Nikola Tesla. The beginnings of modern physics.Physicists are today revealing the very building blocks of the universe; an unimaginable task without modern particle accelerators. Right at the start of the 20th century, Nikola Tesla connected a nearly completely evacuated sphere to a high amplitude, high frequency alternating current so that the remaining air molecules became electrically charged and span around inside the sphere. Tesla had developed the first prototype of a particle accelerator, a fact which remained largely unnoticed by the general public. But even physicist Ernest O. Lawrence could not have set his world-famous cyclotron in operation without the energy of the 5 million volt Tesla coil. In any case, modern physics would not have been possible without Tesla. |