Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Waldo & Magic Inc?

Robert Heinlein wrote a novella many years ago on the premis that wireless electrical power had become commonplace. Among other things there turned out to be problematic health effects from the amount of energy being accidently absorbed by the human body.

I hope some of the people testing this:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/02/wireless.electricity/index.html

are up on their Heinlein. High levels of RF energy - of just about any radiation, in fact - are very bad for the human body. Magnetic fields can be a problem too, though I expect most of the problems there would be due to modern personal electronics being minimally shielded. Trying to power your brand-new wireless powered phone and... ZZT! You just killed your old-school battery powered PDA.

2 comments:

Chris said...

So I should get out my lead suit? As I recall that's what the doctor in the book used.

Gridley said...

I seem to remember a lead overcoat, but it has been a while.