…that doesn’t need batteries. Seems like it would have applications for the outer solar system.
I have to say, after reading decades of science fiction, that it does feel like the future is arriving. For better or worse.
[Update a while later]
3-D printed magnets.
“If we were to draw energy from a typical AA battery based on this design, it would last for a billion years,” according to Lee.
When I first read this, I wasn’t very impressed. Then I realized I had misread it. I thought he had said a million years.
AKA A perpetual motion machine. 😉
In other news, I hear that the CPUs for the Samsung Galaxy S8 will use a 10nm process. Off the top of my pointed little head the theoretical limit is 7nm, so I think the future of Moore’s Law is starting to look questionable.
What about the Mercedes AA Class luxury automobile?
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/new-mercedes/3021121
“AKA A perpetual motion machine.”
Perpetual motion machines — machines that will cycle forever (or for a very long time) due to (almost) no friction or other losses — are perfectly possible. The problem with them as a concept is that no sooner has someone found such a (lossless) endlessly cycling system, than folks seek to try to suck energy from it to power their house or civilization — whereupon the “perpetual motion machine,” of course (unless it’s got the intertia of a planet behind it, as in gravitational assistance), promptly coughs, chokes, and seizes up dead.
This kind of transistor would be ideal for killer robots that have to keep focused on killing humans in the absence of a reliable power source.