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Funding Unsuccessful
This project reached the deadline without achieving its funding goal on December 10.
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Access to the monthly project construction updates and our thanks for helping to make this project a reality.
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Everything included above, plus a beautiful high resolution 8x10 action shot of the Lightning Foundry twin prototypes in operation.
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Everything included above, plus two general admission tickets to a Lightning Foundry public performance. This special Kickstarter offering is about half of the retail ticket price.
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Everything included above, plus a Kickstarter exclusive: For the first time on DVD -- Electrum, by Alberta Chu. A documentary on the construction and installation of the largest Tesla Coil in the world. You’ll also get a commemorative Lightning Foundry 12” etched stainless-steel ruler, featuring dual units. [32nds and mm.] Please read the 'Important Notes on Rewards' for shipping details.
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Everything included above, plus two special ‘Major Lightning Foundry Backer’ invitations to a Lightning Foundry public performance. The two Major LF Backer invites will have preferred seating and access to the strike zone after the performance, so come say hello and visit the machinery. The public performances will feature first-ever demonstrations of multi-hundred foot arc discharges and their effects on objects. Please read the 'Important Notes on Rewards' for shipping details.
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Everything included above plus a beautiful high energy electrical discharge, trapped in a 2" solid acrylic block. [Please see the photo to the left] These figurines are made by using a multi-megavolt particle accelerator to trap high speed electrons in an acrylic block, then explosively releasing the charge with a grounded spike. The fractal discharge patterns continue all the way down to the molecular level. Please read the 'Important Notes on Rewards' for shipping details.
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The ‘Enthusiast Pack.’ Everything included above, plus an invite to transform an item of your choice with a multi-megawatt electrical discharge. Visit our San Francisco lab and personally fire our ½-ton high-energy capacitor bank into your item to help it achieve a high state of division. Optionally, you can send the item to us and we’ll energize it for you, plus provide you with a slow-motion video. Please add the appropriate return postage to the pledge for this option and see the 'Important Notes on Rewards' for shipping details.
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The ‘Experimenter Pack.’ Everything included in the Enthusiast Pack, plus three exclusive offerings: *****A) A lifetime ‘Principal Lightning Foundry Backer’ membership, providing free admission(+1) to all Lightning Foundry public performances, access to the strike zone after performances, plus invites to special testing events. Please read the 'Important Notes on Rewards' for shipping details. *****B) A ‘Million Volt Ride’ on our large experimental coil in San Francisco CA. Personally throw 25ft electric arcs at any item you wish to bring along, and live to tell about it. Jamie Hyneman climbed this coil with his custom salt-water cannon and fired a plasma discharge at the 'bad guy' in the water-jet stun-gun episode of Mythbusters. *****C) An invitation to place an item of your choice inside the strike zone of the completed, full-scale Lightning Foundry. This could be either a machine that intentionally uses the ambient fields for power [you’ll receive a special award if you can outrun our ‘Tesla Roadster’, pictured at left] or it could be an item that receives the electrical energy in an uncontrolled fashion, and is inevitably consumed.
Project By
Connected as Lightning On Demand (36 friends)
I'm an electrical engineer and enthusiast. I've worked around particle accelerators and high-voltage machines for most of my life.
I founded LOD in the early 1990's to explore uses for high-energy and pulsed-power devices outside of the traditional national laboratory scenario.
@Zoran I agree completely. We're at a point where revolutionary ideas won't be developed by the biggest, but the fastest... It's a great time to be quick, light and efficient.
OK guys next time I will be with more money in but people should understand that big ideas are still possible outside of huge corporations
@Gavin Ok! However on the first run, be prepared for flames, cursing, repair work and possibly some wild arcs.
@am Thanks! By the way, some interesting calcs on dark matter recently by a Italian mathematician: http://bit.ly/v0jkRm
It might not 'matter' at all... can it be?
Greg, when you get this off the ground I pledge to be there for the first run, whatever it takes. This reminds me of when I was converted to pursue science and technology at an early age at the Deutsches Museum. Best of luck and never give up in the name of science, education and entertainment. On a side note I'll bet you will have Airbus and Boeing and the rest queueing up for full scale lightning tests!
Good Luck Greg, all that ether and no ten storied Tesla coil to show, omigosh!
Have been wondering about the dark adjacent to 600 light year distant planets, and the dark next to 1 million light year distant black holes, for a while....it's seems like it's fairly constant, much quicker than light speed....if only Carl
Sagan was around to catch the news from the Bern Switz lads......oh well....
@Marnix, Hey thanks! Say hello to RoboDock for me!
Hey Greg, what an awesome project! I hope you reach the funding goal, I'd really like to see this happen. Greetings from Amsterdam.
@Greg, exactly, if we drive the balloon and the global Schumann Resonance at 7.83 Hz and 1 MW, we would excite the fundamental global Schumann Resonance at a 1 MW level. Injecting this potential into the global waveguide at a Q of 10 could have some interesting effects. Doing so on the Tropic of Cancer at midnight during the winter solstice could have some _really_ interesting effects, as the day/night discrepancy is fully symmetrized at those times and locations, resulting in a power focusing at the site and the antipode, and possibly increasing the Q markedly. Perhaps the lightning bolt heard round the world?
Is there any way on earth that hydrogen could be used in such a balloon? How could it possibly be designed to not blow up?
My father was a high energy physicist who specifically worked in the EOS/ESD field. He played with lightning my whole life. Thank you so much for this. He would have loved the hell out of this.
@brian, Hey thanks. Exploring the viability of the Schumann waveguide as a means of transferring energy over long distances is intriguing. On one hand, it has a fairly low Q, but on the other hand the ionosphere is amazingly conductive [in its strong direction.]
One key question is whether a large, elevated, conductive balloon can couple strongly enough to the ionosphere. The problem is non-intuitive and turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to model in multi-physics tools such as COMSOL.
Perhaps the most direct approach is to try. The proposed experiment for the Lightning Foundry would involve operating both towers in phase, driving an elevated balloon. Unlike a lightning strike, the towers can drive the ionosphere at any advantageous frequency, and continuously at the megawatt level. The return path is simply the Earth. This was one of Tesla's goals, although interestingly he did not yet know about the ionosphere. Because of the simulation complexity it's difficult to predict what will happen. Once the towers are built however, it's a simple experiment to carry out. -Greg
Totally awesome, Greg, this is a great project. There's about 100 GW of lightning power continuously flying around in the waveguide formed between the earth and the ionosphere. The global Q is about 10, so the power circles the earth up to 10 times in spherical Lengendre oscillations before dying out with a fundamental frequency of about 7.83 Hz, called the fundamental Schumann Resonance . If you trigger your lightning with this device, you may be able to detect the spherical (global) waveguide echo 127 ms later when the lightning pulse has circled the Earth one time. Most of that energy focuses right back where it started after circling the earth once. An even stronger signal should be detectable at the antipodes of your experiment, so locate your experiment carefully so that the antipodes are not in the middle of the Indian Ocean and try to measure the lightning signal at the antipodes as well!
Awesome project. This has to be built!
First! Good looking video.