Nicola Tesla Channels Galileo Galilei
I just came across a quote by Nicola Tesla in a post entitled Buddy James: The Sounds of Light by Robe Warrior at the electrogenesis substack.
I consider this extremely important. Light cannot be anything else but a longitudinal disturbance in the aether, involving alternate compressions and rarefactions. In other words, light can be nothing else than a sound wave in the aether.1
Then it struck me that I had just written about compression and rarefaction in my previous post, Galileo Galilei Supports Atomism, Part II:
The intuition of Galileo was of a fluid, with infinitely fine particles, where the infinitely fine voids allowed for rarefaction and compression.
Here is Galileo in the Two New Sciences:2
The compacting of infinitely many unquantifiable parts without interpenetration of quantified parts, and the previously explained expansion of infinitely many indivisibles with the interposition of indivisible voids, I believe to be the most that can be said to explain the condensation and rarefaction of bodies without the necessity of introducing interpenetration of bodies and [appealing to] quantified void spaces. If anything in it pleases you, make capital of that; if not, ignore this as idle, and my reasoning along with it, and go search for some other explanation that will bring you more peace of mind. I repeat only this: we are among infinites and indivisibles. [p.57]
I find it fascinating that Tesla in 1934 was using very similar words to what [condensazione e rarefazzione in the original Italian3] to what Galileo was using in 1638, almost three centuries earlier! For Tesla, Galileo’s atoms were the particles making up the aether.
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Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). An Inventor's Seasoned Ideas. The New York Times, April 8th, 1934. https://www.nytimes.com/1934/04/08/archives/an-inventors-seasoned-ideas-nikola-tesla-pointing-to-grevious.html
Galileo Galilei. Two New Sciences, Including Centers of Gravity & Force of Percussion. Translated by Stillman Drake. University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.
Galileo Galilei. Le Opere. Vol VIII: Firenze: Tipografia de G. Barbera, 1898. p.96.
When you go out into the uncharted wastes of scientific history, you occasionally find familiar footprints. I think Tesla, like Velikovsky, found himself on a quest into the distant past to look for where we lost the path.
Thankyou for the mention John, I'm a great fan of your work!