The famous inventor Nikola Tesla did not support Einstein’s theory of relativity, did not believe in the possibility of atomic splitting, and doubted the existence of electrons.
Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 – January 7, 1943), renowned for his research on alternating current, was a Serbian-American mechanical engineer, physicist, and great inventor. His inventions are recognized to work better than expected, even 100 years after he wrote them down. However, it is difficult for anyone to be right 100% of the time.
Inventor Nikola Tesla. (Photo: Faces of The World/Flickr)
Tesla disagreed with the famous scientist Albert Einstein on the theory of relativity and described this theory as “a beggar dressed in purple that the ignorant consider a king.”
“I believe that space cannot be curved; the simple reason is that it cannot have properties. This is similar to saying that God has properties. In essence, God does not have any; only characteristics created by humans exist. We can only mention properties when talking about matter filling space,” Tesla told the New York Herald Tribune in 1932.
“To say that space becomes curved when large objects are present is equivalent to claiming that something can affect the void. Personally, I refuse to endorse such a viewpoint,” he shared.
However, some telescope observations suggest that galaxies and other large objects in space can bend spacetime, with objects in the background sometimes being magnified due to the phenomenon of “gravitational lensing.”
Tesla did not believe in electrons. This may sound strange considering he studied electricity (the flow of electrons through a conductor). Tesla argued that atoms are the smallest building blocks of the universe and posited that if electrons existed, they would only exist in a perfect vacuum.
However, physicist Joseph John Thomson discovered electrons in the early 20th century and measured their properties and effects. Without electrons, technologies such as television could not exist.
Tesla also believed that atoms could not be split. He disagreed with the theory that atoms are made up of smaller subatomic particles. “The idea of atomic energy is an illusion, but it has a mental influence so strong that even after I have lectured against it for 25 years, some people still believe it can become a reality,” Tesla stated in the New York Times in 1931.
Tesla mentioned that he experimented with atomic disintegration using a vacuum tube, operating it at levels of 4,000,000 – 18,000,000 volts. “But regarding atomic energy, my experimental observations show that the disintegration process does not release energy as predicted by current theories,” he added.
In 1932, British physicist John Cockcroft and Irish physicist Ernest Walton first succeeded in splitting an atom. Nuclear energy can be harnessed to generate electricity, but it must first be released from the atom. In the process of nuclear fission, atoms are split to release that energy. Currently, scientists are developing a large-scale fusion project named ITER aimed at producing electricity in the future.
