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.
Anything is a better idea than this. An unpowered LED in a regular room will generate more electricity from light shining at it. An unpowered speaker in a normal environment generates more electricity from the sound waves that fall on it. A phone’s antenna will harvest more energy from the signal it receives.
All of these options are horrendously bad and inefficient ways to generate electricity, and still all of them are orders of magnitude more effective than that thing.