Posted on 06/08/2007 3:31:16 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter
Look. All radio and TV transmitters transmit electrical energy. A radio or TV receiver’s antenna receives a small amount of that power. The radio or TV selects a specific frequency and amplifies the power to produce an audible signal.
The principle of transmitting power through the air is not new, not far out. It is valid.
Problems:
The power received drops as the cube of the distance from the transmitter.
It is an inefficient method of sending power from one place to another.
If the transmitter power is increased, anyone who gets in the way of the signal will be roasted. This is nothing new. If you climb up a TV transmitter tower you may be roasted.
Here’s a practical application that can be used now:
Set up a receiver near a radio or TV tower and steal some of the power that is transmitted. There will be no detriment to the signal received by everyone else and you will get free power. But don’t get close or you will get roasted.
....doesn’t sound too healthy to me. Not sure I want to be constantly be zapped with enough voltage to light a light bulb.
It’s kind of a pathetic commentary on the state of engineering education at MIT (and the US in general)when they trumpet a high school science fair project as a major advance in technology. Telsa’s experiments in the 30’s proof just how ridiculous this story is as well as illustrating the gullibility of and lack of basic scientific knowledge in the MSM.
There’s already a commercial venture doing this. I believe they were at CES earlier ths year: http://www.ecoupled.com/
“Socialized Power” (?)
It would be just that I suppose, realistically it would probably evolve into different transmitted frquencies of power strength, the military might use a restricted band while consumers would need to buy a time alotment much like Tracphones I guess, free would be for the Perfect Planet like in another solar sytem or if we colonize Mars, here on Earth it would be impossible what with Islamics saying its evil and then you have the Druids saying its evil, and those losing money like OPEC saying its evil.
That’s great so my neighboors can hack in to my “grid” and steal power from me... :)
They're only fruitless because we haven't played to win yet.
“Thanks. This is just a variation of Tesla’s design.”
Yep, but not one mention of him in the article.
Sad, when people think “electricity” they think “Edison”. Even in death Tesla keeps getting royally screwed.
I don’t suppose the 55% wasted energy would end up heating the air would it?
Most likely dissipated as heat.....
I wonder if Prof. Marin Soljacic is a Serb? The name could be Serbian. Tesla was a Serb (or Serbian-American, as Wiki says).
Anyone here know if this resonance technology could be tuned to use the Earth’s magnetic field as a power source?
How many thousands of homes are burned each year because of electrical short circuits? Elliminating the need for hot wires running to and fro inside your walls would be a great thing.
How does it compare to charging and expending NiCad batteries?
There is a big problem with the photo of the experimenters. No “diversity”!!.
a fraud
a stupid idea
A dozen reasons why it won't work
or "this is nothing new."
Is this a forum for Luddites?
I for one, am glad to hear about these stories - technology will continue to make our lives better and better - no matter what these anti-science folks say.
Just think, if elecricity had just been discovered today, it would have been deemed too dangerous and we would still be sitting in the dark.
They aren’t really inducing waves of energy. They coil is built to not radiate energy, but to feed it back. They are inducing a high-frequency magnetic field, which the other coil picks up and re-radiates back. I don’t understand the physics (I haven’t read the details), but I think you can picture this like dropping a pebble in the water, and then having another point where the water can reflect back at exactly the right distance to add. After a little while, the waves in most directions remain almost invisible, but in the ONE direction where there is echo, the waves are quite large.
The paper suggests 45% efficiency, which actually is pretty good compared to the efficiency of a battery charger system (not great, but good).
It’s likely there is less energy used when there is no feedback, just like a transformer uses a lot less electricity when it’s secondary coil is not connected to anything. At MHZ frequencies, the current should be very low because the inductance would be high absent the feedback.
And 50% efficiency in exchange for never having to plug in chargers, and getting rid of batteries, might be a very good thing.
I don’t know, in some ways it seems like an idea looking for a problem to solve. Pretty cool though.
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