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Intel Claims an Advance In Wireless Power
Many readers are sending in coverage of a demo at Intel's developer forum of a wirelessly powered 60-watt bulb. The NYTimes gives background on Intel's improvement to the 'wireless resonant energy link' technology pioneered at MIT, where researchers achieved 50% efficiency of power transmitted several meters via magnetic fields. Intel reached 75% efficiency. Now they just have to make those coils a lot smaller.
Tesla wanted to do this on a large scale over a hundred years ago, and was prevented by his investors because there was no way to meter usage. He filed a patent for his concept in 1900. This technology is crippled and extremely late.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This is not a new technology but it is helpful to have refined, although the first use when the technology matures will be short range devices (1-2ft) not long range devices (10-20ft).
Actually it IS a new technology. Anyone who is spouting off bombast about how Tesla came up with this a hundred years ago, or that we've been using this in transformers for years is WRONG. Transformers are not resonant devices and rather rely on the closeness of the windings/core to guide the majority of the field lines to the other winding. As for Tesla's work, he used strictly far field EM radiation, which differs fundamentally from this effect, which uses near-field interactions that tend to "stick" for lack of a better term to the power source unless transferred to another device capable of resonating with it. This is what makes this 2006 discovery so great because it is extremely efficient and doesn't rely on line of sight or broadcasting a huge amount of power so that a device a reasonable distance away can receive the power it needs to operate. According to the 2006 article ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5834/83 ) the electric fields involved are small too: around 200V/m which is about double Earth's field at ground.
And finally, The human body has little to no magnetic response which is why MRI's don't kill you with their multi-Tesla magnetic fields (the Earth's magnetic field is 0.5 Gauss = 1/20000 T, for reference)
Tesla wasn't a hacker like Edison. He was a visionary, who saw deeply into the inner workings of the universe at an intuitive level. He captured what he saw in the language of math, and created the foundations for the modern electric age almost singlehandedly. The HAARP project in Alaska is based on his work in this field.
If he said it was possible within the laws of physics, personally, I believe him. He was probably the most important man in history.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Here: The actual story I was referencing is the last one on this page. I remember it being a "driveway moment" for me -- I got home, and sat in the driveway until the story was over.
(I had trouble w/ streaming -- but I clicked the "pop out" button and there's a download link from there. It's just an MP3)
http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2008/01/25
Fanatics? No.. realistic. Tesla has been regarded as "The Father of Physics", "The man who invented the twentieth century" and "the patron saint of modern electricity." He's far from being a 'crackpot who got lucky'.
Inventions include:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
No matter if the 'Tesla fanatics' know much about physics or not, Tesla still was and remains a very rare genius.
Thank you for trolling!