Tesla on Twitter – Twitter on Tesla

THE POWER AND POTENTIAL OF SOCIAL MEDIA SITES LIKE TWITTER

Several weeks ago I published an article called “An Inconvenient Genius: The Timeless Legacy of an Untimely Man,” about Nikola Tesla. It featured an interview with Marc Seifer, Ph.D., the author of “Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla.” Marc is an internationally recognized expert on Nikola Tesla, and his book has been highly praised by such diverse sources as the New York Times, M.I.T Technology Review and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.

Weeks after the article was posted, a fascinating thing happened. An influential and highly respected leader in the technology media industry “Tweeted” (highlighted with a short text message and link) the article on Twitter.com.

Questions

Within minutes of this Tweet, I began noticing a marked increase in blog traffic. I also started receiving emails regarding the article, the book, and the man himself, as well as some questions and pointed accusations.

Answers

Marc Seifer responds to those questions in this article (I deftly handle the accusations). He and his creative partner, Tim Eaton, have also shared some historical footage and short videos for a feature film project on Tesla they’re working on to help illuminate the answers. The video below includes a rare  tribute to Tesla by the legendary New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia; the audio was recorded within days of Tesla’s death.

Quick Backstory

“An Inconvenient Genius” was a short tribute and reflection on Tesla’s life work, now mainly lost, stolen or obscured in the history books. The article posed a couple of simple question: Where does someone like Tesla fit in? How can we nurture, enable and protect such people for the betterment of humankind?

Pretty simple stuff. I try not to aim too high.

Planter of Seeds

Tesla, considered himself “a planter of seeds.” He let others raise the crops. From Tesla’s point of view, he was a creator of new principles. Contrast that with a rival of his at the time, Thomas Edison, who was able to take the ideas of others and construct the first practical machines. Edison was all business. Tesla was a noble visionary – and it cost him dearly.

Dies Penniless

Because of his less-than-proficient abilities at business, Tesla died essentially penniless on January 7th, 1943 at the age of 87. By all rights – he should have been a billionaire. That’s the backstory.

Let’s Start With the Tweet

I started receiving a lot of emails and web traffic several weeks after the article was posted.  It seemed odd since it’d been out for a couple of weeks. One comment said, “Oreilly Tweeted your article.”

HOLY @ CRAP!

I ran to the window to see if O’Reilly’s annoying TV producer was going to sneak up and shove a camera and microphone in my face. I was afraid they were going to say “You said you’re a writer – isn’t that over the top? Overstating it? You a quack?” It was a stressful moment. But when I looked out,  there was no one there. Then I remembered – Bill O’Reilly wasn’t even on Fox News on Sunday. So I re-read the email, it said “@timoreilly tweeted your article.”

Clueless

I was clueless until I vaguely remembered I’d seen a fellow named Tim O’Reilly speak once at an E-Content Magazine conference. I looked it up. Sure enough, same guy. He’s the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, which according to the website, “spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, research, and conferences.” Tim O’Reilly is also credited with coining the term “Web 2.0.”

The Fascinating Part

So I e-moseyed over to his place on Twitter  (http://www.twitter.com/timoreilly)  and there was a nice little Tweet-blurb from him.

O’Reilly had 18,429 followers (at that time ) on Twitter (he must have the patience of a Saint). So, that made sense, why the traffic to the article increased so much.

IF YOU HAVE THIN SKIN, DON’T COME IN

But as I scrolled up through the tweets on his site, I noticed a few of his followers called the article “over the top,” “out there,” “quackery,” and O’Reilly agreed to some degree. Then the final message I saw from one of his readers called it “a clever deceit.” That did it for me.

NEVER IN MY LIFE …

… have I been called clever. It called for immediate intervention and response.

Anyone that has published anything online knows that you take the good with the bad. If you have thin skin, you’ll quickly get eviscerated, flayed, slung down (in straddle position) a 200-foot razor blade slide – into a pool of rubbing alcohol. That nicety aside, one of the beauties of social network sites like Twitter is, if you’re dealing with knowledgeable and professional people that truly want to learn, to get the facts, you can go directly to the source, correct any mistakes or publicly declare your obvious infallibility  – and do it near the speed of light.

TWITTER ON TESLA – 4 QUESTIONS

So I messaged @timoreilly and asked him to clarify any questions or objections to the article. He responded quickly – like in a couple of minutes, with a total of four questions. Not being an internationally recognized expert on Tesla like author Marc Seifer, I contacted him. Marc graciously and quickly responded. Below are questions “Tweeted” from Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) and answers from Marc Seifer.

A Point of Respect First

I do want to point out, before the Q & A, that I have a great respect for all the people I’ve interviewed and written with. It’s always fun. I try to learn from their experiences and share that information. I don’t vigorously attack each point they make. They’re the experts, not me. When I wrote a couple articles with Al Ries, I didn’t question his expertise about PR or “positioning;” or Steven Pressfield, when he told me he structured “The Legend of Bagger Vance” after the Bhagavad-Gita; or Dr. David Abshire, President of The Center for the Study of the Presidency, about  his inner White House office dealings with President Ronald Reagan over the Iran Contra affair; or Robert McKee, the screenwriting guru about his knowledge of STORY (I mean he wrote the book);  or Dr. Paul Pearsall, a licensed clinical neuropsychologist and an international bestselling author on how he thought the act and concept of “synchronicity” helped him understand and survive his “terminal” disease (which he  did – three times). I could go on and on. But now, with sites like Twitter, a whole new panorama of possibilities has opened up.  If I make a mistake, omit something, or don’t communicate something properly, I’m immediately alerted (some would say “called out” or “Punk’d”). It makes me better. It makes idea and information sharing better, and it can make you better – if you tap into it.

QUESTIONS and  ANSWERS from the TWITTERVERSE

These questions are directly from Twitter, so they are limited to 140 characters. Clear. Concise. It’s a beautiful thing.

Steve: Let me start with the speed of light stuff at the end of the original article, before Marc answers. That reference was actually good. It meant Tim had read the LONG article through to the end. Problem was the speed of light stuff he mentions was a prologue to the next story I’m doing with Marc. I guess you could call it a teaser. I haven’t finished it yet. Nonetheless, Marc answers the question below, although the complete explanation will be in an upcoming article.

Marc Seifer: The speed of light stuff? As George Gamow points out in his book, “Thirty Years That Shook Physics,”

and I point out in my book “Transcending the Speed of Light: Consciousness, Quantum Physics and the Fifth Dimension,” electrons spin at speeds in excess of the speed of light. I explain it more in-depth in my book, but here’s a brief explanation. Gamow discusses the case of  Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck in his book. They measured the ortho-rotational speed of the electron and found that it was spinning at 1.37 times the speed of light (Sommerfeld’s number). Gamow says outright that this violated nothing in quantum physics.

What it did violate was Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Paul Dirac, a British theoretical physicist, wanted to reconcile this dilemma so as to combine relativity with quantum physics, so he ascribed the imaginary number “i” to the spinning electron (the square root of negative one) and this got around the problem of violating relativity and won him a Nobel Prize in the process.

I’ve got a lot more on that, the ramifications, which involve resurrecting ether theory and a new view of what gravity is, which we’ll cover in the next article. Some of it involves CERN and the so-called Higgs Boson (God particle), which is not what they think it is because physicists have forgotten that electrons spin at 1.37c. Why have they forgotten that? Because they are so mesmerized by Einstein’s theory of relativity. In other words, there is nothing in quantum physics that places “c” as the upper limit for velocity in certain instances. It suggests that elementary particles interface dimensions, our so-called “physical” dimension with a primordial “etheric” one. The bottom line is, take this fact at its face value.

Electrons spin at speeds in excess of the speed of light.

Steve: What about the differences between Einstein and Tesla on this issue?

Marc: Einstein used the Michelson-Morley experiment assumption that the substance called “ether” did not exist, or if it did, could not be detected, and because of that the speed of light would always be constant. Nothing could travel faster than the speed of light.

“If Michelson-Morley is wrong, then relativity is wrong.” – Albert Einstein

Yet Einstein later lectured on the ether at Leiden University where Lorentz had taught. Einstein sent Lorentz a letter agreeing that the ether did indeed exist. However, throughout the 20th century the generally accepted premise is that there is no ether in outer space even though everyone knows that there must be some medium for light to be transmitted in. The particle theory in a sense did away with the need for an all pervasive medium because light could travel like bullets.

Tesla disagreed and said of course the ether existed and the whole idea that space was curved around planets and stars was a nutty idea. How could nothing (space) be curved? After some digging, I uncovered Tesla’s theory of gravity which is essentially that the all pervasive ether is absorbed by planets and that’s what gravity is.

From that I extrapolated and came to the conclusion (after investigating other ether theories in line, all  listed in the book) that all elementary particles are constantly absorbing ether so that they can maintain their spin (electrons, protons). I also propose that photons have mass which pairs with Einstein’s statement that photons have energy because energy and mass are equivalent (E-MC2).

So … Einstein saw a relationship between gravity and acceleration, that’s what a G-force is, the faster you go, the more you weigh. What I’m suggesting is that the reason there is a G-force is because the faster you go, the more ether is absorbed. So, we, planets, stars, everything, are constantly absorbing ether all the time. But planets absorb a lot more ether than people. It’s a constant influx of energy which is transmitted into the electromagnetic energy, seen as the north and south poles on the earth and em fields around all atoms, molecules.

When you jump up, the reason you fall to the ground is because you are in the way of this influx. That’s what gravity is.

The problem Einstein had was that if he accepted this kind of ether theory, he would have had to reject relativity (because he said if the ether can be detected, then his theory was wrong). Well, the ether is easily detected. If you are in a car and stop short, the G-force you experience is the influx of more ether.

Question Two:

Marc Seifer: Concerning free energy, you (@timoreilly) asked the key question. It’s not easy to answer.

In 1901, Tesla wanted to transmit electrical power from station to station by means of wireless and then distribute it in a variety of ways. His big mistake was putting the tower on Long Island. He should have put it at Niagara Falls, near the power source. But he didn’t want to live so far from the Waldorf and the high life in NYC. His plan involved creating a receiving tower in England, or anyplace else on the planet restricted to nodal points from the source tower.

Tesla had constructed a small planet earth and figured out where each receiving tower could be placed. Then he could distribute electricity by conventional means, that is, by wires, and also by wireless, particularly for cell phones. He’s the inventor of the ability to create an unlimited number of wireless channels (he multiplied/combined frequencies). Marconi was only sending Morse code. Tesla frequencies are the basis for radio and TV transmission. They are continuous waves.

Later Tesla talked of “free energy.” The question is whether or not he tapped into the etheric field that gives rise to the spinning electrons.

The technology of the times (early 1900’s) was such that it would have been unlikely for him to know how many wireless phone calls would be made and in that sense, the energy was free. But he knew that he would make the money in a different way, such as in the sale of equipment. Also, we never paid for radio or TV, yet RCA, NBC, CBS, etc. made enormous amounts of money.

It was a different model for a revenue stream and J.P. Morgan couldn’t understand that.

Question Three & Four

@Timoreilly: Overstated “he invented particle beam weapons,” Also aircraft never built. Like saying Leonardo invented airplane.

Marc: The particle beam weapon was actually based on the principle of the pop gun – a toy gun Tesla used as a child to take down crows. It uses a repulsive force to pop out the cork. Tesla thought about how to transmit a ray with a destructive force. The problem he realized was that the ray spread out.

Tesla Thinking

Now this is complicated because Tesla also is probably the inventor (in the early 1890’s) of the ruby laser. He talks about a pencil-thin line of light created when he bombarded a ruby in his globe. That’s how a laser works. One way or another, he did not totally realize the importance of the pencil thin line of light. However about 1918, he was bouncing beams off the moon, perhaps to measure the distance to the earth, so he may have still been using some type of laser-like apparatus. I learned this from Czito’s daughter-in-law who I interviewed in Washington. D.C. circa 1984. Czito was Tesla’s assistant and trusted friend.

Tesla realized that a “ray gun” would not work, so he gave it a bit more thought and realized that if he could shoot single pellets, they would never disperse, thus the particle-beam weapon. The way the gun worked (and it was meant to be the size of a Wardenclyffe tower) was to create a belt of charged ions of say a negative charge. As these ran around a circle, they would pass by the cannon. And at that point, small pellets of tungsten electrified with the same charge as the belt would be placed in the path of this ion belt. When the particle hit the belt, it would be repelled with terrific force out the length of the cannon.

Illustration by Paul Frank from Science and Invention Magazine, 1922

Tesla’s idea was to use this “star wars” weapon to take down incoming planes. Since the weapon was so effective, it was Tesla’s hope that if all countries had such a weapon war would be made obsolete. It would make no sense to invade a country because the border would now be impregnable.

Did he ever build one? My guess is that he built small prototypes, probably in the 1920’s and 30’s. He had a patent application for it that was hidden for 50 years until Andrija Puharich unveiled the paper at the 1984 Colorado Springs Tesla conference that I also happened to be speaking at.

Last Question:

Marc: Concerning aircraft, I don’t think Tesla ever built his flivver plane that took off like a helicopter and then flipped into an airplane position. But the Osprey helicopter is a direct outcropping of that device.

Tesla’s “flying flivver,” U.S. patent number 6,555,114

However, I think he probably built a reactive jet dirigible, which was, essentially a flying wing, that evolved into such aircraft as the Stealth and a new shuttle they have yet to unveil.

Tesla on Twitter … Twitter on Tesla

So there you have it. Tesla has been on Twitter and Twitter has weighed in on Tesla.

The Power

The power of social sites like Twitter is the ability to connect and share knowledge, research, experiences and get immediate feedback from a bubbling primordial froth of a “collective conscious.” Sites like Twitter generate a real-time stream of ideas and thoughts that are immediately analyzed, dissected, commented upon and then spit out – for better or worse. It has no fealty to the staus quo. Rich, poor or famous, errors are quickly identified, exposed, corrected and clarified.

The Potential

Is to connect and meet people you probably, in the normal course of things, would never have met – to reach across geographies, demographics, time zones and social strata. You can go directly to the source of anything that interests you – if they’re hooked in to the network.

Authenticity

I have found in my limited time on Twitter, that the authentic voices of this “collective conscious,” social mental membrane or whatever you want to call it  – the people that really do have new and valuable information, ideas, and insights – are also the most responsive.

They actually do what they advocate.

They’re open to engagement. They’re not high-flautin intelligentsia with no idea as to what goes on in the real-world. People like Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), David Meerman Scott (@dmscott), and Tim O’Reilly (my complete list here), actually are very open and sharing of their time and knowledge.

Another “Speed of Light” Teaser?

This is an amazing topic – with multi-dimensional, supraluminal legs. While tracking down the facts for this story, I asked Dr. Michio Kaku about the Dirac equation and the speed of the spinning electron. For those of you that might not know, Dr. Kaku is a world famous theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and “popularizer of science.” He’s the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory), and “continues Einstein’s search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.” (What’s cooler than that? I think we use the same WordPress theme.)

Dr. Kaku is an absolutely mesmerizing storyteller.  Anyway, I asked him. Never thought he’d answer but … he did.

However, I’m not going to tell you what he answered in this article for two reasons. One, because he also pointed me to the math for the answer – which means I have to do more homework. And two, I want you to come back for the rest of the story.

End  – and a Couple of Thanks

Thanks to Marc Seifer for taking the time to answer the questions from the Twitterverse. We have another article coming up about his latest book, “Transcending the Speed of Light: Consciousness, Quantum Physics and the Fifth Dimension.” The article will also include updates on the Tesla film project, “The Lost Wizard” which envisions Tesla’s life story as a big screen biopic — “a cross between The Aviator and A Beautiful Mind,” with his creative partner Tim Eaton. Tim put the Rabbit in”Roger Rabbit,” the twist in “Twister,” sank the “Titanic” and oh … another film you might not have heard of, he was the visual effects editor in “Forrest Gump.” Tim Eaton’s latest work is on “A Christmas Carol” (2009) with Jim Carrey.

Nikola Tesla, “The Lost Wizard”

Courtesy of Marc Seifer & Tim Eaton

Second Thanks

A special thanks to Tim O’Reilly for the Tweet on “An Inconvenient Genius,” and his ready willingness to engage, respond and follow-up. Never met him. Probably never will. Have no idea how he stumbled upon the article, but that’s also an indication of the power of social networks sharing ideas and information. And REALLY – I have no idea how he does it. When I started writing this article he had 18, 429 followers. Now he has 19,376. 19,377, 19,388, 19389 … quick breath … 19,700 …

If you want to be at the forefront of tech-learning and tapping the knowledge of tech innovators, go to Tim O’Reilly’s web site (http://oreilly.com) or checkout their report “Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution: Communication, Connections, and Immediacy–140 Characters at a Time.”

END:

P.S. The speed of the original Tweet and the back and forth Q & A was really quick. However, I am really slow. So that’s why it took me so long to do this follow-up post.

P.S.S. I think I’m gonna “Tweet” this and get some more feedback.