00:00Pretty soon, you'll be able to charge your phone in your pocket while walking around the house.
00:05And meanwhile, your electric car will refuel while just standing in your driveway.
00:11Power will run to all your gadgets through the air, without any wires whatsoever.
00:16I know it sounds a bit sci-fi, but scientists have figured out how to do it.
00:21Don't worry, they're not going to zap electricity through the air like lightning.
00:26Instead, they'll use something much safer, magnetic fields.
00:31Let's say you have a special coil of wire that makes a magnetic field when it gets power.
00:36If you bring another coil close to it, that second coil absorbs the energy and turns it into electricity.
00:44That means you can power things without plugging them in, like a light bulb that turns on all by itself.
00:50And according to scientists at the World Health Organization, these magnetic fields are completely safe.
00:57Now, I suspect you've already used an early version of wireless electricity.
01:03When you place your electric toothbrush on its charger, or the phone on the charging mat, electric energy jumps between them.
01:11There's a special coil inside the charger that creates an invisible spinning energy field when it gets electricity from the wall.
01:18The toothbrush, or phone, has another coil inside it that catches this energy and turns it back into electricity to charge the battery.
01:28This is called electromagnetic induction.
01:31But this method only works for short distances and wouldn't be useful for powering your entire house.
01:37Some companies are already working to make this technology perfect and accessible.
01:42One company has invented their method to send power through the air, called AirCord.
01:48They use it in real-life products.
01:51One cool example is tiny video screens placed next to products in supermarkets with changing images.
01:57These screens don't need batteries or power cords.
02:01Another gadget that's running on this tech is a smart lock designed by the same company.
02:06Normally, smart electronic locks need powerful batteries, but this one stays powered without a battery
02:13and gets energy from a wide-charge transmitter in the ceiling.
02:17That transmitter is like an invisible power outlet.
02:20It works similarly to a TV remote, where you use an infrared beam to control the gadget from a distance.
02:27In this case, the transmitter takes electricity and sends it to all gadgets that need power as an infrared beam.
02:34The transmitter analyzes each device to see how much power it needs,
02:40just like a Wi-Fi router manages the Internet for different devices.
02:44If no devices need power, the transmitter goes to sleep,
02:48but it wakes up now and then to check if anything needs charging.
02:53Nikola Tesla, a brilliant inventor and electrical engineer
02:57who made significant contributions to the development of electricity,
03:00would be really happy to see all this come true.
03:04He believed he could build a system that would transmit electricity and communication signals
03:09through the Earth's ionosphere all over the world.
03:13To prove his idea, he built a special Wardenclyffe tower in New York.
03:18His plan was to use the Earth itself like a giant electrical circuit.
03:23In 1899, Tesla traveled to Colorado Springs, known for its big thunderstorms.
03:29He built a lab there to test his wireless electricity ideas.
03:34The high altitude and frequent lightning storms made it the perfect place for his experiments.
03:39Then he returned to New York, and with money from a wealthy investor,
03:44he started building the Wardenclyffe tower.
03:47Tesla placed iron rods and copper plates under the tower to help send power through the Earth.
03:52There would be a huge metal dome on top of the tower.
03:56By 1902, the tower and lab were mostly built, but Tesla ran into funding problems.
04:03The Wardenclyffe tower never worked as Tesla had hoped,
04:07and in 1917, it was torn down and sold for scrap.
04:12In any case, Tesla's idea only worked for short distances.
04:16The farther the electricity had to travel, the weaker it became.
04:21Scientists needed a way to send energy over long distances,
04:24and they found two viable solutions in the middle of the 20th century—microwaves and lasers.
04:31In 1964, engineer William C. Brown flew a tiny helicopter for 10 hours using only microwave power.
04:40Then, in 1975, Brown and a NASA scientist, Richard Dickinson,
04:46sent 30,000 watts of power over a mile using a research station called Venus.
04:52But there was still a problem.
04:54Half of the power was lost before it reached its destination.
04:58Over the years, technology kept improving.
05:01Computers, lasers, solar panels, and transistors became more advanced
05:06and opened new horizons for wireless electricity.
05:09It could eventually help us switch to cleaner energy from fossil fuels like coal and gas.
05:16New Zealand-based company M-Rod uses power beaming technology
05:20that starts with electricity from the power grid and turns it into microwaves.
05:26These microwaves travel through the air from a sending antenna to a receiving antenna,
05:31which turns them back into electricity that we can use.
05:34But there's a problem.
05:36Various kinds of waves work in different ways.
05:39Microwaves can travel long distances without losing much power,
05:43which makes them great for sending energy to remote islands or factories.
05:47But if you try to send microwaves all the way from space,
05:51you'd need a receiver the size of a city.
05:54Lasers can make the energy beam smaller and more focused,
05:58which means the receiver can also be tiny.
06:00But lasers can be blocked by things like clouds, fog, or dust.
06:06Right now, power beaming won't replace power lines over huge distances.
06:10But it could be used for smaller projects like charging flying taxis and delivery drones in the sky,
06:17powering robots in cities and factories, and replacing backup generators during emergencies.
06:22Countries all over the world are investing in power beaming.
06:27Europe is focused on clean energy.
06:29The Japanese space agency hopes to have a giant solar power station orbiting Earth,
06:35collecting sunlight, and beaming electricity down to us by the 2030s.
06:39The space station could send one gigawatt of energy,
06:43as much as a big nuclear power plant produces in a year.
06:47The space power station is still a work in progress,
06:50but the technology is getting better and cheaper.
06:53So, in the future, we might have a world where there are no more tangled wires,
06:59no more ugly power lines, and even free electricity for everyone.
07:04Japanese scientists are now working on another groundbreaking tech,
07:08a special machine that can turn sunlight and water into hydrogen fuel.
07:13This clean energy source could one day power cars, homes, and even entire cities.
07:19The current reactor is as big as a small house.
07:22It works by using photocatalytic sheets,
07:26which act like tiny solar panels that absorb sunlight and trigger a chemical reaction.
07:32This process splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.
07:36It allows the hydrogen to be collected and used as fuel.
07:40Right now, the process isn't efficient enough to produce hydrogen on a large scale.
07:46Most existing methods of making hydrogen still rely on fossil fuels.
07:50But the scientists behind this new reactor found a better way.
07:55Instead of breaking water apart all at once, which wastes energy, their machine does it in two steps.
08:02First, it separates oxygen, then it collects hydrogen to make the process smoother and more effective.
08:08The team used a special photocatalyst that responds to UV light.
08:13And they found that under natural sunlight, the solar energy conversion efficiency was one and a half times higher than in the lab.
08:22In some places with stronger sunlight, the efficiency could be even greater.
08:27But still, at its current stage, the reactor only reaches about 1% efficiency, which is far too low for commercial use.
08:35Scientists believe that for this technology to become practical, they need to increase efficiency to at least 5%.
08:42To make this happen, they need better photocatalysts and larger reactors.
08:47And they would also need to find safe ways to handle a tricky byproduct, which is a highly flammable gas created during the process.
08:56But if they can boost efficiency, many scientists and companies will start mass-producing this technology, leading to clean, renewable hydrogen energy on a large scale.
09:08That's it for today.
09:09So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:14Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
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