The largest project of Nikola Tesla was an idea to build a planetary ring around the Earth like the one that Saturn has, but make it controlled. Now, some physicists and futurologists want to realize the true possibility of Tesla’s intention. Let us find out why Tesla needed such a ring and what similar projects exist today.
Read also: It’s True: Star ‘HD 140283’ Is Older Than The Universe
Tesla proposed to build a ring around the Earth at the equator. In shape, it would resemble the ring of Saturn, only it should be made not from dust but solid. Then, it was planned to lift this ring on space props into space and remove the selections. After that, the ring would hang in space and begin to rotate with the Earth.
In the future, it is necessary to build a braking system for the ring, and it will be able to travel at great speed.
The ring could become a convenient launching pad for spaceships. If, after a quick rotation, the ring brakes sharply, the ship will fly out into space at high speed. Given that the friction force in space is close to zero, we get a big acceleration for the rocket.
But Tesla never came up with an exact way how to brake the ring.
34 million years ago, the Earth could already have its own rings
The rings around the planets are not a permanent occurrence. For example, according to astrophysicists from the University of California (USA), Saturn’s ring appeared only 100 million years ago. Then, a meteorite or comet crashed into it.
Read also: UFO Expert Claimed To Have Contact With Aliens That Predicted End Of The World
The rings at Saturn are very thin by cosmic standards – their width is about one and a half kilometers. And they are rapidly losing weight. According to scientists, the rings of Saturn will completely disappear after 300 million years. Rings are also found in Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and some of their satellites. These rings are made up of particles of ice and dust.
Some scientists, – for example, NASA astronomer John O’Keefe, believe that the Earth also used to have rings. This happened 34 million years ago when the Earth passed through a cloud of particles and captured them with its gravity. And because of this, a global cooling took place on Earth at that time. However, for the Earth, unlike Saturn, it was difficult to keep the ring. Earth’s rings quickly collapsed under the influence of the moon and the solar wind, which is much stronger in our orbit than in Saturn. But the evidence that proves Earth had rings is not yet available.
In 1988, Soviet astronomers speculated that the Earth has rings. These are small particles of dust. The construction of rings around the Earth is one of the most extravagant projects of physicist genius Nikola Tesla.
