Wireless Electricity

[Pyro]

Article (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wireless-0607.html)

I so want this for my computer wires. *Glares at tangled wires*

[Gorbash Kazdar]

Tesla lives!

[Lord Herman]

Nifty. Very nifty.

[Eldred]

Woo, Science scores another goal!

[Ryshan Ynrith]

That is incredibly awesome. If they can manage to make it affordable and so forth, this could be quite the innovation.

[Icewalker]

Yeah, sounds pretty awesome.

[Occasional Sage]

So, that was June... what's going on with this now?

Also: I want my jetpack!

[CrazedGoblin]

haha nice, sounds quite nifty, and ye i want a jetpack to :smallbiggrin:

[Occasional Sage]

Hey um... here's a question not addressed in the article: aren't there dangerous electromagnetic fields created in energy transfer? They don't mention how this is going to be safe for us, and I know *just enough* about Science to be concerned....

[Gygaxphobia]

Yes it would boil your head. Well induction coils and magnetic fields and all sorts of heat transfer problems anyway

I can't see how this could be done at any great distance, but electricity could run through the walls of your house, you just wouldn't need plug sockets, you could place objects near the walls and get power.

[Catch]

Hey um... here's a question not addressed in the article: aren't there dangerous electromagnetic fields created in energy transfer? They don't mention how this is going to be safe for us, and I know *just enough* about Science to be concerned....


They did mention that:

"The fact that magnetic fields interact so weakly with biological organisms is also important for safety considerations."

The point of magnetically coupled resonance is that two objects of the same resonant frequency interact well with each other and barely at all with everything else. You're not going to get zapped if you walk between your laptop and the wall.

[Crispy Dave]

In todays modern world you cant afford to run tests to see if it will be safe

[Occasional Sage]

They did mention that:

"The fact that magnetic fields interact so weakly with biological organisms is also important for safety considerations."

The point of magnetically coupled resonance is that two objects of the same resonant frequency interact well with each other and barely at all with everything else. You're not going to get zapped if you walk between your laptop and the wall.

It's not the short-term exposure that's dangerous. There's a reason that neighborhoods under major power lines have a higher occurrence of cancer and related ills than areas not under them. Similar problems leadd to teh situation of tree farms under power lines.

I'm worries about 50 years from now when this technology is ubiquitous, and THAT is something the article doesn't address; the line you mention amounts to a handwave.

[StickMan]

It's not the short-term exposure that's dangerous. There's a reason that neighborhoods under major power lines have a higher occurrence of cancer and related ills than areas not under them. Similar problems leadd to teh situation of tree farms under power lines.

I'm worries about 50 years from now when this technology is ubiquitous, and THAT is something the article doesn't address; the line you mention amounts to a handwave.

Yea ditto that here I've seen the studies on people who live near power lines and yea its not good. The human body is a lot more sensitive to things than we think and I've been seeing more and more studies that indicate that minor things may be responsible for major issues even if they don't effect everyone.

[Pyro]

Awwww man. I thought this was cool and consequence free. Now its only cool. Sigh....

[Occasional Sage]

Awwww man. I thought this was cool and consequence free. Now its only cool. Sigh....

Human ingenuity can find answers to just about anything. They might already be addressing this, who knows?

[Samiam303]

Seriously though, what is there one could possibly do about it? Being around high energy levels can cause cancer, so how could sending energy through the air NOT cause cancer? >_<

[Occasional Sage]

Here's a neat application: electric cars and power-projection stations along major roads and freeways. For the profit-minded, there might be a small subscription fee to access the power stations, controlled by an encryption module in the car's power plant.

I'd pay good money to never stop at the gas station again!

[Ramebriz]

:smallbiggrin: Since is great now I not going to have my cellphone without battery because i forgot to plug it (happes a lot of times)
Maybe in the future we are going to have wire less controls for gaming...
wait it happend!

[battleburn]

Watch this dutch commercial on "mobile power" :smallbiggrin:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FZ4dfT_xqS8

[SDF]

Tesla lives!

Exactly what I was thinking. Behold, the creative genius of the 19th century :smallbiggrin:

[Rare Pink Leech]

I just skimmed through the article and I must say this is pretty cool, although the possible health effects are rather sobering.

Here's a question to the science-y people: how much would this really increase one's cancer risk? I mean, when our air is so clogged up with television, radio, cell phone, and wireless Internet signals, emissions from our microwaves, TVs, and computers, not to mention all the wireless mice and remote controls we use on a daily basis and a lot of other things I could probably mention, it's really not a wonder cancer rates are so high.

[sikyon]

I just skimmed through the article and I must say this is pretty cool, although the possible health effects are rather sobering.

Here's a question to the science-y people: how much would this really increase one's cancer risk? I mean, when our air is so clogged up with television, radio, cell phone, and wireless Internet signals, emissions from our microwaves, TVs, and computers, not to mention all the wireless mice and remote controls we use on a daily basis and a lot of other things I could probably mention, it's really not a wonder cancer rates are so high.

These signals are at very, very low power levels, and are unlikely to influence the human body because of it. What is more likely causing cancer is carcinogens in water and food, specifically, pollution.

Edit: In regards to resonance based field transmission, nobody knows yet (obviously). However, I would reason that in order for this to become successful commercially, there would need to be incredibly high calibration of resonance between the transmitter and receptor. If there were not, then the power levels would have to be high - and electronic devices would require shielding (possible, but doubtful because of infrastructure considerations). The human body is much less sensitive to electric and magnetic fields than something like a compute are.

[SDF]

I just skimmed through the article and I must say this is pretty cool, although the possible health effects are rather sobering.

Here's a question to the science-y people: how much would this really increase one's cancer risk? I mean, when our air is so clogged up with television, radio, cell phone, and wireless Internet signals, emissions from our microwaves, TVs, and computers, not to mention all the wireless mice and remote controls we use on a daily basis and a lot of other things I could probably mention, it's really not a wonder cancer rates are so high.

Depends on how much radiation and free radicals are produced. Obviously if it is giving off gamma or beta wave radiation it would be unusable, but it should be no different than living near powerlines. And I hope your microwave isn't giving off radiation... I mean they are lined to prevent that and you can buy those detectors, but that would certainly be no good :P

[Trog]

Coolest. Invention. Ever.

Well, okay not ever... sliced bread is still winning for reasons no one can adequately explain. :smallconfused:

But it is pretty damn cool. Imagine. No more batteries. I mean when you were a kid you had tons of things that required batteries. In the future ([sings]In the year two-thousaaaaaaaaaand[/singing... thank god.]) all you would need is a power transmitter plugged into the wall near a toy box and voila... everything is charged and set to go in the morning.

Not to mention cell phones, iPods, laptops, etc. I can see the next iMac now... wireless keyboard & mouse (neither of which need batteries), wireless internet, and wireless power source. :smallcool:

[Dragonrider]

Someone was just telling me about this...only he made it sound as though the technology had been around for ages and was being supressed by the government...big long conspiracy theory. :smalltongue: However, he's a little odd...I can believe this, though...that's pretty awesome.

[HrahSteddy]

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[The Succubus]

I've got a wireless charging thing built into my phone. It's really nice being able to just drop my phone down on a pad without having to fiddle around with plugs and stuff, especially if it's last thing at night before I go to bed.

[Topus]

I'd like to point out that there are no irrefutable evidences that electromagnetic fields may be hazardous to health.
By the way this technology is likely to be used in short terms for application at the end of the electric grid, distribution of electricity in houses, offices, factories, and so on.
Maybe in the future the entire wired infrastructure could be replaced by a huge grid of mini-coils covering entire nations (maybe associated with an extended grid of mini nuclear reactor, as the young scientist Taylor Wilson says in this tedtalk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HL1BEC024g).

[Finlam]

I will be excited if the paper says that they were able to do it with less than 20% loss. Otherwise, and even then, it's nothing to get excited about: just one more small step in the long iteration toward wireless power that Tesla started over one hundred years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power#Timeline_of_wireless_power).

This technology is not new (http://www.cornellcollege.edu/physics/courses/phy312/Student-Projects/Magnetic-Resonance/Magnetic-Resonance.html), though the range of more than two meters is impressive. It will, however, not make a difference for many years as it is still much too inefficient to be deployed (http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/technology/transfer-efficiency.html).

[Eldan]

The spambots are mutating! They know thread-necromancy now!

[Topus]

Gosh! I didn't notice it was an old thread :(
Sorry for supporting necromancy.

[Tyndmyr]

It's not the short-term exposure that's dangerous. There's a reason that neighborhoods under major power lines have a higher occurrence of cancer and related ills than areas not under them. Similar problems leadd to teh situation of tree farms under power lines.

I'm worries about 50 years from now when this technology is ubiquitous, and THAT is something the article doesn't address; the line you mention amounts to a handwave.

That reason is something known as the texas sharpshooter fallacy. As an analogy, consider someone who shoots at a piece of paper, then, after looking at the results, draws the target so that the bullseye is over the largest concentration. Is this person *really* an expert shot? Of course not.

The same is true when you broadly sweep for any variations from the norm in a given pool of people. Averages are just that, an average. Some groups are above, some are below, and random variations alone will mean that if you survey enough variables, you'll get SOME factors that deviate from the norm significantly...but it doesn't necessarily mean anything, especially if, as here, there's no causal mechanism.

Long story short, non-ionizing radiation* is harmful in the same way that heat and light are harmful, because heat and light ARE non-ionizing radiation. Radiation is a very broad term, you can't consider it all the same. Now, heat(and light, because it is absorbed at heat) *can* be damaging...but only if you are literally burning yourself.

So, if something makes you so hot that your face is gonna start melting, step away. That's the only danger to worry about there. And magnetic fields don't translate heat to humans at all well. That's why MRI technicians, who are routinely around utterly ridiculously high magnetic fields(and coincidentally, lots of power to run that stuff) do not have an abnormally high rate of death, cancer, etc.

*with a marginal exception for things that are very very close to ionizing radiations for statistical reasons that aren't really important here.


Seriously though, what is there one could possibly do about it? Being around high energy levels can cause cancer, so how could sending energy through the air NOT cause cancer? >_<

Oh? All high energy levels? Like kinetic energy? Does moving faster cause you to get the cancer?

Now, back to the tech. Yeah, it's been around a while. Tesla did much of the initial work on it. Not really gov suppression, though. Mostly, it's more expensive than just running a cable, both to make, because cables are dead simple, and to operate, because of the square-cube law. A charging pad will never be as cheap as a traditional cable charger...but it is a lot more convenient. Various commercial solutions have existed for a while, but none have garnered great popularity.

(I know this is old, but long as it's up here, may as well debunk the old wive's tales)