Wireless Electricity??????

[William the Bastard]

I haven't seen a thread on this here yet so I thought I would bring this to your attentions. I am no scientist so most of this goes over my head. I always believed it was impossible. Maybe not.

I would like to see what our local science bods make of this.

LINK

[Hookah Smoking Caterpiller]

sounds cool, however, it seems like it would be difficult to power anything that would require alot of power... like a laptop

[Pra]

It is possible. Inside the two faces of a capacitor, charge is taken to flow through in the sense you've described, though it is caused mostly by the attraction and repulsion of electrons built up on the sides of the faces.

So if you have a battery and hook it up to a parallel plate capacitor (two plates facing each other, charge will build up on one side of the capacitor and it will repel the charge on the other side. The rate of this happening is equal to the rate of which the charge flows in the wires (AKA the current).

Oh nevermind, new technology; always read the links before posting.

Just read it; it's really fascinating. The concept of resonance in applying to powering is really nifty. All things vibrate at a natural frequency, when a driving frequency vibrates at that same frequency then it will cause the specific thing, like lets say a glass cup, to vibrate with a higher and higher amplitude, eventually cracking the glass.

So you can apply it to power. Also, from the looks of it, they're employing a transformer, which could create a high enough voltage, I think, to power that battery (hopefully with little internal resistance.)

[chris_uk_83]

On the face of it, it looks doable. However, the article did say it would be directional, meaning that you'd have to put your gadget in a specific place anyway and couldn't just wander around with it. I'd like to see this made though, it'd make life a bit easier not to have to worry about cables all over the place.

I can see a downside to this technology. You could detect the frequency of energy that was being transmitted by the energy source. You could then 'tune in' a device to that frequency and effectively steal power from anywhere that employed this. I also can't see it being as efficient as wires, so you'd get a fair amount of wasted energy.

[ajm317]

On the face of it, it looks doable. However, the article did say it would be directional, meaning that you'd have to put your gadget in a specific place anyway and couldn't just wander around with it.

Well I don't claim to completely understand what they're doing, but the impression I got was that it was NOT directional.

I did a google search on the guy, and I found a link to his paper, but it's a 19 page journal paper, I'm not sure if I'm THAT interested.

Anyway, the link is here:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0611/0611063.pdf

Basically their scheme is non-radiative. It relies on evanescent waves to work.

[Chaigidel]

this is the first results of the studies done in directed energy, and the manipulation thereof--- Im pretty sure they have nondeadly weapons that use similar principles

[Gary88]

without reading the article (uber lazy) is it not just a big transformer? i mean inducing electic currents is hardly a new idea

[Thanatos]

So what is this, electricity by induction, just over long distances?

[ajm317]

So what is this, electricity by induction, just over long distances?

Sort of.

It seems pretty interesting. They seem to have hit on an idea that gives them the benefits of non-directional power transfer without the associated power lost due to radiation.

[mrmouth]

I just heard on the radio days ago that they have tested it and it works, so its no longer a theory. We are a long way off from it being practical though.

[Thanatos]

Oh man, if this works, I'll be so happy.

[mrmouth]

MIT crafts wireless electricity

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9727045-7.html

[chris_uk_83]

Hmm, I need to learn what a few terms mean before I can fully understand that paper. Any ideas people?
slow-evanescent
field tails
near-field
far-field

[ajm317]

Hmm, I need to learn what a few terms mean before I can fully understand that paper. Any ideas people?
slow-evanescent

An evanescent field is one which dies off exponentially. A slow evanescent wave is one with a large penetration depth (the constant delta in e^(-x/delta)).

Evanescent waves pop up, for example, as a result of total internal reflection.

field tails

Not sure.

near-field
far-field

These are two different terms in the electric field solution. The near field is the evanescent wave, and dies off quickly, it dominates close to the antenna. The far field is a term which does not die off exponentially, it dominates far from the antenna. They are constructing their antenna to minimize the far field term and maximize the near field term.

[Kanaric]

There is that antenna based free energy machine that was built on Mythbusters.

Its wireless electricity but very little.... i wonder what would happen if you had something like 100 antennas connected to that though?

[Simetrical]

this is the first results of the studies done in directed energy, and the manipulation thereof--- Im pretty sure they have nondeadly weapons that use similar principles

I'm fairly sure not. It seems unlikely that you'd be able to use resonance to effectively tunnel electricity into targets, or that it would be particularly useful if you could. Perhaps you're thinking of the microwave-beam weapon that's gotten sporadic press over the past few years.

There is that antenna based free energy machine that was built on Mythbusters.

Its wireless electricity but very little.... i wonder what would happen if you had something like 100 antennas connected to that though?

What you'd probably get is immense waste of power. You never know, though, I guess. For small-time things like cell phones it might not be a big deal, but you probably wouldn't want to power your air conditioner this way until someone comes up with cold fusion, I'm thinking.

[Hells Bells]

why hasnt anyone mentioned tesla yet?

also afaik the electricity would greatly increase cancer rates etc. so it is very dangerous.

[ajm317]

also afaik the electricity would greatly increase cancer rates etc. so it is very dangerous.

Nope. The electricity does not interact strongly with humans because we are not of the appropriate resonance.