The rectified output of a Tesla Coil gives an enormous DC voltage, and we can vary this with an audio signal. The result is silent: an e-field in space near a large metal plate in a wall or ceiling. However, if a person with charged clothing or hair should pass by our device, the charge will convert the e-field into audible sound. Their shirt plays music. Their hair talks to them.
The person has become an electrostatic loudspeaker. Or actually, they've become the "diaphragm," while the high-voltage field-plates are hidden nearby.
Rather than wait for charged people to approach accidentally, instead we can use a "ring-vortex launcher" to silently deposit charge upon the hair of a selected victim. Then, only that person will hear the whispering subliminal voices emitted by our e-field device.
To foil this technique, wrap your head with aluminum foil of course.
(Inspired by the 'instantaneous meteor noise' phenomenon.)-- wbeaty, May 27 2008 Geophysical Electrophonics http://home.pacific...ddcsk1/gelphonx.htmAuroral sounds, etc. [wbeaty, May 27 2008] Electrophonic sounds http://www.google.c...trophonic+sounds%22goog search [wbeaty, May 27 2008] Another means of highly directional sound http://www.atcsd.co...content/view/34/47/Hypersonic Sound (HSS) works well above 600Hz or so. [csea, May 28 2008] (?) The Black Hole http://members.aol.com/BlkHoleLA/home/Ed Grothus' playground [csea, May 29 2008] Tesla Coil http://www.eskimo.c...lb/tesla/tesla.htmlthere goes my sunday in the sun..... [xenzag, Jun 01 2008] Science of Ball Lightning http://www.amazon.c...os/ISBN=9971507234/Int'l Symp. on BL, Tokyo Japan, 1988 [wbeaty, Jun 06 2008] "Chizhevsky Lessons" http://bldgblog.blo...ieting-buzzing.htmlA voltage/ionization sculpture, Basel Switzerland [wbeaty, Jul 12 2010] can't say I really understand the process but... the victim would not only be hearing voices, but their hair would be standing on end ? evil... I like it [+]-- FlyingToaster, May 27 2008 This would be perfect if there was a way to have the device trigger a hand dryer somewhere off in the distance just after the whispering subliminal voices stop.-- Canuck, May 27 2008 //and we can vary this with an audio signal//
As I don't really understand tesla coils very well, I'll have to take it on faith that you can actually do this. I'm not convinced though.
Because it's such a cool idea, I will lend you a bun, pending further investigation.-- wagster, May 27 2008 Perfect HB material! + Thanks for bringing this neglected phenomenon to our attention.
I'm not convinced that rectifying a large ac voltage, (from the standard Tesla coil) and then modulating it with audio makes much sense. Why not convert the audio (ac) directly to the desired HV signal using a specialized transformer?
I also think the foiling would not work unless grounded. In fact, this may explain how those inclined towards metallic headgear are able to hear voices (perhaps suitable detection of radio signals occurs through electrolytic activity in the skin/hair/foil interface.)
I'd like to hear more about the charge-depositing vortex ring launcher. This may have other applications!-- csea, May 27 2008 The vortex ring launcher is what the staff at Hamleys shoot you with on the way in. The problem with using it to deposit a charge is that it delivers the vortex to the target, not the air. So any charged air that you may want to hit people with will remain in the vicinity of the launcher.
This idea is effectively a huge electrostatic speaker with the person as the diaphragm. Really huge. Normally the diaphragm would be within a few mm gap between charged plates with several thousand volts AC across them. If you scale this up from (roughly) 5mm to 5m separation, the field strength will drop by a factor of 1000, so you would need to up the voltages from roughly 5kV to 5MV. I think this is within the scope of tesla coils but I doubt a transformer will do it without arcing. [csea]?-- wagster, May 27 2008 [wagster] IIRC, electrostatic field strength varies as 1/e^3, so going from 5mm to 5m is more like a drop of 10^9, so this may not work at all without more attention to the geometry. I think 5TV is attainable, just barely.
I'm familiar with vortex rings, built a launcher from a coffee can about 1968, and have a couple of the commercial toys. They can deliver "smoke rings", but since like charged particles will repel oneanother, it looks quite difficult to keep a charged ring intact. In fact, I seem to remember playing with cat-stroked balloons and smoke rings with some fun repelling results.
I saw a 110V to 6.3V filament transformer at LASL salvage back in the '70s with a 400kV isolation rating; the outer coil was about 40cm in diameter, and wrapped in teflon/fiberglas (air gap of at least 15cm between primary and secondary). Might be a bit difficult to make one operate at 5TV. But hey! That's why this is the HB.-- csea, May 27 2008 Reminds me of "minority report". In so far as, the isolation of the target maket aspect.
Why on earth would we be arseing around with radio frequencies, large semiprimes, elipitical curves, dsiscreet logarithms, if electrical charge could go the distance. We already have the KLJN encryption. If this was feasable without a physical conduit we would have seen it already.
Remember, whispering to one in a crowd is the cornerstone (keystone, if you are masonically inclined) to all encryption.
Bun anyway, hoping you are actually seeing the bigger picture.-- 4whom, May 27 2008 Whenever anyone mentions Tesla I twitch. He made so many completely whacko claims that I have no idea which of his ideas (aside from some obvious ones like Tesla coils) are real. I wish people would make their bloody minds up as to whether they're going to be loonies or geniuses.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 27 2008 I want to be one of those. And I'm no genius.-- wagster, May 28 2008 //IIRC, electrostatic field strength varies as 1/e^3//
Only from a point source, between two very large plates (e.g. ceiling and floor) it should be linear. And why were you looking in the Latvian-American Shipping Line's salvage yard?-- wagster, May 29 2008 Point (source) taken; the original idea seems to call for a single plate.
I guess it's called LANL now. Much of the good stuff ends up at the black hole [link], where I worked one summer in the 70's.-- csea, May 29 2008 If the charge is varying with an audio signal, would one not need to be in contiguity with the charge to hear the music? The putative ring vortex method of charging the victim would bestow only a single note.
I am skeptical that shirts would sing. On being zapped with a teslacoil there is no sound except the crackle of the coil. Not to kill anyones buzz (so to speak) but I need more about how a static charge produces noise.-- bungston, Jun 01 2008 God I love this place.
Where else would a schmuck like me get exposed to something like Tesla coil vortex ring launchers? You poeple rock.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 01 2008 It's not the static charge that will produce movement, [bung], it's the oscillating field around it. Even if you are earthed (which most people usually are, more or less), just being in a massive oscillating electric field should be enough to induce small movements within your elf and your clothes and make a little sound. The only real problem here is the field strength - hence the Tesla Coil.-- wagster, Jun 01 2008 I saw a paper where a Russian lab made a charged-vortex launcher while looking into possible explanations for ball lightning. Conference-proceedings: [link] They mentioned that the travelling vortex was easily detected by anyone nearby: their arm-hair twitched as the vortex whizzed past.
As for self-repulsion of charged air, I've observed that, for low ion densities, the ions stay entrained because of aerodynamic forces. Probably at very high ion densities a vortex would "shatter" because of electrical repulsion.-- wbeaty, Jun 06 2008 //You poeple rock.//
Belatedly marked for tiglane.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 12 2010 Capacitance:Nature's Slow Moving Charge.
Even if you could deliver adequate power, static charge is inclined to move slowly. If you tried to apply a square wave field at a high (audible) frequency the tendency of the static system would be to damp the voltage. You might be able to achieve sensations on the low end but as the frequency increases the tendency to damp (fail to conduct) the change in voltage potential rises exponentially. So you have an exponential increase in required voltage with distance and an exponential increase in damping with frequency. I guessing that this would make this idea completely unworkable.-- WcW, Jul 13 2010 > static charge is inclined to move slowly.
[WcW] static charge moves at ~c, a foot per nanosecond. Maybe you're thinking of trapped charges on insulating surfaces? Yes, those do move slow. Now think of electrostatic tweeter loudspeakers and "area denial" ultrasonic nonlethal weapons based on vibration of charged membranes. They use metals, where discharge takes nanoseconds rather than tens of seconds. It does require tens of seconds to initially form the ion cloud. But that cloud is then accelerated by e-fields. The above idea is totally baked, but always in the form of obvious transducers having visible stator elements. I want to make invisible ones, so people won't be able to find the loudspeaker. Voices coming from the sky, or coming from a column of ozone-scented air in the center of a room.-- wbeaty, Jan 05 2011 random, halfbakery