If it becomes available tomorrow, in 5 years it'll be affordable for me.
Now, on to Reich and orgone energy! This Universe ain't just for Spacemummy, anymore, pal.
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The earth may fail, but we will quiver
I keep thinking about this story - my first impression was that it is crazy. How could such a thing be possible. But the more I think about it the more possible it seems: solar panels are wireless energy. windmills make use of wireless energy. AM/FM radio transmits energy, encoded with music, and we can pick it up in our homes... there seems to be a lots of examples of wireless energy, it's a wonder it has taken us this long, and it is still only a theory!
There's nothing new about transmitting power, it's just rarely efficient enough to bother. The more interesting thing I've seen in this area are remotely powered UAVs. Several aircraft have successfully flown powered by ground-based microwave beams or lasers. I don't think there are any successful commercial applications yet. May have something to do with the consequences of getting between the beam and the target...
To overcome this problem, the team investigated a special class of "non-radiative" objects with so-called "long-lived resonances".
So I googled "long-lived resonances" came up a lot of irrelevant stuff, plus a blog roundup of people who apparently saw the same presentation as the BBC, with no other papers on the subject. Either Soljacic is the only person in the world working on this and he chose to announce it using a presentation, or the technology is known and he is the only person in the world using this terminology, or the technology is bunk. I don't trust it because the description, of something "emitting electromagnetic waves", is basically what all radio transmitters do, and at horrendous inefficiencies if the objective is to transmit energy.
But assume for a moment that this "resonance" deal is something different than lighting up the neon bulb with the generator across the room. The object to be charged is going to need to be resonating at the same 6.4MHz as the charger. What is to prevent the object from being de-charged by the charger? Or drained if I happen to set it down next to another device that uses the same tech, with an almost-dead battery? Or some resonance antennas that are hooked up to power resistors? Even without radiative waste, it seems like there is much more opportunity for wasted energy with this wireless scheme.
(is 3fingerspointback)
