Tesla's Signals from Another Planet
Alone in his laboratory in Colorado, Nikola Tesla heard rhythmic clicks in his receiver, counting one, two, three, and became convinced someone was signalling.
What was reported
In 1899, the inventor Nikola Tesla built an experimental station in Colorado Springs to study electricity and wireless power. One night, listening to a sensitive receiver, he heard faint, regular signals: groups of clicks that seemed to count, one, two, three.
He could think of no natural cause, and in 1901 he wrote in a magazine that he felt he had been 'the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another', most likely from Mars.
Explanations offered
Others have suggested Tesla picked up natural radio waves from storms, or perhaps signals from Marconi's early radio experiments in Europe, which were happening at the time. A later theory is that he caught radio bursts produced as Jupiter's moon Io moves through Jupiter's magnetic field. No one knows for certain what he heard.
- When
- 1899
- Where
- Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
- Witnesses
- Nikola Tesla
- Status
- Probably natural radio
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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