MIT crafts wireless electricity

A team of scientists from MIT has come up with a way to light a 60-watt lightbulb. The trick is that the bulb is located about seven feet from the power source and no wires connect the two.

Wireless electricity, or "WiTricity" as MIT likes to call it, could one day allow consumers to carry notebooks or cell phones without batteries. It could also make it easy for contractors to remodel homes. Someday. To make it happen, the waves would need to be targeted and tracking mechanisms would need to exist to link the power source and the intended target.

Various techniques for transmitting power wirelessly have been around for years. Radio is an example. Transmitting electrical power, however, is tricky.

WiTricity couples resonant objects: the source and recipient resonate on the same frequency, allowing them to communicate efficiently without interfering with other objects. MIT analogizes this to an opera singer and 100 wine glasses. If the wine glasses all contain different amounts of liquid, they will resonate at different frequencies. When the singer hits a particular frequency, one glass will shatter but others will remain unaffected.

In the MIT experiment, the scientists used two copper coils to create the wireless link between the power source and the bulb. The scientists found there was strong interaction between the sender and receiver and only weak interaction between the sender and the ambient environment.

Further details will be spelled out in the June 7 issue of Science Express.

[tabaks--2008]

"Hot water" or "wheel" kind of "discovery"

Wow, only 80 years after Nikola Tesla already discovered how to
do this, they re-invent "hot water"! I'm glad MIT isn't wasting any
time and/or money.
8^\

[Lee in San Diego]

That is what I was thinking

Not being more than an armchair engineer and scientist I need to
ask is there some sort problem with Tesla's technology?

[wmmo75]

Yeah, I think it is called lightning

Yeah, I think it is called lightning

[pkolson]

Tesla, Long Ago

Not sure now "new" this is. Nicola Tesla was working on this
decades ago. Oh wait, he was a "crackpot." I forgot.

[CdoG1969]

Credit were credit is due.

When Tesla was determining the resonant frequencies of the earth to potentially transmit unlimited electric power, he also recognized frequencies that acted as a damping field to nullify electric power. With the advent of the wireless and Tesla's unique investigations into broadcasting electricity, a dozen or more inventors thereafter announced their own means for transmitting electrical energy without wires. One British inventor, H. Grindell-Matthews, actually demonstrated his "mystery ray" apparatus in 1924 to a Popular Science Monthly writer in London (See: Pop. Sci. Monthly, Aug. 1924, P. 33). When his beam was directed toward the magneto system of a gasoline engine, it stopped the system. Afterwards, it ignited gun powder, lit an electric lamp bulb from a distance and killed a mouse in seconds! Grindell-Matthews said the secret was involved with the "carrier beam" he used to conduct a high-voltage, low-frequency electrical current. During 1936, Guglielmo Marconi experimented with extremely low frequency (ELF) waves and displayed their exceptional ability to penetrate metallic shielding. These waves could affect electrical devices, overload circuits and cause machines like generators, electric motors and automobiles to stall. Diesel engines, which do not rely on electrical ignition, were not affected. Mysteriously, Marconi's research on the subject was never found after the war.

[mattbytez]

WiFry Thunder stolen by Paris Hilton

While technology buds through with this amazing breakthrough the announcement was eclipsed by media giants pandering to Paris Hilton's jail time coverage. Few heard about this because of the non-news about Paris Hilton that flooded our airways. What else are we missing while radio and TV focus on "non-news" with such irresponsible hysteria? Americans should be angry, as poison looms in our foods and important recalls are missed because people have turned off the contaminated airwaves that spill trash and litter into our lives. Demand integrity in your coverage Americans!