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.
Imagine scaling it up to infinite, like say you could get 30 million wind turbines tall enough to be directly in the jet stream. That’s going to affect other things. It’ll slow the jet stream or make it move. It’s resistance, and if you know your physics, you know that any kind of resistance is going to effect other things. Hell, large dams and tsunamis change the earths rotation. Yeah the effect is small with things like resistance power, but if you ratchet it up, and over time? Yeah, it’ll change things in unexpected ways. Maxing solar is of upmost importance.
Is It possibile to scale this effect to such a level that it would result in real problems being produced? What will be the amount of such turbines required to significantly modify the earth’s rotation in a dangerous way? Does the earth have enough surface to host such an amount of turbines?
What he’s saying is essentially “inevitably, yes”.
But… none of us have a crystal ball. We can try to make good predictions, make choices based on reason, but ultimately, we’ll just have to wait and see.
The questions I pose are to understand whether what is saying is actually a threat or just some scaremongering.
I do not know the answers, but someone might and that would be interesting.
Yes indeed we can, and we should before we claim something will become inevitably a huge problem. There currently is no such problem, and such calculations should not be that difficult to do within our theoretical frameworks.
Well, only if it scares you 😉.
But seriously, I don’t think It’s really anything to worry about. It was pointed out that other forms of energy generation, like wind or tidal, or hydroelectric can have this same effect of slowing planetary rotation (Hydroelectric has actually had measurable effects on the rotational velocity, there were studies). Likewise, geothermal power accelerates core cooling (nominally). Which ultimately could also mean our demise. So we don’t really have better options.
But all of this is so long term, none of it would matter for hundreds of thousands of generations of humans. And to be quite honest, I will assert right now that in hundreds of thousands of generations, the human race will have both different means of power generation and different planets to live on. (Or we won’t still be around and it’s all moot.)
So no, no reason for anyone to worry about this, maybe ever.