Can earth's (or a planet's) magnetic field be used to generate electricity ?

in

You need to have a coil move through the earths magnetic field to get any electricity, then the power comes from the effort required to move the coil, the earths field is changing very slowly however and this change would produce some electricity albeit exeptionaly small amounts.

Colin =^.^=

Grey Lensman by E E 'Doc' Smith (1951) They used, AFAIR, planets, with the the sun as a heater (not 6.3V) as the components of a triode as a weapon. (Don't tell GWB for heavens sake)

martin

Yeah how about deploying many many many many of these (tiny) devices ?

How much "power" would that generate ? ;)

Bye, Skybuck

At a gues i would say a lot less than is needed to recover the energy used to build them over their lifetime. polymer solar cells are probably a better bet.

any

Colin =^.^=

The Earth's core is soild Nickel and it has montians and valleys of it's own, there is no 2nd metal layer.

-- There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltechs, or the Mayans. Some believe that they may yet be brothers of man, who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens.

The Lone Sidewalk Astronomer of Rosamond Telescope Buyers FAQ

"The giant orb of iron and nickel that anchors Earth's center is spinning faster than the planet's surface, according to a new study that confirms scientists' expectations."

"Earth's core is made of a solid inner part and a fluid outer part, all of it mostly iron.

The solid inner core has an uneven consistency, with some parts denser than others, and this can either speed up or slow down shock waves from earthquakes as they pass through.

So the researchers speculated that if the Earth's inner core is rotating faster than the rest of the planet, then shock waves from waveform doublets would enter and exit through different parts of the core despite originating from roughly the same spot on the planet's surface.

By analyzing the minute changes in travel times and wave shapes for each doublet, the researchers concluded that the Earth's inner core is rotating faster than its surface by about 0.3-0.5 degrees per year.

That may not seem like much, but it's very fast compared to the movement of the Earth's crust, which generally slips around only a few centimeters per year compared to the mantle below, said Xiaodong Song, a geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an author on the study."

It makes sense that the inner core should be rotating faster, since the tidal drag from the Sun an Moon would have the most leverage on the outer part.

Double-A

It's been done in sci-fi decades ago. You run a couple of tethers with corona generators on the end, and just pick up DC in your satellite. Of course, since you're generating electricity, the energy comes from your orbital momentum.

No problem! Just put a couple of megawatts of solar panel on the station, and energize the wires, and you've got a motor!

Cheers! Rich

Un bel giorno Skybuck Flying digitò:

It has been done:

It's spelled Toltecs.

I had never noticed that before, I copyed it from another post, so it's fixed.

-- There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that they may yet be brothers of man, who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens.

The Lone Sidewalk Astronomer of Rosamond Telescope Buyers FAQ

___ NASA did this on one of the shuttle missions. Just let a long wire out that swept the earth's magnetic field, and generated enough induced current to melt and break the wire! Gelogical evidence shows that the earth's magnetic field wanders all over the place in terms of both pole position and strength. At times the NS poles lie at the equator. N and S will eventually trade places, and sometimes field strenth cycles through a 0 field strength period! All on a geological time scale, of course. Nothin to worry about for a while....... ___

Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabris, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.-- I have a catapult. Give me all of your money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.

Is the field stronger in space or in the inner core of the earth or maybe even on the surface of the planet or maybe in the air ?

Bye, Skybuck.

Unless you're talking about the poor bastards at the bottom of thier society who had to resort to earning a living by fixing the mistakes of the Tolengineers :)

H.

A few conditions have to be met :

-since only the derivative of a magnetic field generates a voltage, the rotation axis should be tilted to 90 degrees.

-The pickup coils are to be mounted on an external structure

Rene