Four articles this month, though I have to admit that they’re more about technology than general science. The first and potentially most exciting of these is the news of Intel’s demonstration of technology to transmit power wirelessly. Personally I’ve always wondered when we would get around to accomplishing this. After all, in science-fiction shows like Star Trek, you never see long trails of wiring all over the place. Now that wireless transmission of data is easy, power cords are number one source of ugliness and mess with tech gadgets.

Anyone who’s watched Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige would also know that Nikola Tesla achieved this late in the 19th century. However, as the article explains, the trick isn’t in simply transmitting it, it’s in doing it safely and efficiently. The article talks about installing the system in airports and offices, but if it becomes cheap enough I can’t imagine why ordinary home users won’t want to be able to do away with pesky electrical wires as well. Still, our current troubles with neighbors stealing bandwidth from wireless networks are bad enough, just think about how troublesome it would be if your neighbors could steal your electricity supply as well!

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