A Princeton-led team has built a tabletop device that generates voltage directly from Earth’s rotation through its magnetic field. While the power output is orders of magnitude too small for practical electronics, the breakthrough suggests Earth’s spin could someday provide constant, fuel-free energy if the effect scales up. The team is now calling for independent labs to reproduce the results.
I held bent paperclip up in the air just now. I’m electricity science man!!!
For a fraction of the cost of what it would take to make this possible, we could have every desert on the planet blanketed with solar panels and have enough energy for 100 civilizations.
All we need to do is bury about 100 individuals that are determined to fuck it for the rest of us.
I have a feeling covering deserts with solar panels will have some sort of negative impact on the environment. Those are habitats too, although inhospitable to most organisms.
Still, I see you point. It makes more sense to invest in green energy sources we know work and are already cheap. A combination of wind, solar, and hydro should be more than sufficient to supply the world’s energy needs. Although I still think we should be investing heavily into cold fusion research, because that’s still the holy grail.
Oh great, I’m sure absolutely nothing can go wrong if you scale this up to meet humanity’s growing demand for electricity.
It’s free energy!There is already tidal power generation slowing down the Earth’s rotation, though not by much.
Oh this will be fun! But I wouldn’t worry we going run out of drinkable water by 2040, so we don’t need to worry about this.
Futurama did it first, and it didn’t go well.
Nikolai Tesla theorized this 100 years ago. The plans that explain how his Wardenclyffe Tower was expected to work for data transmission were found, BUT he has said there was a secondary purpose for generating power from the Earth’s magnetic field and core rotation that he never detailed. I dont think they ever got that far, but he was clearly aware that the Earth’s magnetosphere was not the only generated sphere that was useful.
Pretty much what Tesla said.
