Sand-based battery lasts THOUSANDS of hours

You can't recharge it - yet anyway - but a new battery designed at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel could revolutionize everything from cellphones to electric cars. Prof. Yair Ein-Eli (pictured) worked for almost three years with partners in the United States and Japan to develop the battery which gets its power from, of all things, silicon from plain ol' sand. The new battery is said to provide constant power for thousands of hours, is extremely efficient, and is already drawing considerable commercial interest. It is also very safe on the environment.

Sounds like a winner to me. We could soon see the day when these things are powering our cars... and we can then tell OPEC, literally, to go pound sand :-P