Cooling PCs with a heartbeat

Japanese firm Eamex (Japanese product page) has developed a pump that they say could form the basis of anything from artificial hearts to liquid cooling systems for laptop computers. It uses a plastic that expands or contracts when a small amount of electricity is passed through it, on the same principle as artificial muscles. In a laptop, it achieves cooling performance that's 2X-3X better than conventional pumps, creates no sound or vibration, and can be made smaller and cheaper than anything around at the moment. And as the manufacturer notes, the operating frequency of 1Hz is close to the pulse of the human heart. Despite our status as willing passengers on technology's heady voyage toward the future, the idea of our laptop sitting there with its innards pulsing creeps us out just a bit.

[Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese)]