Electro-nirvana? Not so fast

Posted: Friday, June 08, 2007 5:36 PM by Alan Boyle

Andre Kurs' credit cards still work. So do the gizmos that he carries around with him. And the last time he checked, his head hasn't exploded.

That answers some of the questions that have popped up in the wake of this week's revelations from Kurs and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about a new scheme for transferring electric power without wires. But there are plenty more questions yet to be answered: Is the method now known as "WiTricity" really, truly safe over the long term? Can it compete with other strategies to generate, transmit and store electrical power? How long until I never have to plug in my laptop again?

Right now, none of those questions is easy to answer. Kurs, a physicist at MIT, said the research group has patents pending on the technology and is just beginning to look into how it might be commercialized.

In one sense, the researchers are going where many scientists have gone before: Most famously, Nikola Tesla tried to set up a power-beaming tower a century ago, but was never able to get it up and running. One company, Splashpower, already offers a wireless recharging system, although you have to set your specially equipped gizmos right on a pad to fill them up with juice.

In another sense, the MIT technology - which depends on coupled magnetic resonators to send power more efficiently than can be done through inductance alone - pushes the envelope beyond what Tesla had in mind.

This week's reports indicated that the WiTricity transmission system had a power efficiency of about 40 percent over a distance of 7.5 feet. Kurs pointed out, however, that the efficiency rose past 50 percent if the distance was reduced to just below 7 feet - and that at closer distances, efficiencies of up to 70 percent were achieved. "That's competitive with rechargeable batteries," Kurs said.

The health issue will take a longer time to resolve. "Without a proper study, which includes effects of long-term exposures, it is inappropriate to make claims of safety for this," Frank Shellock, an expert on the issues surrounding magnetic resonance imaging, told me in an e-mail.

In response, Kurs told me that "the fields involved are much weaker than the fields that are involved in MRI." He pointed out that the emissions were well within IEEE's internationally accepted standards.

That's not to say that Kurs and his colleagues take the health questions lightly.

"We're not experts in physiology," Kurs said. "We agree that this is something that needs to be examined carefully. But even if it turns out that 1 mHz or 10 mHz is dangerous for infants, we can still tailor the system to work around that."

Over the past few days, Kurs has truly had to deal with questions about whether getting too close to the electromagnetic coils would make your head explode, or whether they could erase the data on a credit card's magnetic strip. He said his head and his credit cards were all safe, even though he was nearly touching the coils during the MIT experiments.

"There were no effects," Kurs told me. "Nothing funny happened, my hair didn't stand up. ... I had my credit cards. They were in my front pocket, which is a few inches away from the equipment."

For another perspective, I turned to Kelly Classic, media relations liaison for the Health Physics Society and a medical health physicist at the Mayo Clinic. Here's her e-mailed response:

"This idea is very interesting and fun. I know that I personally would like to have this available, especially for my laptop.

"I reviewed the materials and also sent them to one of our non-ionizing radiation specialists (his name is Ken Foster, but he preferred that conversations be between you and me) and here are some of our general thoughts (Ken also just wrote a paper on WiFi hazards, and his information sheet on this is on our Web site.)

"First, when we’re talking about health effects, it boils down to how much of the energy is absorbed in our tissue and is it enough to cause damage (by heating or another mechanism). So, most times when we’re talking about radiofrequency radiation (electric and magnetic fields), we talk in terms of a Specific Absorption or Specific Absorption Rate (SA or SAR). It’s a bit like ionizing radiation when we say you can be exposed to X rays, but how much was absorbed? It is the amount that is absorbed that is of interest for biological effects.

"From what we know, It doesn’t appear that human health effects would be an issue from the low-frequency field (10 MHz or 1 MHz) being discussed. These fields do not interact strongly with the human body and, according to their measurements, all of the fields (electric, magnetic, etc.) produced are below international safety limits for that type of field.

"They mention that in one of their experiments there was no interference with other devices (like a cell phone). This might need to be investigated a bit more, especially with respect to use in a medical setting. We’d want to know whether the field could cause an erratic response in some medical devices (i.e. pacemakers, EEG units). More recent reports about cell phones and Wi-Fi in medical settings indicate that they are not an issue in a medical setting, but this is a different frequency and it would be prudent to do some checking before its widespread use.

"The authors have a statement - 'The experimental setup radiates roughly 5 watts when transmitting 60 watts over a distance of more than seven feet ... this is equivalent to the power radiated by a few cell phones' - that is quite misleading, though we understand they are trying to relate this to a device with which we are familiar. But the application they are discussing, WiTricity, is a 'near-field' application, and talking about radiated power is meaningless in this context. These coils are not 'radiating' fields to the extent that someone standing at a larger distance is affected, and the number has no connection with the energy transfer. The comparison with cell phones is also misleading. The potential for biological effects is not even thought to be similar when comparing 10 MHz to the 850 or 1950 MHz of cell phones.

"There is also a misleading section when the authors talk about transferring 60 watts into the light bulb. It's really not clear how much energy was transmitted, but it was enough to power a 60-watt light bulb, and the energy transmitted to do that would not need to be much (essentially meaning that there isn’t that much energy 'freely roaming' between the transmitter coil and the receiving coil, which is also reassuring from a health effects standpoint)."

When I ran these remarks past Kurs, he responded thusly by e-mail:

"Concerning the power radiated: Devices containing alternating currents generally radiate, and ours certainly does. As Ms. Classic points out, this radiation occurs in the far field and is not relevant to health issues of humans standing close to the device. We mentioned the power radiated not because of its relation to health, but because it is considered as power lost in our scheme, and due to concerns about pollution of the electromagnetic spectrum. Note also that the 5 watts cited can be considerably reduced, as we point out in the article.

"About the amount of power transferred, we properly calibrated our experiment to make sure that the light-bulb was indeed being fed 60 watts."

You'd think this week's news would be heartening to any gadget geek. But our own gadget guru, Gary Krakow, isn't impressed just yet. In addition to the health issue and the efficiency issue, Krakow brought up a bigger philosophical point - which I'm sure Chris Eldridge and some of our other Cosmic Log regulars would share. Here's some of what Krakow had to say:

"The future of electricity is that our homes – and cars (Prius, etc.) will generate electricity for our own, personal use. ...

"My weekend home is cooled/heated by a heat pump – now 20 years old. I pay something like 40 percent of what a normal 'all-electric' house pays for air conditioning and heat. Just kick that idea 'up a notch' – put a small windmill (etc.) in your neighborhood for 20 to 30 homes – and you no longer need high-tension power lines.

"Those high-tension lines produce huge magnetic fields. How about the MIT guys standing under those to light their bulbs? They can also see what those fields do to the grass beneath the wires. ..."

So what do you think? Feel free to chime in on our discussion board or in the comments section below.

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Comments

To say that the coupled magnetic resonance being used does not affect biological tissue is wrong in general and unsupported at the specific frequencies. I've used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in research. This used a pulsed magnetic field to induce current into brain circuits, overloading them and effectively shutting them down. Magnetic fields have the ability to penetrate the tissues between the epidermis and cortex and so affect the brain directly, as opposed to electrical stimulation (as used in electroshock therapy) which affects all intervening tissues. TMS affects the brain without causing the widespread seizures caused by electrical stimulation. TMS originally still caused such seizures, but we've learned how to use it without this effect. Still, the mechanism of action remains to cause disruption. It's just that we can now focus a weaker field to a smaller area, and keep the resulting disruptions down to an area that causes a problem such as depression. With this in mind, it should be obvious that while magnetic fields might pass through some tissues, possibly harmlessly, it's the ability to pass through some that makes it of potential danger to tissues below.

The magnetic field does not get reduced (or do so only slightly) by the tissues, but this is not to say they are not affected. There is little to no published evidence of this, but as Sagan was fond of saying, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The same can be said of the effects of electromagnetic fields at 1 MHz to 10 MHz. Most of the literature describes research done at frequencies outside this range.

The comparison with magnetic resonance imaging is apt with respect to the technology, but not the effects on tissues such as brain cells. Such imaging is NUCLEAR magnetic resonance. The magnetic field causes changes in the spin of atoms. More relevant to the application here is the effect of magnetic fields, and the electrical fields (possibly) induced, to such things as neural membrane permeability (essential to brain cell firing), receptor sensitivity (affecting the ability of neurotransmitters to do their job) and the molecular bonds of any chemicals that happen to vibrate at that rate (analogous to microwave ovens exciting water molecules and thus heating and cooking things, including living tissues and breaking DNA). Studies at 915 MHz and 2450 MHz (as used in radio telephony) have shown damage caused, even at fairly low power densities (see Henry Lai's 1997 review of this literature at: http://www.mapcruzin.com/
radiofrequency/henry_lai1.htm).

It should also be noted that the magnetic fields used in MRI are massive, from 0.5 Tesla for smaller medical imagers to 5 or 7 Tesla for the few extreme research machines such as are used at NIH. (The Earth's magetic field is about 0.00005 Tesla) MRI magnets (a stationary permanent magnet which is part of the device, and an electromagnet that works against it during operation) can erase credit cards, pull surgical steel implants loose, and cause all sorts of other problems. The field being used by this power transmission system is nowhere near this strength, and so not of concern in that way.

It is not safe to simply assume that different frequencies do not have some effect. The MRI people understand well the concept of the "spikes" of reactivity of various substances subjected to magentic fields. We should assume there probably are such spikes for biological processes within the 1 Mhz to 10 MHz range. We don't know that, but we should assume it in order to develop testable hypotheses that we can disprove. This is the accepted method of science, the only way to prove the safety of the technology. And it SHOULD be proved, not assumed. This is the socially responsible way to do science. When someone can write a similar review article of various studies done on the frequencies in question and summarize the results, then we can have an answer. Until then we don't know.

In my opinion, based on more than casual familiarity with at least some of the relevant literature, devices like this should come under FDA testing. FDA regulates medical devices. Until the FDA is satisfied that a given device does not have notable biological effects, and so is not considered a medical device, it should be assumed that it might. FDA does not regulate cell phone use, but they do study it and keep an eye out for problems. The responsible thing to do with this technology would be to submit it to FDA for testing, before someone finds what they think is a problem and has this done anyway. The MIT team, and MIT itself, should well consider the effect of acting responsibly vs. not acting responsibly and a problem being found later, to their scientific reputations and social (not to mention financial) liability.

Dennis McClain-Furmanski, Dalworthington Gardens, TX (Sent Friday, June 08, 2007 9:15 PM)

"They can also see what those fields do to the grass beneath the wires. ..."

High voltage lines have to have regular maintenance to prevent overgrowth of the right-of-way. In some cases they just use a herbicide. I have never seen magnetic fields cause any effect on the plant life near it. I pass one on my way to work that runs through a cattle pasture. The grass is as green and lush as any other part of the field.

Todd, Natchitoches, LA (Sent Friday, June 08, 2007 9:57 PM)

I meant to add the "space solar power" angle as well. This is another realm of electro-nirvana that is being taken more seriously. Here's a trio of relevant links:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18056610/

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/post.html

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/
archive/2007/04/23/165659.aspx

Alan Boyle (Sent Friday, June 08, 2007 10:20 PM)

... And then there are the reports about acoustic heat engines:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/
dn12000-mini-heat-harvesters-could-be-new-energy-source.html

Alan Boyle (Sent Friday, June 08, 2007 10:22 PM)

Wasn't wireless power the cause of the destruction of the Earth in "The Quiet Earth?" Hope it was just sci-fi and not prophetic!

Bill Adams, Corpus Christi, TX (Sent Friday, June 08, 2007 11:49 PM)

I always find that Dennis from Texas writes very informative responses to your subjects, Alan. Magnetism, whether used to lift heavy loads of iron in iron foundries, or in little wrist-bands to combat arthritis, or hands-on globes to raise your hair in science exhibitions, is still working with an unknown quantity. New applications, like transmitting power sans electric cords, really do require a lot of testing, not just to make sure the methods 'works,' but to ensure the safety, short-term and long-term, of those who operate such machines.

But perhaps this new transfer technology will result in science learning much more about electricity and magnetism and their co-relationship. Perhaps that knowledge will lead to the ultimate elimination of the internal combustion engine and the relief of mankind from the threat of Global Warming in the future. If we survive that long.

Des Emery, St. Thomas, ON, Canada (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 12:42 AM)

Alan, I have to take issue with your comment that "Tesla tried to set up a power-beaming tower a century ago, but was never able to get it up and running.". In fact Tesla was able to get a small scale version of the system working in Colorado Springs. His results were so impressive that he was able to secure funding for the major project in New York from JP Morgan and other investors.

The system was based on resonant coupling and conduction through the Earth with a minor return circuit over the air, not inductive coupling. The receiving tower was meant to be built in Europe but Morgan withdrew the funding when he learned that the consumption would not be metered. This part of the story is disputed, with even Tesla praising Morgan's support in some of his lectures and writings, considering he needed his support this could be attributed to not biting the hand that feeds you. Tesla himself explains the workings of his system in his lectures and pattents. Those interested in reading Teslas lectures can find them here...

http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/contents.htm

His patents can be researched here...

http://www.keelynet.com/tesla/

The one I consider one of the most important and the one that should be more deeply investigated is this one...

http://www.google.com/patents?
id=MvdbAAAAEBAJ&pg=PP1&dq=
nikola+tesla+dynamo+electric+machine#PPP1,M1

It probably holds the key to drawing electricity from the environment by collecting the feedback of the opposite and equal reaction.

I hope that these guys are really successful and perhaps give Tesla's inventions exposure they deserve, hopefully enough for someone to learn how he was able to coax millions of Volts by using a few thousand Volts as leverage, a sort of electrical fulcrum.

GridFree, DFW, TX (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 1:52 AM)

There has been constant work on Tesla technology over the years and a Myriad of information available. For MIT to come out and say THEY invented it, as was first stated is wrong. To not include, or not draw attention to the thousands of enthusiasts and their experimentation, discussion and accomplishments is wrong. That it is said that Tesla did not achieve wireless energy transfer using the same methods is incorrect. What we have is a recreation of his work in a scaled down and usable form.

Everyone deserves credit here and more to the point Nikola Tesla deserves credit, not just MIT.

Yesiamstoned (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 2:01 AM)

We have created a technological society in which we are constantly "bathed" in electro-magnetic fields of varying strengths. I am unaware of any studies of the long term effects of the typical radiation levels people are subjected to especially in urban environments. Anecdotally, I have read of greater incidence of cancer associated with living near high voltage transmission lines. I live near Washington DC - every time I visit a physician near WTTG-TV - I'm reminded by my keyless auto entry device (it stops working) that the fields generated by proximity to WTTG's transmitter tower even affect keyless entry as far away as Sibley Hospital's parking area. (Typical TV transmission levels 5 megawatts?)

Has the FDA studied the long term effects of these high level radiation sources?
Does the FDA place "black warning" labels on the new 64 slice CT scanners now in use that I read generate 80 to 320 times the dose of a single xray exam?

I suspect that the public's health are more affected by these electro magnetic fields than by the MIT concept.

Query - what kind of power levels would need to be generated to run an entire household?

Rich Gallen, Sterling VA (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 2:10 AM)

Folks, back in the late seventies, in high school electronics, we used the power of an AM radio station seventy miles away to power a 60 watt light bulb - made a miniature Tesla coil - and heard about people getting charged for laying coils under high power lines, because it causes a detectable loss of wattage.

Jeffrey Hall, Allendale, CA (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 2:12 AM)

There's no reason to excited about this technology. It isn't really a new idea and any application is a long way off. Also, there are no indications that the materials used for the device are any cheaper and safer than normal electrical wiring.

John Berard, Charleston, SC (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 10:23 AM)

Don't forget our own U.S. military has demonstrated a wireless "weapon" that disables people by bathing them in just the right frequency and strength to make their skin feel like it's on fire. Ionatron's website says "Laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) weapons work like “man-made lightning” to disable people or vehicles that threaten our security. Man-made lightning is not new; it was first demonstrated in the late 1890s by Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the AC induction motor. The transmission of energy without wires is the heart of the concept—man-made lightning is nothing more than high-voltage discharge." I also seem to recall seeing black and white film of a military demonstration of wireless power transmission in the 50's using much bigger metal antennas from one mountaintop to another using microwave frequencies, I think. So, MIT has merely put a new spin on some old (and still inefficient) technology.

Jim Hawk, Washington, DC (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 12:58 PM)

Sorry I am not an electrical person just an average mother for whom this article has provoked alot of questions. Thanks in advance to anyone who answers them.

If all this power is freely floating arround us all the time isn't there ways to use this energy constructively? Right now with generation costs caps coming off eletricty production costs, caused by the price to generate electricty increasing, wouldn't this in effect then reduce electricty consumption and therby lower costs to consumers, as well as lowering the amount of fossil fuels need to produce the electricy and thereby helping with the greenhouse effect?

If the abilty to power a lightbulb from AM radio has been arround since at least the seventies what technical advancements are being made in this arena? It seems 7 feet is much less then 70 feet? Is it the radiation amount is less or is it the ability to be wireless energy for objects that are needing a higher more concentrated and continuous energy is needed. Is this new technoligy going to brodcast like Am radio or will it be something homeowners can use like solar panels?

M. Cheshire, Westernport, MD (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 1:32 PM)

I think if there was enough energy flying through the air to power lights and computers, it would cook your flesh.

James, Ashland, OR (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 5:57 PM)

On the one hand, I am always somewhat excited about new technology innovations with potential large-scale implications such as this one. On the other, while I am in no way a radical, conspiracy-theory type, I feel I was unfairly born into a world in the 1970's that already by then and immensely now is filled with electronic waves and that nearly the entire human race is broiling itself slowly in a mass experiment which I'd say has at least a 1% chance of leading us to circumstances much like those of the novel "The Children of Men," in which people become sterile. That this issue is not scrutinized, that the fda does not directly regulate cell phones and similar devices, and that the SAR numbers come from the cell phone mannufacturers themselves are obvious results of our free economy, which I am pleased with, but only so long as we distinguish freely roaming markets from freely roaming charges pouring out of the gadgets fueling the markets (usually only doing so at their inception before becoming commodotized, ubiquitous, and therefore more impactful). While experiments with cellphones and microwaves and the like seem to be inconclusive, does not our own intuition cry out to shield ourselves? For nearly 100 years now, people almost anywhere can turn on a radio and pick up a station because we are walking around in tainted air. I have no doubt whatsoever that this tidal wave of waves is affecting our dna over the long-term in some way, which the how it seems just as with global warming we would all rather visit one day than avoid. I can only hope we are giving ourselves superpowers lol, although because we can cook things with concentrations of these energies I unfortunately doubt this.

James Vaughn (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 6:10 PM)

@M. Cheshire:

It seems MIT(and many other) wireless electrical transmissions are using two coils(one a transmitter, one a receiver) that have been specially 'tuned' by winding the electrical coils with the exact same number and orientation of loops of wire to work almost exclusively with eachother at this low of a power. While something like a Tesla Coil requires many thousands of volts to operate(because the primary(tranmitter) and secondary(receiver) coils aren't the same length - usually some fraction of eachother to provide a large boost to the volts supplied)these don't require as much energy(or so it seems) because they send electricity at a slight loss(instead of gain)at a very specific frequency.

Cpt. Electricity (Sent Saturday, June 09, 2007 7:43 PM)

Silliest article I've seen lately. I've used an electric toothbrush that recharges when set in it's base by using a magnetic field. No wires, no electrical contacts, no magic.

Phil, Houston, TX (Sent Sunday, June 10, 2007 12:26 AM)

Tesla's "big tower project" out West was NOT completed because Westinghouse took away Tesla's R&D money, and then destroyed his tower-in-progress while Tesla was overseas. Westinghouse destroyed Tesla. Period. Read the books and watch those Tesla videos yourself. Then when he died, the US Government STOLD all his life-time engineering notes from his house - before Tesla's family members could pick them up. With greedy people running our country, EVEN TODAY, nothing good will ever happen. We are all doomed to as*holes and idiots.

FM, GR MICH USA (Sent Sunday, June 10, 2007 9:43 AM)

Anyone truly interested in knowing whether there are any health effects should bring me in for testing. I have Dystonia, which means I suffer from involuntary muscle spasms, mostly in my face and right shoulder. My wife and I, working with an expert in EMF (electromagnetic fields), have proven over the last 7 years that the involuntary spasms are a reaction to the electrical environment around me. For example, although my right shoulder has been raised up involuntarily in my house (or near or in any other building in the county I live in) 24/7 for the last 6 months, I can simply walk 30-50 feet away from my house out into my yard and the shoulder lowers back down and stays down until I get back close enough to the house. For the last 7 years, I've used the concept of a Faraday Cage to get relief from the spasms any time I want by going inside a screen enclosure. Energy frequencies hit the screen and spread out around it, failing to penetrate to the interior. I am also often able to control the spasms by using a frequency generator to introduce a new electrical field around my body that somehow counteracts the frequency or frequencies causing the involuntary muscle spasms in the first place.

Although there are many electrosensitives out there, what makes my case different than most is that you can see my body's reaction yourself. In other words, I don't have to tell you what I am feeling, you can just plainly see it, as opposed to someone who says they feel nauseous or have a headache. Turn on a vacuum cleaner near me and my face goes crazy. Turn it off and my face goes back to normal. The spasms start with the introduction of the offending energy, and stop when that energy is no longer present.

I'll gladly volunteer to participate in any controlled, scientifically monitored experiments on this wireless power transfer technology to see whether it affects "human health" - I have no doubt about the outcome.

I also have no doubt that I could select other individuals I know with dystonia and show that they would also react poorly to this power transfer system.

In my case, the reason that I have this electrical sensitivity is that my 7th cranial nerve (which controls the facial muscles) was damaged and regrew improperly. What used to be a "closed" neurological circuit has been compromised, and is now subject to interference from the outside. The most common offenders are fluorescent lighting systems, electric conventional ovens, and virtually any type of electric motor. I do not react to cell phones, presumably because the frequencies involved are in a much higher range than what typically affects me.

I dramatically improved my overall condition by removing the metal fillings from my mouth, which we believe were acting like antennas.

Tom Fleury (Sent Sunday, June 10, 2007 1:49 PM)

My Sonicare toothbrush recharges by electromagnetic coupling-there's a coil in the base and one in the toothbrush. This happens at 60 hz., and the coils are almost touching. The energy falls off with the square of the distance, though, which has been the major stumbling block in wireless power transmission. Apparently these MIT guys have found a way around it. 1 mhz is smack in the middle of the AM broadcast band, by the way. Someone living near a megawatt AM station would probably experience the same health effects (and be able to power their household for free?)

Jonathan D, Wailuku, HI (Sent Sunday, June 10, 2007 8:55 PM)

FM, GR MICH (thumbup)

I couldn't agree with you any more on this. US government robbed Tesls's work right after his death. Ironically, while the genius was alive, he couldn't get any funding for his great inventions. Those greedy bastards left him to die in poverty and robbed him afterwards!

Yes, with these people running our planet, we'll live in this primitive dark era for much longer than necessary.

B Zhao, London, UK (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 5:45 AM)

Wireless power is quite an idea but I, for one, do not wish to have my body continuously subjected to radiant power of this magnitude.

As far as I know, there have been no studies on the effect of long term exposure to such radiation, but I will bet the farm that if funded by the power vendor, any such studies will show that power to be harmless.

None for me, thank you.

Joe Uzzer (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 8:33 AM)

MIT has not done anything new NIKOLA TESLA was doing this almost 100 years ago. So give credit where credit is due. No breakthrough here, I have looked over dozens of news stories on this and no-one is mentioning TESLA. Time to do a better job researching your topics, try looking up Wardencliff tower, that would be wireless transmission of power through magnetic resonance.

Nikola Tesla, Boulder Colorado (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 10:49 AM)

Could magnetically resonant energy be generated from the Sun? I mean, aren't we getting a LOT of stuff from the Sun, other than heat and light? Solar power technology impresses my socks off but, is there also magnetic / RF spectrum energy that could be harvested? Anybody willing to (gently) respond to my very ignorant question?

Tom W, Wilmore, KY (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 12:00 PM)

Here's another news story related to MRI exposure (again, remember that the MRI field is much more powerful than the field that the MIT researchers are talking about):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19164082

... And here's another wirelessly powered lightbulb, that levitates to boot:

http://bea.st/sight/lightbulb/

Alan Boyle (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 12:53 PM)

Tesla, Smemsla. His work in advanced electromagnetics was hardly advanced. A little known secret that Jearude Claurent was working with magnetic field displacement technology in Germany about the same time Tesla was hyping up his new alternating current to the world. Jearude was working with electro magnetic field displacement, or matter transferrance. His lost journals, which only a select few are priveleged to ever see the light of day show that he discovered the frequency or wavelength of the classes of matter. That frequency was the blueprint for matter cohesion. This frequency, once duplicated and applied with the correct amplitude of power, and gyroscopic rotation (to create the field of transferrance) and then projected could carry matter from point a to point b. This transferrance would occur at light speed..distance was not an issue. From inches to parsecs. Does the machine exist?...Yes...somewhere in the world..No one has been able to decipher exactly where in the world his journal references.

PHD scientist...prefer to remain unnamed (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 5:23 PM)

Boyle, thanks for the second link. Interesting reading. Amazing, this was done in 2005. I wonder if the MIT guys have thought of what plagiarism might do to their careers. :) Just kidding, don't get your panties in a knot.

GridFree_Or_Die, DFW, TX (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 5:36 PM)

@ Tom W- The problem with getting magnetically-resonant energy from the Sun is that the Earth has its own magnetic field which (for the most part) shields us from the Sun's energy. The most obvious examples of this shielding effect are the Auroras Borealis and Australis- Northen and Southern Lights which are caused by charged particles bending around the Earth's field and interacting with nitrogen, oxygen and other atoms in the atmosphere.

There is a distributed computing project known as Spinhenge@home (http://spin.fh-bielefeld.de/) that is researching molecular spins and magnetic resonances.

@ the forum-
I work in the cell-phone world and we once had a site being erected at a church. The members of the church were very concerned about it and complained to their Pastor. The cell-phone service provider funded an EME (Electro-Magnetic Energy) Field Survey of the church and we had rather astonishing results. The test was performed with the cell site at full power; which was 50 watts per antenna at 1950 megahertz, four antennas each turned 90 degrees from the next so they covered the area in a circular pattern.

Fields adjacent to the tower were at approximately 50% of the maximum recommended safe continuous exposure level. Moving away from the tower, the fields fell to 20% within 50 yards and decreased substantially as the distance further increased. I cannot say at what point the fields were negligible since the survey only covered the church property.

We could not make the same claims when we neared the power lines overhead: at 100 feet from the lines, the power level was about 50% of the recommended exposure level but skyrocketed to over 200% when you were within 50 feet and 300% when you were directly underneath the lines.

Needless to say, the church members were happy about the cell site power levels but emphatically displeased with the local utility provider since the power lines run within 30 feet of the church's day care, nursery and school classrooms and were supposed to have been buried two years earlier.

KM, Southern California (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 5:57 PM)

It seems immature to adopt fancier forms of wireless power transmission such as this even when much simpler forms such as solar/light power are possible for individual devices. Devices could have their shells made largely of one of the many competing materials that absorb light and convert it to electricity. This should be sufficient to power small devices.

John Doe, Seattle, Wash. (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 10:32 PM)

KM, you just described what the problem Tesla had with Hertzian waves for communications.... they dissipate and lose their power very quickly. His system had minimal power loss at long distances because it didn't use the magnetic radiation, that was reserved for his motors. Theories say his system was using scalar waves. Not quite sure how that works but it seems promising. I've got to get more physics books. I wonder how JC Maxwells treatise on electricity explains it. Would be nice to understand his math and undo the damage done by Heavyside's simplification of his formulas. Perhaps Tesla understood the portions that were dismissed by Heavyside and others.

GridFree_or_Die, DFW, TX (Sent Monday, June 11, 2007 11:16 PM)

I agree with John Doe. As a society, we're looking at an ever increasing demand and decreasing supply of energy. To implement a system like this for some small niche applications might be ok, but widespread use of this is a terrible waste of energy when we should be concentrating on ways to conserve and more efficiently apply our precious supplys.

Onevoice (Sent Tuesday, June 12, 2007 1:09 PM)

If Tesla, and others, are right, the supply of energy is infinite, it merely has to be recognized and extracted. The only problem is that it would be difficult to comercialize and there is the main problem. All the big companies are looking for ways to integrate any new energy(electricity) generation system into the existing grid so they can charge out the wazoo for it. Tesla's ideas after the failure of the Wardencliff project changed towards microgeneration localized to the home or device. If the rumors about him making a Pierce Arrow run for a week on an electric motor and power generation device for a week without recharging are true, then our government is sitting on the technology to produce free energy and it is being held to protect 'oil industry interests'.

GridFree_or_Die, DFW, TX (Sent Wednesday, June 13, 2007 7:10 AM)

Jonathan D, Wailuku, HI -- "Apparently these MIT guys have found a way around it. 1 mhz is smack in the middle of the AM broadcast band, by the way. Someone living near a megawatt AM station would probably experience the same health effects (and be able to power their household for free?)"

I don't know about powering a household, but when I was a kid I'd build crystal radios, tune them into the loudest station I could find, then replace the headphones with a bulb or small motor. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to retune that old thing to a cell or FM frequency and hook up one of those "buck boosters" you see advertised for emergency cell phone power to charge some batteries. In fact, I may just try that this afternoon...

Alan Sheets, Loveland CO (Sent Wednesday, June 13, 2007 1:07 PM)

Folks, whoopee, they have reinvented an air core resonant transformer. Just about every aspect of this is well known. There are reasons that we don't do this:

-Poor efficiency (40% stinks, BTW).

-Large size needed to cover any distance (see their own pictures).

-Its already mediocre performance will tank if the coil alignment is not correct.

This technology is well known in electrical engineering, and is not that hard to analyze if you have the training.

John Glaser, Niskayuna, NY (Sent Wednesday, June 13, 2007 1:59 PM)

As has been stated, turn of the century scientists have not been given the credit they deserve for this discovery like Tesla, Marconi and Hammond, all pioneers in wireless power and transmission .. Also people forget about devices that were out years before that can do this .. With one Violet wand.. a small tesla coil device from the turn of the century and a 60 wt lightbulb about a foot away will light up. also note any large coil or tesla coil like device will light up any neon light bulb. Go to the Boston museum of science and see this.

Divitus (Sent Thursday, June 14, 2007 12:31 PM)

Hoo, boy. I suspect that the MIT researchers have no concept of the world of bogus science that surrounds them, nor the degree to which they have, uh, coupled into it with their wireless transmission scheme.

What they've done is not tremendously spectacular, and they acknowledge that; it's an engineering, not a science project. The reason that it's more interesting now than in the past is that we use a great many more hand-held, battery-operated devices _within our homes_ than we did a few years ago, and it would be nice to be able to operate these without having to fool with the batteries.

The technology probably can be made to work well enough, though the miniaturization of the coils would be interesting. They won't find any health problems because low-power rf doesn't cause any.

The fields between the coils are limited because the receiving coils, when properly loaded, produce fields that buck those of the transmitting coils. Again, this is hardly a new concept, only the narrow application is new. The researchers readily acknowledge this.

But what a flood of bogus science they've loosed. I'll bet very few people at MIT have any idea what Keelynet really is, or who Keely was, and they'd be simply horrified. And the shade of Nikola Tesla, who should have quit when he was ahead, poor guy.

There is a lesson to be learned from most of the forty-odd comments here, and it is mainly for the scientific/engineering community. Scientists and engineers are ignorant of ignorance. That is, they have little concept of how little the general public understands what they do, nor the degree of superstition that is associated with science and technology in general. Science writers and schools try to educate the public, such that they can, but nobody ever addresses the people on the other side of this particular canyon. In the harshest terms, it is a canyon with ignorance and superstition on one side, and arrogance plus a bit of a siege mentality on the other.

Attempts to bridge the gap are supported by neither side unless there's a book contract being offered: the public side likes bogus science books and movies with conspiracies thrown in, and the scientists are happier with books that try to popularize the more obscure aspects of particle theory.

The books make each side happy. The scientists enjoy being popular writers, and the people who write books about exploding nuclear power plants and the conspiracy to suppress information about the deadly electromagnetic fields emitted by vacuum cleaners feel that they're providing a much-needed whack to the arrogant scientific establishment. And both sides make money.

I suppose that this is nothing new, either; people railed against Edison a hundred years ago. It's just that I wish there was a way to help people be a bit less scared of their world, and that there was a way to make scientists and engineers a bit more generous with the knowledge they've distilled.

Mark Kinsler http://www.mkinsler.com

Mark Kinsler, Lancaster, Ohio (Sent Saturday, June 16, 2007 11:02 AM)

Witricity News, Experimental Videos And Information: http://www.witricitynet.com

Witricity (Sent Monday, July 16, 2007 2:02 PM)

Good hevans...

Wirless power transfer, additional conversions of energy from one form to another, and back again to get it to work for the device being powered sound like a hugh loss in an already poor efficiency system. The inductive charging princople like that produced by splashpower will knock overall system efficiency down to <<40%. A standard wall wart is about 80% efficient at best, the splashpad will probably still need one of these.. Also on the TESLA thing, how much power will have to be radiated to illuminate a 60 Watt bulb at 10 meters? good lord i thing it will have to be massive.

John, Cardif, wales (Sent Wednesday, August 15, 2007 8:15 AM)

Thanks to all that responded above. I missed "The Big Bang" this week and have finally gotten my fill of authentic scinece geek jibberish. I may survive until next week. I did like the idea Des had on replacing the internal combustion engine with induced and resonated power. Placing low voltage emitters in roadways and receivers unders cars, supplying direct power to the electric motor and maintaining the charge to the litium ion batteries might finally free us of $90 per gallon oil. It may also save our lives from the day we wake up and realize we don't have enough oil to make oxygen hoses, IV tubes, lubricate moving parts, produce cutting oils and all the other necessities that will be there long after we quit running SUVs at 15MPG.

Neal, Kokomo In (Sent Thursday, November 01, 2007 1:16 PM)

I would suggest to all if you have the time. Read some of his lectures. He comments on the problem of increasing human energy (ie. power generation). We fail to recognize what tax dollars have allready paid for and is open to the public. The Magnetosphere of the earth has shown that a magnetic field can absorb energy from high energy particles. Telsa's attempts were at manipulating the ionosphere and magnetosphere in the attempt to control this. There are many solutions to distribution of power. But the question folks is where the power comes from. I beleive this has also been discussed in this forum. But i must say bravo to these MIT groups. It has caused a wave of discussion and awareness as well as opening the flood gates of ignorance. But this should be the first step. The true goal, if we care for anything beyond our petty reality, i'd say its time for a global awareness to the current state of empire on this planet right now. To be able to come together to control such a delicate electronic masterpeice for capturing power as the earth or jupiter for that matter would be a spectacle that would put a tear in any inventor's eye. Especially Tesla's. He gave us the technology to do so.To learn more about this earth system simply search any search-engine and look for magnetosphere or ionosphere, or even HAARP.

Beanah Vulgaris (Sent Monday, December 10, 2007 4:07 AM)

to clarify, our tax dollars have paid for nasa to study the magnetosphere and ionosphere. Other global organizations study the ionosphere and solar flares for obvious power grid reasons. Also my description of power transfer suxored. But the bottom line is. Learn for yourself, and experiment.

Beanah Vulgaris (Sent Tuesday, December 11, 2007 1:16 AM)

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