharges. By carefully adjusting the drive voltage [up to 14 million volts] and the spacing of the towers, we intend to explore this mysterious region where normal electric arcs transform into lightning.
1:12 Scale Model
We’ve completed a fully functional 1:12 scale prototype for the Lightning Foundry, which we use to study the interactions between the two matched coils, and refine new design ideas. The prototype twin coils often surprise us with wonderfully unexpected behavior, including a strong tendency to couple power wirelessly over large distances. We studied this odd ability in detail, and published a paper on wireless power transfer at the 2008 North American Power Symposium. The 1:12 scale prototype has already performed at several public events including Maker Faire, The Robert Randall Home for Decrepit Mariners, and also at the Integratron, sponsored by the UCLA Art|Sci Center.
The Electrum Project
Electrum is a sculpture that employs lightning as the major component. Real lightning , which is very rarely seen up close, has the ability to focus and clear the mind. The work stands 38 feet tall and is essentially a column with a sphere on the top. Concealed within the sculpture is a 130,000 watt Tesla Coil. The Tesla Coil is the largest of its kind in the world. Lightning discharges up to fifty feet in length emanate in all directions from the top of the sphere.
The Electrum project is a collaboration between Greg Leyh, high voltage engineer from Lightning on Demand (LOD) in San Francisco, and Eric Orr, sculptor. Leyh represents the scientific aspect that has allowed Orr to manifest a work of art that is singular in its power to transform the moment. Orr has combined primary materials in a number of his water and fire sculptures. The Electrum sculpture is an evolution of Orr's work towards absolute simplicity. The sculpture has the sense of pure industrial strength art. The viewer is bathed in the raw force of nature.
Electrum was commissioned by a prominent New Zealand art patron. The work was installed on his farm in April 1998 outside of Auckland.
The Electrum Project provided us a rare opportunity to study long electrical discharges up close. Electurm's unusual size allows a person to climb into the high voltage electrode while the sculpture operates at full power. By physically touching the launch point of the discharges with fast current probes, we were able to capture detailed waveforms of discharges up to 50ft in length. Viewed from just inches away, the 50 foot long discharges possess an unusually intricate structure and sound. From inside the sphere it's impossible to tell how far the arcs are reaching, although the immediate impression is that it they stretch from the tip of the wand towards infinity.
Electrum: Science as Art The video documentary by Alberta Chu Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
At the turn of the century, scientist Nikola Tesla developed his Tesla coil: an electrical current generator that he envisioned as a potential power source shooting lightning into the air to be pulled down by energy customers around the world. Almost a century later, artist Eric Orr was commissioned to build a huge sculpture that would throw magnificant lightning bolts. He turned to high-voltage engineer Greg Leyh for help, and the result was the largest Tesla coil in the world - a tower four stories high that generates three million volts of electricity and 40-foot bolts of lightning. So often we think of science and art as being irreconcilable opposites. This program proves the reverse: ELECTRUM is an intriguing opportunity to explore the relationship between technology and art, and meet the people who see beyond the ordinary.
Efficient Wireless Transmission of Power Using Resonators with Coupled Electric Fields
Background. Since its introduction by Nikola Tesla in 1900, the concept of wireless power transmission has expanded in many directions, including high-intensity microwave beams, lasers and mutual magnetic induction.
Figure 1. Test setup with resonant transformers and 800 watt test load.
Wireless power transmission systems typically fall into one of two categories; near-field and far-field designs. Near fields drop off with the square of the distance, and tend to radiate small amounts of energy. Far fields are mostly radiative, and drop off linearly with distance. By convention, two elements are considered near-field coupled when their separation is less than a few times the size of the transmitting element, and are far-field coupled when the separation is many times the transmitting element size. This experiment explores what might be considered primarily near-field effects, with some far-field effects beyond the 15 meter range.
Setup. Initial tests at 5 meter spacing yielded an unexpectedly high power transfer of about 450 watts, measured by the resistive test load on the receiving coil. The test load consists of twenty 40watt incandescent light bulbs. Further refinements to the synchronous detection circuitry in the receiving coil increased the resistive load power to 801 watts, with the transmitting coil operating at 3.6kW.
Analysis. We wanted to separately evaluate the coupling contributions provided by the electric and magnetic fields. To accomplish this we first determined the mutual inductance and capacitance between the coil towers vs. their separation distance. Measuring actual magnetic coupling between the coils was relatively straightforward. However an accurate measurement of the effective capacitance between the two electrodes was not practical. To determine this capacitance we modeled the geometry of the test area using the COMSOL electrostatics solver. The COMSOL plot below shows the electric field pattern between both toroidal top electrodes and the bounding box representing the building walls and roofing trusses.
Figure 2. 3D COMSOL electrostatics model, showing the electric field pattern between top electrodes.
Table 1 below summarizes the capacitance matrix values calculated by COMSOL and our magneting coupling measurements vs. transformer separation distance. Magnetic and Electric Coupling Values vs. Separation Distance.
Next, we performed circuit simulations of the two-coil setup in Ansoft Simplorer, using the coupling values from Table 1 above. The Simplorer circuit model shown in Figure 3 below includes the RF source, primary and secondary transmitting coils, coupling components representing the mutual inductance and capacitance, primary and secondary receiving coils, and the resistive test load. We separately evaluated the magnetic and electric coupling contributions by ranging either L_coupling or C_coupling while holding the other at zero. Using the values in Table 1 Simplorer predicted that the magnetic coupling is small compared to electric coupling, with only 1.64% for the magnetic case vs. 38.36% for the electric coupling at 2m separation. For the rest of this experiment we assumed that the coupling is primarily electric in nature.
Figure 3. Simplorer circuit model, including ambient coupling values.
Actual Coupling Measurements. Figure 4 shows the test setup for measuring actual coupled power between the transmitting and receiving coils. For these actual ranging tests we set the transmitter power to 3.6kW in order to match the operating conditions in the circuit simulations. A large experimental coil located in the back of the high-bay area had to be grounded for these tests, otherwise it would 'rob' noticeable amounts of energy from the two test coils.
Figure 4. Receiver coil delivering 775 watts to the 40W x20 test load.
Table 2 below compares the Simplorer predictions from above with our actual coupled power measurement results. Note the absence of actual test data for center-to-center transformer distances of 4m or less. The arcing hazard between the two top electrodes was too great at these close separation distances, since the top electrodes are each 1.4m in diameter. Table 2 shows good correlation between the simulation results and the actual power measurements across the 5m to 17m range.
Table 2. Calculated efficiencies from Simplorer vs. Actual Measurements.
Conclusions. Considerable care must be exercised during wireless power operation, as unintentional coupling of energy to nearby devices and structures can result in fire hazards and equipment damage.
Wireless transmission of power through coupled electric fields is easily demonstrated at high power levels, and across laboratory-scale distances.
Electric fields are far more effective than magnetic fields towards coupling energy between widely spaced resonant transformer coils.
It is not necessary for the transmitter and receiver coils to be of identical size and shape, or even exactly the same frequency to transfer useful amounts of power. A large experimental coil located across the lab with a self-resonant frequency 9% lower than the two test coils was able to intercept over 50 watts of power at a distance of 15 meters.
Self-Powered 'Automatons.' Nikola Tesla had envisioned an ambitious wireless system for supplying motive power to remote vehicles and airships. As a simple proof-of-concept demonstration for the near-field case, we constructed the self-motive prototype shown below in Figure 5. This unit collects energy from the ambient electric fields using an on-board 'reverse Tesla Coil,' which in turn charges a large, on-board capacitor bank. The capacitors then drive a DC motor connected to one of the wheels, providing motive effort for the machine. This prototype is able to move about at a 'stately pace,' powered completely by the ambient electric fields. The metal wheels conduct the secondary RF ground currents to the concrete.
Figure 5. Our 'Tesla Roadster,' a self-powered automaton prototype.
Wireless Powered Vehicle Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
Mike Kennan driving his 'Tesla Roadster,' powered completely from the ambient fields produced by the Lightning Foundry 1:12 scale prototype coils. Note the gentle sparking to the concrete, forming the return path. Video by Josh Bailey.
Recapitulation summary - update
Largest Tesla Coils Ever Will Recreate Natural Lightning
Sometimes, all it takes to push the boundaries of science is a wacky idea and a machine to prove it. Greg Leyh, founder of Lightning On Demand (LOD), may do just that, with plans to build two, ten-story-tall Tesla coils that can shoot hundreds of feet of lightning.
“Historically, new scientific machines produce unexpected discoveries,” said Leyh in an e-mail interview. “Many new discoveries are viewed as problems, where others provide fascinating new insights.”
Leyh hopes the Lightning Foundry project will shine new light on the initiation process of natural lightning, which he explains on the LOD website. The problem with studying lightning, it states, is that as lightning forms, it uses tricks science does not yet understand to break through the air up to ten times easier than what can be done with small-scale electric arcs. But theories, and an experimental accident of the Siberian Institute for Power Engineering, found “laboratory-scale electric arcs start to gain lightning-like abilities once they grow past about 200ft in length,” according to the website.
Thus, the team at LOD aims to build two Tesla coils at the scale needed to generate electric arcs large enough to mimic natural lightning.
These will be the largest Tesla coils ever built, and will run at full output—around 4 million watts—to fill a football field with continuous bolts of lightning. They then plan to increase the voltage to 14 million volts and change the distance between the towers “to explore this mysterious region where normal electric arcs transform into lightning,” according to the project website.
“Understanding how lightning forms [and grows] is the first step towards being able to control where lightning strikes or being able to suppress it completely in certain areas,” Leyh said.
In 2008 they built a 1:12 scale model of the Lightning Foundry project, and as the project website states, “The prototype twin coils often surprise us with wonderfully unexpected behavior, including a strong tendency to couple power wirelessly over large distances.”
While testing the prototype coils, “we accidentally discovered that they can transmit wireless power very effectively… enough to start a fire,” Leyh said. They published a paper on the discovery at the 2008 North American Power Symposium.
But they found the wireless power could do other things, and the LOD team used it to create the world’s first “wirelessly powered” vehicle using the electric field from the coils. The vehicle, which they called the “Tesla Roadster” is a chair on wheels with a large pole that can pull power from the field of the Tesla coils.
LOD has created similar projects. They built the “first big coil” in 1990, followed by the largest Tesla coil in the world, the 38-foot-tall, 130,000 watt “Electrum” in 1997.
Aside from fire safety, the team will be taking other Tesla coil-related issues into consideration. Tesla coils have an uncanny ability to short out modern electronics—anything from erasing voice mails to blowing out computer screens. To guard against this, the LOD teams usually places “nearby electronics in shielded enclosures,” or they run the coils “far, far away,” Leyh said.
Wanted: Money to create lightning machine that shoots bolts 250 feet
Engineers in the U.S are hoping to build the world's largest Tesla coil capable of shooting 250ft arcs of electricity. Although the project has a serious scientific purpose, it would also be a massive spectacle expected to draw in huge crowds. Called The Lightning Foundry, the huge structure would stand ten stories high.
Ambitious: Engineers in the U.S are hoping to build the world's largest Tesla coil. This would be of interest to scientist Peter Terren who created these huge electric sculptures using a Tesla coil in Australia
The man behind the project, high voltage engineer Greg Leyh, wants to see how lightning gets so efficient at transmitting electricity.
He told The Register: 'Lightning uses around a tenth of the power per foot of energy to send electricity through the air compared to man-made examples.
'Lightning initiation is still something that baffles experts.'
Great spectacle: Peter Terren uses Tesla coils to create bizarre artworks in Australia
The team is now seeking $348,000 in funding to get the project off the ground. If successful, it would be built in San Francisco and then transported to Nevada where it would be set up close to the Hoover Dam. This location has been chosen because of the space which would be available for testing the machine.
Vast: Engineers hope to build the world's largest Tesla coil close to the Hoover Dam, Nevada, because of the large amounts of space available for testing
There are also issues of safety which would need to be addressed because of the huge arcs of electricity which would be generated with huge crowds watching. Despite this, Mr Leyh believes the project would still draw in the crowds. 'Hopefully, this is a scientific experiment that people would go and see,' he told The Register. 'I would love it if this inspires people to consider their universe and the wonders it contains.' Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
The Lightning Foundry is a project based on 20 years of development. Lightning is electricity, but operates very differently from electrical discharges at the human scale. As lightning forms, it breaks through the air up to ten times easier than small-scale electric arcs, using tricks we don’t yet understand. The problem of understanding "lightning initiation" still confounds world experts in the field. However, recent theories and a bizarre experimental accident suggest that laboratory-scale electric arcs start to gain lightning-like abilities once they grow past about 200ft in length.
Electrum is a sculpture that employs lightning as the major component. Real lightning , which is very rarely seen up close, has the ability to focus and clear the mind. The work stands 38 feet tall and is essentially a column with a sphere on the top. Concealed within the sculpture is a 130,000 watt Tesla Coil. The Tesla Coil is the largest of its kind in the world. Lightning discharges up to fifty feet in length emanate in all directions from the top of the sphere.
But theories, and an experimental accident of the Siberian Institute for Power Engineering, found “laboratory-scale electric arcs start to gain lightning-like abilities once they grow past about 200ft in length,” according to the website.
“Understanding how lightning forms [and grows] is the first step towards being able to control where lightning strikes or being able to suppress it completely in certain areas,” Leyh said.
