The headline couldn’t be more attractive—“A Laptop 40-Hour Battery?” Alas, all this is just speculation raised from some juiced theoretical prototypes at the moment. Regardless, in the ScienceNOW article by Robert Service, a research team, lead by Yi Cui, a materials scientist at Stanford University, is cited as developing a battery anode from nanowire strands of silicon which can hold a charge up to 10 times longer than conventional carbon anodes. What’s holding this technology back from reaching your laptop’s battery? Designing a cathode that is equally able to hold a charge that is 10 times greater than current technology. Let’s just hope that these new 10x batteries don’t produce 10x-sized laptop fires.—Dave Prochnow