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He was certain that the "barrier" had something to do with the noisy
pipes, but he was never again able to reproduce the effect.
I'm repeating this story from memory, so some of the details might be
wrong.
A couple of years ago I heard a report of a similar occurrence, but this
time involving electrostatics. An engineer was called in to a 3M factory
to solve a static-buildup problem in a wide web of moving plastic, and
part of the problem involved an 'invisible wall effect' which
appeared under the wide strip of plastic which was moving overhead.
In thinking about this late at night, a possible explanation suddenly
appeared to me: superpose a string of harmonic standing waves.
An acoustic resonator such as an organ pipe contains a type of sinusoidal
standing wave. Resonators also support a number of harmonics, and many
standing waves of shorter wavelength will "fit" in a single organ pipe.
If we combine the "organ pipe" physics with the "delta function" idea,
something very weird results. If the harmonically related acoustic
standing waves in the organ pipe are chosen so as to produce a
pressure-maximum at the mouth of the pipe, that pressure-maximum will be
very small in thickness, like a membrane across the end of the pipe. If
the audio amplitude is high in intensity, then the absolute pressure in
that thin membrane might become so high that the waveform excursion
approaches both two atmospheres and vacuum. It would be a sort of "shock
wave", standing wave and it would act to reflect the sound back into the
organ pipe as if it was an invisible wall. When viewed at an angle, it
would appear silver because of internal reflection during the near-vacuum
portion of the pressure excursions. It might even resist penetration by
solid objects. Just by transmitting the proper sound into the organ pipe,
perhaps we would see the system "self organize" and produce the thin
"pressure membrane" across the mouth of the pipe. Or perhaps we need some
sort of nonlinear trigger in order to create the "wall".
Shades of Star Trek! "Modulate the shield harmonics henson, their matter
annihilation beams are getting through!"
;)
No, this has not been tested. It is pure speculation. Well, maybe
"impure" speculation, because there is an empirical component contributed
by the anecdotes about strange phenomena.
The harmonics for such an effect would be 1,3,5,7,9, etc. However, if an
emitter was in the center of the organ pipe, the "phenomenon: might occur
at the location of the emitter, and sound would not get out. To prevent
this, we could guarantee that the pressure wave at the emitter would be
very low by generating two sets of harmonics, where one is 180deg out of
phase with the other. Frequencies would go like this: +1, -3, +5, -7, +9,
etc. At the emitter the acoustic impedance would be very low (all wind,
little pressure), while at the mouth of the pipe it would be very high,
and nonlinear effects might arise (it might become a sort of vibratory
acoustic soliton.) A simple way to do this would be to use a double-ended
transducer, like a loudspeaker cone, which was stretched across the center
of the tube.
I think to myself, "this is crazy, because the standing waves will simply
form a travelling pulse." Yes, maybe. Therefor, here's another way to
visualize the entire situation. Place an acoustic transducer membrane
across the center of a long tube with plugged ends. (Perhaps use a small,
disk-shaped electrostatic loudspeaker.) Use it send out a narrow,
negative going pulse which travels down the tube (a positive pulse will
propagate out the "back" of the transducer simultaneously). The pulses
will reflect from the plugged ends. As the reflected pulses pass the
transducer again, we generate another pulse which propagates in the
opposite direction from before (so it moves with the reflected pulses, and
superimposes so as to reinforce them.) The pulses are now twice as large.
Keep going, and the bouncing pulses will grow and grow until nonlinear
phenomena will appear at the tube plugs where the pulses must superimpose
upon themselves during reflection. (They also superimpose when they pass
each other at the transducer, but then a positive pulse is passing a
negative pulse, so the pressure averages to zero, even though the velocity
of the gas is high) Then, when nonlinear disruption appears at the tube
plugs, remove the plugs, and the nonlinear disruption will form an
"invisible wall" which still reflects the pulses.
A photograph of this membrane-shaped nonlinear disruption possibly
exists. It is in the book "Supersonics", by R.W.Wood, 1939. In Fig 10 on
page 26, an air-jet ultrasonic whistle is creating a standing wave just
outside the mouth of the whistle's resonant cavity. It appears as a ring
with a reflective surface which hangs in space.
I haven't thought this through, but it seems as if the sound would mostly
cancel out between the emitter and the "invisible wall." The sound within
the "wall" itself would be intense, and the "wall" would store a
considerable amount of energy inside. Only a small amount of sound would
propagate between the "wall" and the transducer to keep the "wall" alight.
Another issue: the speed of sound in a tube is not constant for all
frequencies. Rather than pulses, we might need to generate a sort of
comb-spectrum which, as it flies away from the transducer, only assembles
itself into a narrow pulse as it collides with the tube plugs. This would
resemble an "antichirp" wave, but rather than having a swept frequency, it
would take the form of a superposed string of repeated "antichirps" which
repeatedly slam into the nonlinear region of the "invisible wall"
membrane.
This has connections with the realm of EM physics. Nikola Tesla
discovered that a long coil of wire behaves as a sort of "electromagnetic
organ pipe". If we create the same set of harmonics as above, but make
them propagate along a long Tesla coil, we would simply create a corona
discharge at the tip of the coil, just as Tesla coils are known to do.
However, what if we "modulate the field harmonics" a bit so that the
voltage maximum does NOT appear at the end of the coil, but instead
appears a few inches away? In that case the "delta function" shockwave
effect would produce a membrane-like hemispherical region where the EM
fields were extremely intense, but which were nearly zero elsewhere. As
the drive frequency was lowered, the hemispherical corona discharge would
slowly expand from the coil's terminal, and would inflate itself into the
region surrounding the terminal.
But this is impossible! The speed of light is independent of frequency!
But is it really? Is the phase velocity within a resonant cavity constant
across frequency? No, and narrow EM pulses turn into "chirps." This is
nearfield dynamics, and is different than "Hertzian wave" physics. My
intuition is telling me that this effect is nonlinear in such a way that
"membranes" can be created when a set of superposed waves in constant
harmonic and phase relation to each other will repeatedly assemble into a
narrow pulse which has a particular physical location. At first glance it
appears that a nitrogen gas environment is needed, and the pulses create a
membrane made of plasma which reflects the waves. But my intuition says
"no, there is an electromagnetic nonlinearity to the vacuum, and only EM
fields are needed, no ionized gas is required." If true... wow! Where is
this nonlinearity hidden within Maxwell's equations? I don't know. Maybe
within the infamous "tensor version", rather than the simplified version
created by Heaviside.
If the fields were strong enough, the membrane-like region might glow with
purple light... just like Tom Bearden says it does when the Russians use
stolen Tesla technology to create a "scalar force bubble." Hey, maybe the
infamous "Russian Woodpecker" was a Tesla-bubble generator. Maybe the
small modulation of the Woodpecker signal was not data, and not OTH radar,
but was actually a method to prevent jamming/disruption by
Tesla-technology countermeasures. Maybe the Woodpecker was left slowly
ticking over so the nonlinear bubble-effect would remain "alight", but
with the power level set so low that any intruding aircraft would pass
through unaffected. Step on the gas, and any aircraft would bounce off
(or incinerate?)
Are you very afraid yet? As Yoda said, "You Will Be."
When applied to audio, it appears that a delta-function resonance membrane
need not sit at the end of the organ pipe, but might be coaxed to hang in
space. If the frequency of all of the harmonics in the drive waveform was
smoothly lowered simultaneously, then the entire "bubble" would expand as
if it was being inflated. Hey! Decreasing the harmonics is actually just
sliding the comb-spectrum downwards in frequency, and then the lowest
harmonic falls off the end at zero freq., and the "bubble" has expanded by
one wavelength. Cool. The "bubble" can take any one of a number of
concentric locations separated by 0.5 wavelength. (When random intuitive
speculation makes this much sense, it's frightening!)
The acoustic membrane-effect might act like an invisible ceiling in any
bathroom which was excited by the noise of oscillating water pipes. The
higher harmonic energy would have to be strong in order to make the
"membrane" be thin. The high frequency part of water-cavitation noise is
known to be intense. The pulse waveform of the pipe-sounds would have to
resemble narrow spikes, and would have to be resonant with the vertical
mode of the room. (Ooo! "Pulse waveform!" All the Tesla-fanatics know
that pure sine waves are "Hertzian", and narrow pulses are "Tesla-nian".
Repeated pulses might create nonlinearities where sine-wave resonances
would not.) And finally, something nonlinear would be needed to trigger
the formation of the initial shock-bubble. If the acoustic energy already
trapped in the room was intense, maybe the extremely brief "snap" sound of
a static discharge could form the "wall".
Going back to EM again, I see that a complete sphere might be possible.
It doesn't look possible at first sight because a single dipole emitter
would create a pair of "Tesla domes" with a dead-band at the equator of
the bubble. However, multiple orthagonally-oriented emitters might be
able to create an entire set of "tesla domes" of various orientation.
Which means...
...that...
...ball lightning is explained! (I didn't know I was going to write that.
It just came out of my fingers.)
In order to trigger production of an electromagnetic soliton-membrane
sphere, we'd need to create a huge amount of short-wavelength radiation.
The standing waves which would be trapped inside a small sphere of
ball-lightning would be of microwave wavelength. This was actually Nikola
Tesla's recommendation which was followed by the Corum brothers in
producing artificial ball-lightning: they used a pair of
frequency-mismatched tesla coils which tended to produce discharges of
extremely short pulse widths and extreme power. (when a discharge united
the coils, the resonant frequency of the system as a whole was not 2F or
1/2F, and so the EM energy dumped instantly into the arc channel, sort of
like Quantum wavefunction collapse.) If a short enough electromagnetic
"whip crack" signal could be produced, then a "tesla bubble" might arise,
and the electromagnetic standing waves would remain trapped inside. Don't
touch the glowing spherical blob, because if it disrupts, the "flashbulb
effect" (EMP) might melt your tooth fillings and singe off your eyebrows,
as well as dumping energy into the remaining spherical plasma and
producing an immense acoustic "bang."
Even scarier thought: what if space is nonlinear for intense EM waves?
(It certainly is at the higher energies, where gamma ray EM waves can
trigger the production of electron/positron pairs directly from the
vacuum.) The above "shockwave bubble" resonant effects rely on the
nonlinear behavior of air. In the case of sound, the variation in
propagation velocity is the source of nonlinearity and the key to the
production of shock wave bubbles. In the case of EM, we must rely upon
the formation of a corona discharge which then reflects EM back to the
emitter. However, if there is any nonlinearity in the vacuum, then an EM
"shockwave bubble" could be produced even in a hard vacuum. Maybe a "ball
lightning" can exist even in a vacuum? And if THIS is true, then it
implies that atoms are perhaps nothing more than tail-chasing
electromagnetic waves which are reflecting from themselves and remaining
trapped in one location (and which, when disrupted, can trigger the
pair-creation of electrons and positive nucleii?) Are atoms a kind of
tiny "ball lightning?" Are they made from little else but light waves?
Is "ball lightning" a kind of naturally-occurring giant atomic
particle?!!!
There are stories of "ball lightning" passing through windows and walls,
and even being "sucked up" by metal wires, only to reappear at another
spot on the wire. If this stuff is nothing but an EM wave and a nonlinear
effect, then we might expect it to pass through any insulator as if it
was not there. It might even launch its waves down a conductor and the
re-assemble itself at the location of an impedance-mismatch.
If all of the above is true, then we can make "Star Trek Force Fields"
from either EM or sound. Now we just need some phasers to complete the
picture. Why not create some charged carbon clusters in a vacuum,
accelerate them
with some linac electrodes connected to a 10MV tesla coil (in oil), then
let the particle beam exit through a tiny pore in the side of the
accelerator tube? It would be just like any other particle beam, but
because the "particles" could be billions of times heavier than an atomic
nucleus, the beam power would be delivered as heat and mechanical
disruption, not as "radioactivity" or electrical shock. Build a 1000-watt
unit and use it like a razor blade. Only THIS razor blade lets us sculpt
titanium as easily as we can sculpt butter. Buy yourself a big block of
steel and whittle yourself a car engine.
Tesla claimed that he could prove the reality of his "death ray" by
producing an incandescent spot on the dark part of the moon which would be
visible by telescopes. Heh. This would only be possible if the
'Lunites'
weren't protecting their real-estate with electromagnetic Tesla-bubbles!
:)
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