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Scientists build device to harvest electricity from Earth's spin (www.earth.com)

submitted 2 days ago by noumenon@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Ah yes, so potentially planet bursts apart or at least there is some other horrifying cataclysm involving ever worsening earthquakes, or lessening which means pressure starts building up

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Nah, Earth's a giant blob of liquid with a thin skim of crust on the outer layer. If you apply a force that slows a portion of that crust, you're not going to affect the spin of the blob - you'll just push that part of the crust around a bit at most.

So apocalyptic earthquakes will shut this down long before you have any real effect on the day's length. (And that's a lot easier to recover from!)