Teslas cosmic ray power generator

[Jandell]

Tesla said his radiant energy generator worked by using cosmic rays to ionize gases, releasing electrons to do work.  Now apparently, if a thin sheet of metal is used to shield against cosmic rays in space it causes the rays to scatter atoms upon hitting the metal, and these atoms move very quickly through any gases they hit, leaving a trail of ionized particles behind them. 

Since about a third (I think) of the cosmic rays get through the atmosphere and reach sea level, I was wondering if the following idea would work: get 2 closed metal cylinders, fill one with oxygen (say) and one with hydrogen.  The cosmic rays will hit the metal and ionize the gases inside, and you will end up with 2 cylinders filled with oppositely charged ions, and presumably some plasma physicist or someone who knows about this stuff would be able to use them to generate electricity.

I know this is very vague, but its definitely not my field so hopefully someone who knows about plasmas or electrical engineering could tell me what the problems and possibilities of this type of machine are.

[mscoffman]

Cosmic rays are very high energy ionized helium nuclei. Because they are
charged particles they get batted around by magnetic fields in space and
some achieve very high energies (effectively weights). Up to 10^18
Electron Volts. This is much higher then humans are currently able to
get in particle accelerators.

They then ram into atmosphere molecules usually hit the O3 ozone
molecules. This causes a cascade distribution of different types of lower
energy particles that generally terminates at 1000ft up above sea level.
As one goes up in altitude in either mountains or in aircraft you move
into these cosmic ray particle showers which is the reason for increased
radiation with altitude. One exception is a particle called a muon that is
moving so fast it streches it internal relativistic clock. They reach sealevel
where each 30ft depth of seawater stops 50% of muon energy.

Telsa -

If you look at Tesla's patents you see he is confused because his
discoveries were fairly early, before science completely developed.
So he thought that cosmic ray muons and "sky electricity" were
both a form of energy known as radiant energy. So while Tesla
came up concept of cosmic rays he didn't parse them scientifically
correctly and is not credited with their discovery.

"sky electricity" is a valid form of free energy concept that as you
move up in altitude there is high voltage charge available. This is
a static electric "return equalization current" from thunderstorms
and solar ion flow from like the Aurora Northern Lights. They actually
flew an aircraft flat and level using these voltages as it's horizon
reference, in a test.

Tesla knew of muons because he calculated that a 4ft long fluorescent
tube light would require 25Mev to light up and he knew his ballast inductors
where not *that* good. So he proposed energy from space to supply
these and light these tubes.

It turns out that muon source is a flux of particles that can initiate
hydrogen atoms to fuse, but the muon loses out once every 40 interactions
so needs to be supported by a higher flux than cosmic rays can provide.
This is known as aneutronic muon catalysed fusion.

The guy in Australia said he ran his Ford car on thermonuclear energy!
He caused muons to fuse deuterium rather than hydrogen in a hot
neutron radioactive process where the neutrons then generated
additional muons. That works but, it is a hot nuclear process
initiated by cosmic rays.

:S:MarkSCoffman