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In brief: A team of physicists believe it may be possible to harvest electricity using Earth’s rotation through its own magnetic field, and they’ve published a paper involving a test that appears to validate the concept.
The study, published in the journal Physical Review Research, builds on work the team conducted back in 2016 and an idea dating back to at least 1832. Using a cylindrical shell made of manganese-zinc ferrite measuring 29.9 cm in length and positioned at a specific angle (57.5 degrees), a voltage of 18 microvolts was measured. Normally, any voltage created would be canceled out by electrons rearranging themselves but this wasn’t the case with the hollow cylindrical shell.
When the cylinder was rotated 90 degrees, current went to zero. Rotated another 90 degrees, it returned but of opposite sign. Testing with a solid shell produced zero voltage at all orientations.
The physicists took every precaution to ensure no local stimuli influenced the test. The experiment took place in an underground, windowless laboratory with low 60 Hz and RF backgrounds, and under a limited temperature range. They were even able to reproduce the results at a second location, a residential building roughly 3.5 miles away from the lab. Also of note is the fact that the predicted effect disappeared when experiments were conducted in a Faraday cage.
The results are intriguing to say the least, but further study is needed.
Christopher F. Chyba, one of three authors of the study, admitted that the amount of electricity generated by the experiments was “miniscule” and that it might not even be possible to scale things up to a useful level. The tests were also conducted with a very specific set of requirements and materials.
The first thing that needs to happen, Chyba added, is that independent groups will need to reproduce – or rebut – their results. For example, testing in different environments could help determine if there was a hidden source of electricity that the researchers didn’t account for.
Image credit: Unsplash Community
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