Comments on: Field Of Fluorescent Tubes Powered By Ambient Current

By: sailingsoul

sailingsoul — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:06:22 +0000

Being anchored in the earth or that the ground has zero volts potential is not a factor. The gas will glow (fluoresce) by being exposed to any electromagnetic field that is strong enough. Like a transmitting antenna as mentioned in replies.
Jaxsun, your are correct, reporters as writers do it all the time. It’s their way to get you to read the article. Literary license or cheep trick you decide. I vote the latter, they’ll never stop. SS

By: Jaxsun

Jaxsun — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:59:40 +0000

its not stray current.
its potential difference, Voltage, its not electrons randomly flying around but rather forces that induce movement in the electrons (current).

the headline here is misleading.

By: Russ

Russ — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:45:16 +0000

There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you can extract power from the electrical field around high voltage power lines, someone has to supply the power that you get. If enough people were to do this, the power company would soon discover that for every watt of energy they put into one end of the line that they would be getting less than one watt out of the other end. Of course this ignores the normal losses in transmitting the power in the first place. If you live next to an AM broadcast station you can extract some power from the signal being radiated from the stations antenna. Of course this will affect the radiation pattern from the stations antenna and cause problems for the Federal Communications Commission rules. Again there is no such thing as a free lunch, or power out of the air. If there was, then we should be able to extract power from lightning bolts. If you could extract power from lightning bolts, it would be like having a high speed highway bus hit a kid on a skate board to usefully move him ahead in a controlled manner. We call these types of incidents an undesirable accident.

By: Corey

Corey — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:00:49 +0000

It works by my house (colorado), but its nowhere near that bright. either the u.k. voltage difference or this photo is a time lapse.

By: Joe L

Joe L — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:26:57 +0000

Could be unstable power or something, who knows.

By: Daniel Pataki

Daniel Pataki — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:42:17 +0000

Couldn’t they run these power lines next to freeways and get some free lighting?

If people can run cables under and steal the electricity why are power companies not using this to do something?

By: Joe L

Joe L — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 04:14:12 +0000

Actually I’ve heard that some people run cables from beneath these high voltage lines to their homes and get free electricity (illegal of course).

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:34:10 +0000

if they can do that what else can light up or turn on other the the fluorescent tubes? maybe a type of thing that can harvest this energy! or maybe a hybrid car charging station??? always thinking green!!