More than 120 years ago, Nikola Tesla picked up a signal from Mars: what he warned humanity about

The American inventor of Serbian origin Nikola Tesla has always stood out among other scientists for his eccentricity, but one of his claims sounded too crazy even for him. In 1899, Tesla claimed that his radio had received signals coming from Mars.

Although this story may seem like a historical fable with no evidence, or just a modern fake for the sake of hype, there is documentary evidence to support Tesla's claim (to see the photo, scroll to the end of the news story). OBOZREVATEL tells the details.

In 1899, Tesla was in his laboratory on Pikes Peak Mountain, working on methods of wireless power transmission. One day, he heard rhythmic sounds through his receiver, which the inventor was sure came from another world in our solar system. He then decided that Mars was the likely source of the signal.

Tesla announced his discovery on Christmas Day 1900 in a letter to the Red Cross.

"I observed electrical actions that seemed inexplicable. Faint and uncertain, they gave me a deep conviction and foreboding that soon all people on this globe, as one, will turn their eyes to the heavenly vault with a sense of love and awe, excited by the joyful news: "Brothers and sisters! We have a message from another world, unknown and distant. It sounds like this: one... two... three..." - Tesla wrote in his letter.

The inventor also wrote confidently that the signal could in no way be terrestrial or just noise caused by solar waves.

Subsequently, he was repeatedly asked about the signal and warned humanity that we were not ready to communicate with Mars because the language methods were too different.

"Their means of interplanetary communication may be perfect, but we have not yet learnt their language. It's not even possible to offer a code yet... Suffice it to say that a message from Mars, which may be a triangle for them, will look like some other shape for us, and vice versa," the scientist said.

In his opinion, language differences "can only be reconciled with time and careful study".

As Tesla continued to analyse the signal, he became increasingly convinced that it was a signal from Mars. Many years after the discovery, he wrote a letter to the New York Times, which was published in 1910. In the letter, he speculated about the existence of extraterrestrial life.

"Certainly, some planets are uninhabited, but others are inhabited, and life must exist among them under all conditions and phases of development. Personally, I base my belief on the faint planetary electrical disturbances that I detected in the summer of 1899, which, according to my research, could not have come from the Sun, Moon or Venus. Further research convinced me that they must have come from Mars. All doubts in this regard will soon be dispelled," he said in the letter.

Tesla also claimed at the time that the Martian language was incomprehensible, but he was convinced that the further humanity developed, the clearer communication with extraterrestrial life would become.

He also said that he was able to design a device that would help improve communication with Mars.

However, for one reason or another, nothing is known about Tesla's further attempts to establish communication with Mars. Perhaps he failed, or perhaps he decided that humanity was not ready for the discovery.

During World War II, Tesla also claimed to have invented a "death ray" that could change the course of the war. However, even before his weapon was perfected, the inventor died in January 1943 in his hotel room in New York.

All the documents left behind were confiscated by the US authorities, and it was only in 2016 that the FBI declassified about 250 pages of Tesla's records, followed by two more batches of documents. However, a significant part of Tesla's files, which no one doubts exist, has never been found.

Earlier, OBOZREVATEL also reported that scientists managed to record strange radio waves sent into space by a distant exoplanet.

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