How the Physics of Electromagnetism can Generate Electricity

nyone who has experimented with tuning forks is familiar with the transference of vibration between an active tuning fork to something that is tuned to the same frequency. It turns out that a similar phenomenon exists for electromagnetism. Tesla was familiar with this, as was Einstein who wrote on it in his Nobel prize winning paper on the photoelectric effect. This understanding led to the development of things like the wireless transmission of power, the remote control, photovoltaic devices, quantum physics and many other things. With this understanding, we arrived at a working theory for photosynthesis. So good is our understanding that a recent invention for low cost solar cells is based directly on photosynthesis. But we are going to look at something else that is based on all of the early theory to examine the possibility to tap power directly from the cosmos by using nothing more than a device that is tuned to resonance with a specific and active part of the electromagnetic spectrum to produce usable amounts of power without polluting anything. In many ways, this is already being done.

The basis of this possibility is founded on the humble crystal radio that used to be a simple child's toy that has gone on to become the focus of a lot of people who developed sophisticate crystal radio sets as a hobby. What is proposed is not to get free radio form analog signals that are propagated around us in profusion, but to tap into the abundant energy at various frequencies bathing the earth from deep space. We take as our jumping point, the simple crystal radio design and convert it to a power accumulator and generator that anyone can build with off the shelf technology.

To begin from the, proven, the established and known; a crystal radio receives programs broadcast from radio stations. Radio stations convert sound into radio waves, part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and send out the waves in every direction at the speed of light. Radio waves travel across and through the crystal radio antenna all the times, causing a process similar to the photoelectric effect. Radio waves interacting with the antenna, cause radio wave generated electricity flow-vibrate between the antenna wire and the ground wire. This electricity is captured and connected to the crystal radio between the antenna and ground wire. The crystal radio itself is connected to and uses a tuner to tune the electricity to receive just one station that itself outputs signals at a fixed frequency. The tuner can be as simple as an adjustable one-slider tuning coil, similar in design to a tunable Tesla coil that resonates with the antenna because the antenna also acts like a capacitor. Contained in the crystal radio itself is a crystal detector that is used to convert this radio wave electricity back to sound electricity. The detector can be made from a special rock of galena in a holder. To this is connected a set of earphones to convert the “sound” electricity to sound you can hear in the earphones. The “sound” electricity is actually a fixed frequency of electrical impulse that is modulated to emulate sound vibrations and it is this variation in electrical modulation that actually causes the magnets in the earphones to vibrate to produce sound that we can hear.

Let's put aside the sound reproduction for a moment and concentrate on gathering power. We know that we can hear the sound because there is an energy input. Recall, primitive crystal radios have no battery, being completely dependent on the energy output of its source. We can amplify the input a number of ways. One: parallel connect more than one receiving antenna. Two: design an antenna that can capture a wide part of the electromagnetic spectrum to gather more energy. Three: combine both methods to boost energy accumulation further. We can store this energy for later use or just use the power produced directly. However, since we are not collecting a collimated narrow band of a single frequency, there are some problems. We either have to weed it out to very specific frequencies such as in the photoelectric effect or a radio tuner, or we have to design something that will accept all frequencies and store them as they can't be used all at once. There are ways to do both. The single frequency method has already been described in the literature.

To gather a broad band of frequencies, you are going to need an antenna that combines all of theses frequencies and fortunately, we have just such a device. This antenna combines the length of multiple antennas in a single piece of hardware. That hardware is designed incorporating a fractal design and such devices are used on cell phones. These antennas are compact and versatile allowing everything from talking, texting to broad band wireless internet surfing. So we know that fractal antennas gather all the frequencies all then time. What we get is what we chose to get with an included tuner in the cell phone. Now cell phones are passive receivers and not accumulators as proven by the fact that they require a battery to run them to convert incoming signals into something we can understand. What our purpose here is to create something that has both the capability of the cell phone to receive signals combined with the power generation in the crystal radio as an accumulator.

The key to our success lies in the fractal antenna and we can couple many in a series-parallel design of an electrical accumulating circuit. As incoming electromagnetic radiation is random in frequency and orientation, we will have to incorporate diode screening to select those parts of the frequencies that will allow us to create a dipole to build voltage and current in the method described as a half wave rectifier. We can build two circuits from the same antenna to capture both orientations of the incoming frequencies. We can orient antennas in all directions to gather the maximum input from space. The diode on the alternate circuit must be oriented in the opposite direction and coupled correctly into the circuit to charge the battery. The battery will have to have a blocking diode to stop the electrical potential leaking back to the antenna and back into space. The battery can then be wired to run any device that runs of batteries and also coupled with and inverter to run household appliances on 50 or 60 hertz. It is a simple matter to ad the filters to generate the specific voltages and currents for the multiplicity of devices that we have today.

This method of taping into power from ambient frequencies that come to us at all times from space and is free for the tapping is perhaps the greenest way that we can fulfil all of our electrical needs. It is our challenge to create these power sources to replace all those dangerous technologies that currently are in use. Eventually we will have to as other sources will dry up. Politics and economics notwithstanding cannot block the use of such devices forever.

References:

U.S. Patent 1,748,435, "Crystal radio apparatus", 1930. H. Adam

U.S. Patent 1,825,070, "Radio receiving set", 1931. W. J. Kayser.

U.S. Patent 2,805,332, "Subminiature portable crystal radio", 1957. Keith L. Bell.

http://io9.com/5127125/the-greatest-inventions-nikola-tesla-never-created

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Physics-Nikola-Tesla-Inventions-Resonance.htm

US Patent number for Tesla Wireless Systems. Radio telegraphy, Radio mechanics, Methods of tuning and selection, Detectors, etc.:
568,178; 593,138; 613,809; 645,576; 649,621; 655,838; 685,012; 685,953; 685,954; 685,955;
685,956; 685,957; 685,958; 723,188; 725,605; 787,412; 1,119,732.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect

http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay-photoelectric.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-fractal-antenna-for-HDTV-DTV-plus-/