(NaturalNews) Much of the technology we use in our daily lives was developed during a time when energy was cheap and seemingly limitless.

Nowadays, we realize that there are not only limits to fossil fuel-based power – which is still the primary source of electricity for many of us – but that there are other consequences associated with the wasteful use of such power.

This requires a rethink and subsequent redesign of technologies that we have come to take for granted.

A case in point is the standard electric clothes dryer found in most modern homes. The typical clothes dryer uses an embarrassingly huge amount of power to perform a task that once depended on solar and wind power – i.e. the clothesline.

Around the middle of the last century the clothesline was largely replaced by the bulky, power-gobbling clothes drying apparatus we know today.
 

Is there a better way?

Most of us may not have given the matter much thought, but finally someone has realized that there must be a better way.

The clever folks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (the same institution that figured out how to make plutonium out of enriched uranium, but I won't dwell on that) have developed a new clothes drying technology that uses sound rather than heat to remove the moisture from our t-shirts and socks, etc.

To be more precise, this new dryer design uses high-frequency ultrasonic waves to dry wet laundry – and the result is faster drying and the reduction of energy use by as much as 70 percent.

Oak Ridge researcher, Ayyoub Momen, who helped develop the ultrasonic dryer, said that the old technology, which relied on heating elements, "is energy-intensive no matter how you design it."

The ultrasonic dryer instead displaces water and turns it into a fine mist, using a "low-energy, high-frequency vibration."

It appears that the new technology will not only reduce drying time, but will also save consumers millions of dollars and even create new jobs.

From the Daily Mail Online:

"According to the US Department of Energy, ultrasonic dryers could save consumers up to $900 million over the course of 10 years.

"And manufacturing the machines would also create 6,350 jobs in the nation.

"Momen expects his ultrasonic dryer will cost consumers about $500 and cut down the nation's spending by $9 billion."

And there's another fringe benefit: The ultrasonic dryers won't make your clothes shrink.
 

But is it safe?

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade (or laundry, as the case may be), but in researching this subject I ran across a sentence in the related Daily Mail article stating that the "intense vibrations" produced by these dryers are too high-pitched for even dogs to hear.