The mess of electrical cables that recharge our laptops, mobile phones and PDAs could soon disappear altogether -- at least according to a team of US physicists, who have shown how power can be transmitted without wires using special "resonant" antennas. The researchers used the system to power a 60-W light bulb placed two metres from a wireless transmitter, and say that it could be scaled down for use in portable devices without a loss of efficiency (Science Express doi: 10.1126/science.1143254).