Re:Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time
by Hexstream on Monday February 11, 2008 @01:16PM
(#113482)
"Tesla generates a powerful pulse of electricity, and drains it into the
ground. Because the ground is conductive, it doesn't stop. Rather, it
spreads out like a radio wave, traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles
per second."
And all this time I thought only light travelled at the speed of light :/
While I read that article, I was thinking, what if we found a way to 1. direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably and 2. managed to represent bits accurately within that current? Free international communication, without networks of cables ;P
Re:Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time
by kirubakaran on Monday February 11, 2008 @01:31PM
(#113493)
Radio wave is electromagnetic wave (aka 'light' in a range of frequency). But "speed of light" in non-vacuum is lower.
"direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably"
Earth is not homogenous. I wonder if pointing a low frequency laser into the ground will accomplish anything. It most likely will be refracted in an unpredictable inconsistent way.
Re:Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time
by Hexstream on Monday February 11, 2008 @10:07PM
(#113780)
Well, what if we transmit known data in a strong signal from one end to the other and then compare what was received to what was sent... (insert big hand waving) if we replicate those steps x times, we might be able to map the "interference structure" of the Earth and compensate for that somehow...
Re:Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time
by Hexstream on Tuesday February 12, 2008 @02:26AM
(#113868)
We could recalculate the "interference infrastructure" every couple seconds... Remember that we don't need 100% accuracy also; TCP/IP layers reliability on top of unreliability.
Re:Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time
by mhartl on Tuesday February 12, 2008 @12:10AM
(#113819)
Check out the movie "The Prestige" (http://imdb.com/title/tt0482571/), which (among other things) features David Bowie as Tesla during his time in Colorado Springs.
And all this time I thought only light travelled at the speed of light :/
While I read that article, I was thinking, what if we found a way to 1. direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably and 2. managed to represent bits accurately within that current? Free international communication, without networks of cables ;P
"direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably" Earth is not homogenous. I wonder if pointing a low frequency laser into the ground will accomplish anything. It most likely will be refracted in an unpredictable inconsistent way.
This is admittedly almost impossibly complicated.