“Scientists have sounded the death knell for the plug and power lead,” David Derbyshire reports for The Daily Mail.
“In a breakthrough that sounds like something out of Star Trek, they have discovered a way of ‘beaming’ power across a room into a light bulb, mobile phone or laptop computer without wires or cables,” Derbyshire reports. “In the first successful trial of its kind, the team was able to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb 7ft away.”
“The team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who call their invention ‘WiTricity’, believe it could change the way we use electricity and do away with the tangle of cables, plugs and chargers that clutter modern homes,” Derbyshire reports. “It could also allow the use of laptops and mobile phones without batteries.”
Lead researcher, Dr. Marin Soljacic, designed a method “to fill a room with a ‘non-radiative’ electromagnetic field,” Derbyshire reports. “Most objects in the room – such as people, desks and carpets – would be unaffected by the electromagnetic field. But any objects designed to resonate with the electromagnetic field would absorb the energy.”
“The scientists say the technique works only over distances of up to 9ft. However, they believe it could be used to charge up a battery within a few yards of the power source connected to a receiving coil,” Derbyshire reports. “Placing one source in each room could provide enough power for an entire house.”
“Professor Peter Fisher, another of the researchers, said: ‘As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of wireless power, it would charge automatically without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside such a room.’ The researchers believe there is little to worry about on safety grounds, saying that magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms and are unlikely to have any serious side effects,” Derbyshire reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]