In 1899, Nikola Tesla was testing his own transmitter designed to track thunderstorms 1,000 km away when he suddenly believed he had received a transmission of some sort from an unknown source. He thought it was an extraterrestrial signal originating from somewhere within our solar system, possibly from Mars. What was hidden behind this strange discovery?

Nikola Tesla. © Image credit: MRU MEDIA | Element images are licensed from: DreamsTime.com

Tesla’s transmitter was ultra-sensitive enough to receive radio waves from far beyond Earth. Nikola Tesla firmly believed that it was absurd to think that we are the only intelligent beings in the universe. He also believed that intelligent beings would naturally seek ways to communicate with other intelligent beings.

Tim R. Swartz, a well-known biographer of Nikola Tesla, also says there may have been a connection between the futuristic inventor and intelligent aliens, according to his semi-autobiographical book “The Lost Papers of Nikola Tesla: HAARP – Chemtrails and Secrets of Alternative 4.”

Tesla Transmission Tower

This hypothesis does nothing more than accentuate the mystery surrounding Tesla, most of whose personal documents and notes were confiscated by the US government. Many people believe that his inventions could be potentially dangerous to the interests of industry.

Electric oscillator

As Swartz explains, while testing one of his many inventions, Tesla detected radio transmissions that he believed were extraterrestrial communications. After this event, the inventor reportedly became obsessed with building better, more powerful radio receivers.

Experiments in Colorado

While testing the device, Swartz claimed in an interview that Nikola Tesla heard radio transmissions that he believed were actually attributed to extraterrestrial communications:

“He wondered at the time if he wasn’t hearing ‘one planet greeting another,’ as he put it. From that point on, it became something of an obsession of his, building better and better radio receivers to try to see if he could repeat what he was hearing. He got to the point where he claimed he was actually receiving voice transmissions. He said it sounded like people were talking back and forth. He made notes saying he was actually hearing intelligent beings from another planet talking to each other, although he didn’t know what language they were speaking. But he still felt he understood them.”

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At the time, prominent scientists hypothesized that Mars would be a likely haven for intelligent life in our solar system, and Tesla initially thought these signals might be originating from our red planet.

Tesla Electric Oscillator

While Tesla’s most prominent personal records and notes are in the hands of the United States Army, Swartz claims to have acquired a number of private records at a 1976 auction. The author claims that all of this information was missing from the face of the Earth after the visit of the alleged   “Men in Black  .” As noted by National Geographic, most of Tesla’s papers were taken by the government, but most of his belongings were later returned to his family, and many ended up in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, which opened in the 1950s. But some of Tesla’s papers are still classified by the US government.

Collier’s Weekly (February 9, 1909)

When interviewed in February 1901 by Colliers Weekly (an American magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Collier), Tesla gave this account and recorded his belief in extraterrestrials. Here, in his own words, he described

“While I was improving my machines for producing intense electric currents, I was also perfecting the means of observing the small effects. One of the most interesting results, and also of great practical importance, was the development of certain devices for indicating a storm approaching at a distance of many hundreds of miles, its direction, speed, and distance traveled.

It was while doing this work that I first discovered these mysterious effects which had excited such unusual interest. I had so perfected the device that from my laboratory in the mountains of Colorado I could observe every electrical change that occurred within a radius of more than 1,000 miles.

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I shall never forget the first sensations I experienced when I realized that I had seen something of incalculable consequence to humanity. I felt as if I were present at the birth of a new knowledge or the revelation of a great truth. My first observations positively terrified me, because there was something mysterious, if not supernatural, about them, and I was alone in my laboratory at night; but at that time the idea that these disturbances were intelligently controlled signals had not yet presented itself to me.

The changes I noticed were occurring periodically, and with such definiteness, both in number and order, that they were not traceable to any cause known to me. I was familiar, of course, with the types of electrical disturbances produced by the Sun, the Aurora Borealis, and terrestrial currents, and I was quite certain that these variations were due to none of these causes.

The nature of my experiments precluded the possibility of the changes being produced by atmospheric disturbances, as has been erroneously asserted by some. It was some time later that the thought came to my mind that the disturbances I had observed might be due to intelligent control

Although I could not at the time decipher their meaning, it was impossible to think of them as having been entirely accidental. The feeling that I was the first to hear a greeting from one planet to another has steadily grown upon me. A purpose lay behind these electrical signals.”

The crux of the matter was that although Nikola Tesla could not decipher the meaning of the messages he received, he believed that aliens were interested in Earth and, being more technologically advanced, had left their mark on our planet. He was absolutely convinced that somewhere in the universe there were intelligent life forms and that they were trying to communicate with us.