Cool, Cooler, Cooliest

Hey, look! It's a heat sink shaped like a fan, or it's a fan made like a heat sink! Yes, it's two devices in one! It's a combined heat sink and fan for personal computer CPU chips. Now wait a minute Bucky, if this thing is rotating, which it is, how do you get the heat from the CPU (which isn't rotating, being as it is connected to the motherboard by a couple hundred wires) to this fancy schmancy new combo heat sink and fan? That's the trick, isn't it? I read all about it, and I'm still not sure. This is what I got: there are two parts, the rotating heat sink and fan combo, and the stationary part, which is basically a flat heat pipe that sits on top of the CPU. The heat pipe is really flat, and the bottom on the impeller is also very flat. The two parts are separated by a very small gap, about one one-thousandth of an inch (0.001") and somehow the heat from the CPU is transferred across this gap. Whether it is by radiant energy or by convection I am not sure, but they seem pretty confident that it works. Might start seeing them in everyday computers before too long. From Scott.