Tesla and Superweapons.

There is a tradition dating back to cold war times of what may be called superweapons. These are weapons which usually have some mythological quality about them, either due to their extreme power, their use of secret futuristic technology or supernatural origins.In this thread I would like to focus on the superweapons which are more scientifically oriented, rather than the supernatural ones. How likely is it that they exist? Are they even scientifically possible?An important figure when it comes to discussing these weapons is Nikola Tesla( ). The father of Alternating Current, he has a mythos surrounding him of the mysterious/mad scientist and more importantly he has recently become a symbol for suppressed knowledge. It is the opinion of certain groups that information on the electromagnetic force has been kept from general knowledge and that Tesla had access to this.This leads on to the final aspect this thread should discuss. That there are scientific discoveries with important military or practical implications which have been withheld from the public.So basically:
Are there superweapons?
Are they plausible in the first place?
Is there secret scientific knowledge?
What is the truth in Tesla conspiracies?

I should be clearer about what exactly makes something a superweapon. A quick example would be, a rail gun is not a superweapon and Philadelphia experiment technology is. Basically a superweapon is something which if it did exist would indicate governments have technology way, way in advance of what the public know about it.An example of something which marks the boundary between superweapon and regular weapon would be the ion cannons or any space based "beam-weapon". This is conceivably within our scientific framework, but would be a huge financial drain to construct.I also should have been clearer about something else. As cavediver said, secret scientific knowledge is quite different to secret technology. And example of secret scientific knowledge would be claims that the government/other groups hid part of Maxwell's equations from the public. What we learn in textbooks is only three-quarters of what Maxwell really found.

In my opening post I describe what I'm talking about and I'm simply choosing to call them superweapons. Maybe I could use a different word, but the thing is there is no proper word for what I'm talking about. If you don't like "superweapon" mentally replace it with "megaweapon", "omgweapon" or "conspiracy weapon" or something. My previous reply to Taz should give some indication as to what I'm talking about. I don't think it matters what word I assign to it since there is no word.

No, not entirely. It's a close one in a certain sense. I mean nobody knew about it and all that, but most nuclear scientists at the time knew of the possibility of such a thing.Basically as cavediver said it's stuff built from ufo technology or secret science nobody has heard about, like teleporting naval ships. Apologies for being unclear. Unfortunatly there is no solid terminology in this area of conspiracy theories and it's not as easy to nail down as something like 9/11 conspiracies.

I'll play devil's advocate. My contention is that the work of James Clerk Maxwell was obviously censored at the end of the 20th century. The missing "scalar" part of electromagnetism is possibly being used by governments such as china and the united states as reserve weapons in case of an emergency. If others think this is not the case, then where did the scalar part of electromagnetism go and who now holds that knowledge?

Well since Tesla's technology is electromagnetic in origin, that faulty theory would have to be Quantum Electrodynamics. Can you explain:
(a) What is faulty about it?
(b) Why it seems to explain everything we've ever observed?
(c) Where is the electromagnetic phenomena it doesn't explain?

The quantum theory of the interaction of the electron and photon fields. The "contrarian" perspectives on QM that come up on this board have no particular relevance to the definition of the theory. Usually the debates on this board are about interpretational issues, which don't really affect Quantum Electrodynamics. There is a mainstream EM opinion, that is Quantum Electrodynamics. So I ask again:
(a) What is faulty about it?
(b) Why it seems to explain everything we've ever observed?
(c) Where is the electromagnetic phenomena it doesn't explain?

This is what you said: In other words, mainstream science doesn't agree with Tesla because our understanding of electromagnetism is founded on a faulty theory. It is your claim that the theory is faulty and Tesla is right. I'm asking you why it is faulty and where are the observations that support Tesla.
You are the one making the claim and I'm asking why the theory is faulty. Can you explain why it is faulty? Why would I have to provide evidence for a claim I never made?

Ah, Sidney Coleman. The man who made quantum field theory comprehensible.Percy you may like this:
http://claymath.msri.org/yangmillsexistence.mov
It's not exactly QM, but it is a good deal of modern physics, in what I believe is a fairly accesible talk.

Look let's make this simple. When you say rejection of Tesla is based on faulty theory, what theory are you talking about and what is faulty with it?

Now we are back to the topic. Since we are getting to the supposed science behind these weapons. By actually providing the name of the theory. Something beyond "the theoretical thingy that made people not believe Tesla". Well first of all, let's tackle scalar weapons. The theoretical basis for these things, we are told, is a scalar function which is apparently missing from standard electromagnetism. People like Bearden insist that this scalar function was removed from Maxwell's electromagnetism by Oliver Heaveside and it contains the secrets of Tesla's technology.
First of all, I think this is nonsense, since the classical electromagnetism of today is the exact same as that of Maxwell. Maxwell used quaternions and we use vector functions, but (if you know quaternions) it is easy to prove they are the exact same theory. Hence I cannot see any basis for these scalar weapons.Now over-the-horizon radar is related to Tesla's wireless claims and his ideas about projectile weapons. Tesla had this idea on how electromagnetism worked, his theory if you will and it allowed things like over-the-horizon radar, projectile weapons and wireless energy transmission. When Tesla presented his ideas, the one people focused on was over-the-horizon radar since it was related to what was being done at the time. The claim made by the mainstream at the time was that over-the-horizon radar was only possible according to standard theory if the earth possessed a radio-wave reflective layer in the upper atmosphere. The view at the time was that there was no way we'd be lucky enough to have such a layer and as such the technology was impossible. In Tesla's theory it didn't matter, electromagnetism could just be manipulated to curve over the horizon. Similarly it could be manipulated to make projectile weapons.What happened? Well it turned the Earth's atmosphere does have a radio reflective layer. There was nothing wrong with the theory at the time, there simply wasn't enough knowledge of the Earth's atmosphere. Tesla was correct by fluke and the actual over-the-horizon radar we have now is not based on his ideas. Hence if Tesla's electromagnetic theory is not actually responsible for one of its supposed successes, I can't see how it is reasonable to entertain the idea that it is being used to create secret weaponry.

I've certainly never heard this. From what I've read (biographies and the histories of electromagnetism), he famously thought that there wasn't an ionosphere and hence the fact that wireless worked lead him to doubt Maxwell's equations. Can I see a reference for this?

In case this seems off-topic, Tesla's use of wireless technology is often used as the basis of secret weapon claims. The idea is that since his theory gave us wireless, then his projectile weapons should work. My point is that the theory never worked, except once by fluke. Even in that case, the explanation using standard theory was already known. The first link says that Tesla utilised the ionosphere and the second says that he used short distance wireless. Neither demonstrate that he knew of or insisted that the ionosphere was there. For a long time he insisted it wasn't there and that Maxwell's equations were wrong. (Most biographies of Oliver Heaviside mention this).Not only that, but in his theory electrons didn't exist and we've since found that they do. He was a very intelligent man and had a great practical gift with electricity, but his aversion to theory led him to ignore Maxwell's equations and he fell behind the times. His theory can easily be shown to be false today, simply by observations of an electron. So I believe that it is very unlikely such a theory is secretly being used to develop weapons technology when it's trivially falsified everyday in almost any physics or chemistry lab.

I know one can use creeping waves, but they're not relevant for the time period.
With regards to your first point, I'm not sure what to say. I'm well aware of the fact that a person can talk about one way of doing something and at the same time be capable of thinking of other ways. I'd have to be pretty stupid to assume otherwise. I don't see what relevance that has though. Tesla said that over the horizon radar was possible due to effects unique to his theory, the same theory that he used as a basis for his projectile weapons. However that isn't how over the horizon radar works at all. Over-the-horizon radar works due to electromagnetism functioning as described by Maxwell's equations and the presence of a reflective layer in the atmosphere. Tesla's theory was wrong. So I don't think that theory and ideas developed from it, such as projectile weaponry, can be taken as plausible sources of secret military technology.Now maybe Tesla had other ideas, but if he never wrote them down in a complete way or made a functioning machine based on these ideas I don't think it matters. Yes, very. A "cross-section of energy from the vacuum"(?) isn't anything like a quantum field. However this isn't that related to this thread.