My Stupid Question, please don't laugh:
If you did this on a massive enough scale, to generate serious amounts of power, would that accidentally slow the Earth's rotation down over time?
If you did this on a massive enough scale, to generate serious amounts of power, would that accidentally slow the Earth's rotation down over time?
Given a field generated by asymmetric rotation of the molten core at the center of the Earth, 'shorting it' (apply a load) would presumably affect the core's rotation. In terms of relative energy however, the poor coupling at the surface would suggest that this would be a very challenging way to divert any meaningful amount of power from the core itself. It would however have to deal with points in time where the core reverses its magnetic field. The papers on core reversals are fun to read.
I think more usefully, the presence of the voltage, might be an interesting way to localize one's location and orientation.
I remember brainstorming "off the wall" power generation ideas and one that has yet to be realized would be to inject dust ahead of a wind turbine with a collector in the back. Then using the Van DeGraf effect to generate power instead of lightning as it currently does.
The main problem is that locally measured Earth magnetic field varies on a daily basis and is strongly influenced by solar storms.
A better alternative is to use variations in Earth gravity to improve inertial navigation. That vastly more stable.
"We previously showed that even in an extreme scenario where our civilization somehow would obtain all its electrical energy from the effect described here, Earth’s rotation would slow by <1 ms per decade [2]."
But I think if you do the math, it would be absolutely miniscule.
Actually, after some quick googling (so, maybe someone actually knows better) it seems like this is an issue where there’s an active discussion? Maybe somebody actually involved in the field knows more.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004JD00...
https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/3/79/2012/esd-3-79-2012....
But that came out in 2012. I bet you could find some other article citing it, as rebuttals.
It seems a bit implausible to think we could somehow pull enough energy from the wind to really matter, but then again carbon based climate change also seemed a bit implausible so, I guess, who knows?
I'm not an EE, but isn't this related to Tesla's last invention which bankrupted him - I believe he was working on electricity generation from thin air.
But this paper seems to imply that Earth, isolated from evening else in the solar system, could be made to slow down. This does seem like a violation of conservation of angular momentum...
I think the energy comes from weakening of the magnetic field and the energy stored within it, not from slowing down earth rotation. Earth as the result may rotate faster as the moment stored in the field will be transferred back to Earth as in the example with a sphere from the article.
This would not be good...
Don’t remember, exactly. It was a while ago.
No. Incidentally :)