The 20th century was rich in events of a global nature, from world wars and revolutions to the conquest of space. It was a century of bold decisions, as well as crazy ideas, projects and experiments.
Death ray
The Death Ray is perhaps the most ambitious invention of Nikola Tesla. Tesla invented a charged particle beam emitter after studying the Van de Graaff generator. To implement his developments, Tesla needed money, but he did not want to sell the invention into the hands of one state, reasonably believing that this could forever change the balance of power on Earth.
The inventor sent proposals all over the world to design "super-weapons", suggesting to establish a balance of power between different countries and thus prevent the onset of World War II. The list of addressees included the governments of the United States, Canada, England, France, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. In the USSR, Tesla's discovery was seriously interested. In 1937, Tesla negotiated with Amtorg, which represented the interests of the USSR in the United States, and gave her some plans for a vacuum chamber for his death rays. Two years later, Tesla received a check from the USSR for $ 25,000. The Second World War confused the cards, and Tesla's tower was destroyed by the Americans themselves. It was believed that it could be used by the Nazis.
Hurricane managementThe idea of controlling the weather for military and peaceful purposes dates back to the 1940s. Tried to change the direction of tornadoes and hurricanes of the US Air Force and General Electric. On October 13, 1947, as part of the Cirrus project, about 80 kg of dry ice was dropped from an aircraft onto a hurricane moving from west to east and heading for the sea.
He turned towards the city of Savannah, Georgia and left 1,500 people homeless. Of course, the project was canceled, but no one wanted to give up the idea of weather control. From 1962 to 1983, the Americans worked on the storm fury project. Its nominal goal was to pacify the hurricane by sowing silver iodide. In fact, the hurricane is a real weapon. Having "turned" him away from his territory, he can be sent to another. In 1969, the United States was accused of almost sending a hurricane to Panama and Nicoragua. In 1978, a convention was adopted on the prohibition of the negative impact on the climate. The USSR and the USA signed the treaty. Since then, there have been no proven cases of military use of climate weapons, but accusations of the involvement of certain forces in natural disasters continue. The fact that strategic meteorological work is being carried out,confirms at least the existence of several ionospheric heating stands around the world. HIPAS operates in Alaska, Sura in Vasilsursk, EISCAT / Heating is located in the Norwegian Tros, SPEAR operates in Svalbard, and a complex at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The most famous ionospheric facility is the American HAARP. He is the most powerful of all. It is his people who believe in conspiracy theories who blame many climate disasters in general and Hurricane Sandy in particular. He is the most powerful of all. It is his people who believe in conspiracy theories who blame many climate disasters in general and Hurricane Sandy in particular. He is the most powerful of all. It is his people who believe in conspiracy theories who blame many climate disasters in general and Hurricane Sandy in particular.
Man-made tsunami Another "high-profile" experiment that the US military worked on was the Seal project - creating an artificial tsunami. New Zealand assisted the United States in testing.
In 1944-1945, under the guidance of Professor Thomas Leach from the University of Auckland, experiments were carried out on the coast of New Caledonia. Over the seven months of the program, more than 3700 underwater explosions were made. Their results were controversial: some sources speak of a 10-meter tsunami, while others claim that the experiments ended in fiasco. The Seal was officially declassified only in 1999. But back in 1968, the Marine Research Department of the US Navy, having recalculated the data on dynamics, expressed doubt about the real possibility of creating an artificial tsunami even by an explosion of atomic charges.
The turning of the riversIn 1971, the USSR planned to turn the Pechora, Vychegda and Northern Dvina rivers. The Taiga project was supposed to create new channels of the Ural rivers by carrying out 250 nuclear explosions, but only three of them were implemented. The damage to the population and the environment was too great, further work was stopped.
The only reminder of the idea that had not come to fruition was the radioactive lake between Pechora and Kolva. Another ambitious project is to change the movement of Siberian rivers. According to the plan developed in the Ministry of Water Management, the Irtysh, Ob and other rivers were supposed to supply water to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and, possibly, Turkmenistan to preserve cotton growing in Central Asia and save the drying up Aral Sea. The first stage of the project was the creation of a shipping canal from the Ob, which passed through Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan. The second stage of the implementation, which received a rather terrible name - Anti-Irtysh, assumed a turn of the Irtysh back to Kazakhstan. For this, it was planned to build a hydroelectric complex, 10 pumping stations, a canal and one regulating reservoir. In 1985, the Academy of Sciences adopted a resolution on the scientific inconsistency of the method, and the work was stopped.
Ivanova's Monkey Men An ambitious and eccentric project was carried out in the young USSR - a project to create a hybrid of a man and a monkey.
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In 1924, while working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Soviet scientist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov received permission from the directors of the institute to use the experimental primate station in Kindia, French Guinea, for such a study. Ivanov tried to get support for the experiment from the Soviet government. He wrote letters to Lunacharsky and other officials. In the end, NP Gorbunov, the head of the USSR Council of People's Commissars, became interested in his proposal. In September 1925, Gorbunov helped allocate $ 10,000 to the Academy of Sciences for Ivanov's African experiments. On February 28, 1927, Ivanov artificially inseminated two female chimpanzees with human sperm obtained from volunteers. On June 25, he inseminated a third monkey. None of the monkeys became pregnant. The chimpanzees were sent to a new primate station in Sukhumi. Ivanov tried to organize the insemination of human women with chimpanzee sperm back in Guinea, but the French colonial government did not approve of this experiment, and there were no documents left to confirm this fact. After returning to the Soviet Union in 1927, Ivanov made another attempt to inseminate women with monkey sperm in Sukhumi, but in July 1929, even before the experiment began, Ivanov learned that the only male monkey in Sukhumi, an orangutan who had reached puberty, had died … In 1930, Ivanov fell into disgrace and his dubious experiments were curtailed.there are also no documents left to confirm this fact. After returning to the Soviet Union in 1927, Ivanov made another attempt to inseminate women with monkey sperm in Sukhumi, but in July 1929, even before the experiment began, Ivanov learned that the only male monkey in Sukhumi, an orangutan who had reached puberty, had died … In 1930, Ivanov fell into disgrace and his dubious experiments were curtailed.there are also no documents left to confirm this fact. After returning to the Soviet Union in 1927, Ivanov made another attempt to inseminate women with monkey sperm in Sukhumi, but in July 1929, even before the experiment began, Ivanov learned that the only male monkey in Sukhumi, an orangutan who had reached puberty, had died … In 1930, Ivanov fell into disgrace and his dubious experiments were curtailed. In 1930, Ivanov fell into disgrace and his dubious experiments were curtailed. In 1930, Ivanov fell into disgrace and his dubious experiments were curtailed.
Battle Mole After the end of World War II, the projects of the German underground tanks "Subterrina" and "Snake of Midgrad" fell into the hands of the Soviet leadership. They were planned as amphibians capable of moving on the ground, underground and even under water at a depth of 100 meters. As a result of a long study of the drawings by a group of scientists led by Professors G. I. Babat and G. I. Pokrovsky, a verdict was made: the machine can be used for combat purposes. It was assumed that such an underground combat boat would be able to reach strategically important enemy targets and blow them up right from the ground. The explosion in this case can be explained by an earthquake. As a matter of urgency, personnel and funds were allocated to create their own underground tank, which was codenamed "battle mole".
A machine on a nuclear reactor was created, capable of moving through the earth at a speed of 7 km / h. The results of the first tests in the Ural mountains amazed everyone: the "mole", penetrating into the ground without any difficulties, covered 15 km and destroyed the bunker of a simulated enemy. It was a complete success. But the repeated experiment unexpectedly ended in complete disaster. The subterrina exploded for unknown reasons, killing the entire team. The project was suspended, and under Brezhnev it was finally closed.
Into space from a cannonThe HARP project started in 1961. Canadian engineer Gerald Bull played a huge role in it. In addition to American specialists, Canadian engineers also participated in the project. HARP meant the creation of special light-gas cannons, which, first of all, were supposed to launch artificial earth satellites into low orbits.
Later, the project also interested the military, since such a gun could be used to destroy enemy satellites. As part of HARP, about 10 guns of various calibers were built. They have been deployed throughout North America. The largest of these was located on the island of Barbados in the Caribbean. This gun had a caliber of 406 mm. Its length was 40 m. Before a shot, a vacuum was created in the barrel of such a gun to improve the movement of the projectile. A 180-kilogram projectile flew from such a gun at a speed of 3600 m / s. The height of 180 km, reached on November 18, 1966, was insufficient to launch satellites into orbit. Gerald Bull developed a special rocket projectile that was supposed to solve this problem. The improved versions of the Marlet already had a rocket engine, thanks to which they could reach an altitude of 500 km. Nevertheless, it was decided to close the project in 1967. The cannon on the island of Barbados has survived to this day, but its condition is deplorable.
