Christopher Chyba held a hollow, dark cylinder made of manganese, zinc, and iron in his Princeton lab, looking skeptically at the tiny voltage his instruments were detecting. It seemed too simple — and perhaps too strange. Without moving parts, batteries, or solar panels, he was apparently drawing electricity directly from Earth’s own spin.
“It seems crazy,” admitted Chyba, a physicist at Princeton University. But crazy or not, his experiments suggest something remarkable: the possibility of harnessing Earth’s rotation and magnetic field for electricity.
A Different Spin on Impossible Physics
Humanity has harvested power from wind, water, and sunlight. But extracting energy directly from the rotation of our planet itself — from the very cycle that drives day and night — has always seemed a bridge too far.
The idea behind Chyba’s experiment was seeded nearly a decade ago when he first studied how distant moons would heat as they sliced through their host planets’ magnetic fields. Could something similar happen here on Earth, Chyba wondered?
In theory, as Earth spins through its magnetic field, any conductive material placed on its surface should experience a force that nudges electrons, creating a current. Yet this doesn’t happen normally, because electrons quickly rearrange themselves, forming an opposing electric field that neutralizes any current before it can be captured.
We have known this much at least since 1832, when Michael Faraday, the father of electromagnetism, tried and failed to extract power from the planet’s magnetic field. His experiments suggested it was impossible.
However, Chyba and his colleague Kevin Hand, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, claim Faraday’s experiments relied on assumptions that might not necessarily be correct in all circumstances. If a device were made of the right materials and shaped just right, it could circumvent the limitations Faraday encountered. That’s because Earth’s magnetic field, which is generated by the churning of molten iron in the planet’s core, isn’t uniform. It has both symmetric and asymmetric components. But, as Earth spins, this symmetric part, which aligns with Earth’s axis of rotation, can remain steady, creating a potential source of energy.
A Tiny Current, a Big Idea
To exploit this loophole, the researchers devised a hollow cylinder made of manganese-zinc ferrite. This material is both slightly conductive and magnetically shielding. And this structure can disrupt electron rearrangement.
Chyba and his team tilted the cylinder precisely at 57 degrees, orienting it perpendicular to both Earth’s magnetic field and its rotational motion. Electrodes attached at each end measured an unmistakable — but minuscule — direct current voltage of about 18 microvolts. Rotate the cylinder 90 degrees, and the voltage vanished. Reverse the cylinder, and the voltage flipped. Control tests with solid cylinders produced no voltage at all. The device was carefully shielded from external interference, such as temperature fluctuations and background electromagnetic noise, to ensure the results were accurate.
“It has a whiff of a perpetual motion machine,” Chyba told Physics Magazine, acknowledging the skepticism his results would inevitably invite. But the physics, he insisted, was sound. The electricity, though tiny, genuinely appeared to flow from Earth’s spin.
The current generated by the device is proportional to its size and the strength of Earth’s magnetic field, which is relatively weak. To produce meaningful amounts of power, the device would need to be much larger or made of materials with even more favorable properties. The researchers speculate that future versions could be miniaturized and connected in series to amplify the voltage, or deployed in space where Earth’s magnetic field is stronger.
But even if the technology never becomes a major source of power, it could still have practical applications. For example, it might be used to create “batteries” that require no fuel and never wear out. So, they could provide a steady trickle of electricity for low-power devices. That may be appealing in space, although one wonders if a solar panel would do the trick better.
Expected Skepticism
As one might expect, the findings drew immediate attention but also scrutiny. Yong Zhu, a microelectronics expert at Griffith University in Australia, says “There are so many factors that can produce microvolt signals,” from temperature variations to hidden currents. Zhu insists more rigorous testing is needed before he’s convinced.
Rinke Wijngaarden, a retired physicist previously at the Free University of Amsterdam, previously attempted similar experiments without success. Wijngaarden remains unconvinced by Chyba’s theory. “The observed voltages are so small that there are many potential spurious causes available,” he cautioned, although he praised the experimental setup by the Princeton team.
Yet even if you’re a skeptic, you can’t help but feel fascinated. Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at Aix-Marseille University in France, noted that traditional physics seems to forbid such an effect. But, intriguingly, he added, “Maybe there is a subtler version of the argument that rules out this possibility; I do not know. In any case, it is a very interesting story.”
Chyba welcomes this scrutiny. “The next step is for an independent research team to reproduce the results,” he explained. The possibilities may be worth it.
The findings were reported in the journal Physical Review Research.
