Wireless power technologies are moving closer to becoming feasible options.

PowerMat Wireless Charging Plate

A vision of our wireless future, courtesy of PowerMat. The company teamed up with Michigan-based HoMedics to introduce more than a dozen products at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

This year probably won't be the tipping point for wireless electricity. But judging from all the new techniques and applications of this awe-inspiring technology, getting power through the airwaves could soon be viable.
Fulton Innovations showcased blenders that whir wirelessly and laptops that power up without a battery at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this month. The devices are all powered by electromagnetic coils built into the charging surface, and there's not a plug in sight.

Fulton's wireless electricity technology is called eCoupled, and the company hopes it can be used across a wide rage of consumer devices. Fulton was one of half a dozen companies that wowed consumers at CES.
10 Wireless Electricity Technologies
ECoupled uses a wireless powering technique called "close proximity coupling," which uses circuit boards and coils to communicate and transmit energy using magnetic fields. The technology is efficient but only works at close ranges. Typically, the coils must be bigger than the distance the energy needs to travel. What it lacks in distance, it makes up in intelligence.
In conjunction with the Wireless Power Consortium, Fulton, a subsidiary of Amway, has developed a standard that can send digital messages back and forth using the same magnetic field used to power devices. These messages are used to distinguish devices that can and can't be charged wirelessly, and to relay informtion like power requirements or how much battery is left in a device.
Using this technique, an industrial van parked outside the Fulton booth at CES charged a set of power tools from within its carrying case. The van was tricked out by Leggett & Platt people )--a diversified manufacturing company based in Carthage, Mo., and an eCoupled licensee--and is designed to solve its customers' biggest headache: arriving at the job site with a dead set of tools. Fulton, which teamed up with Bosch to design the setup, already has test vehicles rolling around in the field and plans to sell them to utility and other industrial companies by the end of the year.

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Bosch Wireless Powertool Set The eCoupled setup uses a technique called close proximity coupling, so the devices can remain in their case while charging. Generally, the efficiency of the wireless-electricity transfer decreases with distance.

In another area of the vast CES show, cellphones, videogame controllers and a laptop charged wirelessly on a silver and black mat created by Boulder, Colo.-based WildCharge.
The mat uses a conductive powering technique, which is more efficient than inductive powering but requires direct contact between the devices and the charging pad. Though most of the mats or pads on display are intended to power only a handful of devices at a time, WildCharge says the product design is certified for up to 150 watts--enough to power 30 laptops.
Across the room from WildCharge, PowerCast displayed Christmas ornaments and floor tiles glowing with LEDs powered by ambient radio waves. The devices harvest electromagnetic energy in ambient radio waves from a nearby low-power antenna. Because of the dangerous nature of electromagnetic waves in high doses, Pittsburgh-based PowerCast is targeting its application for mall devices like ZigBee wireless chips, which require little power.
Perhaps the most promising wireless power technology was the latest iteration of WiTricity, the Watertown, Mass.-based brainchild of MIT physicist Marin Soljacic, on display in a private suite high in the Venetian hotel tower.
The technology uses a technique developed by Soljacic called "highly coupled magnetic resonance." As proof that it works, an LCD TV is powered by a coil hidden behind an oil painting located a few feet away. Across the hotel room, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler walks in the direction of another coil holding an iPod Touch in the palm of his hand. Power hungry, it starts to charge when it gets within two meters.
Soljacic has already earned a $500,000 genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work, but Giler said the technology is at least a year away. In the meantime, WiTricity has obtained an exclusive license from MIT to bring Soljacic's idea to market and hopes to have an estimated 200 patents.
But because Soljacic published his academic paper in Nature magazine, companies like Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) have been able to replicate the effect in their labs based on his principles.
Elsewhere at CES, PowerBeam showcased wireless lamps and picture frames. Located in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company uses yet another wireless-powering approach. Its technology beams optical energy into photovoltaic cells using laser diodes. Although the company says it can maintain a constant energy flow across long distances, the difficultly of targeting a laser means that it's not ideal for charging moving devices.
So, while 2009 may not be the year wireless electricity takes off, the nascent sector is certainly on its way.

Most intriguing extrasolar planets

The first planets outside our solar system were spotted in 1990, in orbit around a dying, radiation-spewing star very different from our Sun. In the years since, scientists have turned up even stranger worlds.

Starting in 1995 with 51 Pegasi b - the first extrasolar (or exoplanet) discovered around a normal star - planet hunters have found alien worlds that run the gamut in terms of diversity. There are large, gassy giants and small and rocky worlds. Some are two-faced worlds of fire and ice, and some float eerily through space, bound to no star.

In the dozen years since the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the number of known and suspected exoplanets has climbed to nearly 230. Here are some record holders and oddballs.
The first


The closest


51 Pegasi b was the first planet discovered in orbit around a normal star other than our Sun. The planet, a hot Jupiter, also goes by the moniker Bellerphon, after the Greek hero who tamed winged-horse Pegasus, in reference to the constellation Pegasus where the planet is located.
Epsilon Eridani b orbits an orange Sun-like star only 10.5 light years away from Earth. It is so close to us telescopes might soon be able to photograph it. It orbits too far away from its star to support liquid water or life as we know it, but scientists predict there are other stars in the system that might be good candidates for alien life.


Free floaters

There are known exoplanets that have one, two and even three suns. But one bizarre class of planet-sized objects has no suns at all, and instead floats untethered through space. Called planemos, the objects are similar to, but smaller than, brown dwarfs, failed stars too small to achieve stellar ignition

A zippy planet


SWEEPS-10 orbits its parent star from a distance of only 740,000 miles, so close that one year on the planet happens every 10 hours. The exoplanet belongs to a new class of zippy exoplanets called ultra-short-period planets (USPPs), which have orbits of less than a day.

Triple-Core Chip ADM

The announcement was a surprise, coming just a week after the major launch by AMD of its four-core processor, code-named "Barcelona."

It also goes against the industry tradition of doubling processing power with each new design. Single-brain microprocessors are giving way to dual-core ones, followed by quad-core, with eight cores due next from Intel.

But AMD on Monday quoted industry research that showed quad-core chips had only grabbed two per cent of the market since Intel first introduced them last November. In contrast, dual-core chips took 12 to 15 per cent of the market within the first two quarters of their release.

"We believe triple-core is the right product at the right time to serve a broad swathe of the market," said Bob Brewer, head of marketing and strategy for AMD's PC platforms.

"There's a space for it, it makes sense, it's naturally going to resonate with consumers."

AMD is still planning to introduce its "Phenom" quad-core processor for desktop PCs in December, but it will follow up with a triple-core version in the first quarter of next year.

"If the choice is say $200 for a dual-core [processor] and $400 for a quad-core, then if you can get $300 for a triple-core, it's like free money," said Nathan Brookwood, analyst with the Insight64 research firm.

AMD told reporters that the choice of single, dual, triple and quad-cores would simplify its product lines for consumers, who were confused by comparisons between clock speeds and the size of memory caches on the chips.

Mr Brewer said a triple-core chip would work well for example on a PC where a user was playing a video game such as Bioshock, which utilised two cores, and where an anti-virus programme ran at the same time using the other core.

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday confirmed that rumors of a triple-core desktop chip on its roadmap are true. The chip, which will be part of AMD's new Phenom desktop processor brand, will be released sometime in the first quarter of 2008, according to AMD executives.
It appears that Phenom, the new brand initially believed to be built solely around AMD's first quad-core desktop chip due out in December, will be marketed to enthusiasts, OEMs and the custom system builder channel in both mid-range, triple-core and high-end, quad-core flavors.

"Triple-core is the mid-range product for 2008," said AMD marketing VP Bob Brewer at a press lunch Monday in San Francisco.

Asked if most consumers wouldn't just opt for the full quad-core if they were upgrading from dual-core, Brewer said AMD believes a mid-range multi-core product could attract budget-conscious shoppers. He said that while technologists and industry experts might not grasp the value of a triple-core processor, that "this is something that naturally resonates with consumers."

"They see, quite simply, that 'n-plus-one' is better than just 'n'," Brewer said.

AMD had ample motivation to announce the triple-core Phenom news when it did. Internet rumors began building into a storm over the weekend. And Brewer admitted that the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker wasn't averse to taking some of the spotlight away from its main rival, Intel, on the eve of the Intel Developers Forum at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

The triple-core announcement seems like a particularly opportunistic stab at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip leader. Though Intel came out with its quad-core product last December, its current chip architecture makes the production of a triple-core chip impossible. AMD, with its native multi-core design featuring independent power supplies to each individual core on a die, can and apparently will produce one sometime early next year.