Adapted by:
Juan Carlos López
Senior WriterAn engineer by training. A science and tech journalist by passion, vocation, and conviction. I've been writing professionally for over two decades, and I suspect I still have a long way to go. At Xataka, I write about many topics, but I mainly enjoy covering nuclear fusion, quantum physics, quantum computers, microprocessors, and TVs.
Karen Alfaro
WriterCommunications professional with a decade of experience as a copywriter, proofreader, and editor. As a travel and science journalist, I've collaborated with several print and digital outlets around the world. I'm passionate about culture, music, food, history, and innovative technologies.
In July 2016, American physicists Christopher Chyba of Princeton University and Kevin Hand of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory published a groundbreaking paper in Physical Review Applied. They proposed the possibility of generating electricity by harnessing the Earth’s rotational motion. Their idea required building a device capable of interacting with the planet’s magnetic field. At the time, very few scientists took them seriously.
Despite the initial skepticism, Chyba and Hand spent the next nine years developing their electricity-generating device to prove their theory. During this time, physicist Thomas H. Chyba, a researcher at Spectral Sensor Solutions in Albuquerque, joined the team. His company specializes in developing electro-optical sensors for detecting chemical, nuclear, biological, and radiological threats.
Chyba and Hand Were Right From the Start
In March 2019, the three physicists published a new paper in Physical Review Research, experimentally demonstrating that, as they suggested in 2016, it’s indeed possible to generate electricity from the Earth’s rotation. They built a device that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, similar to the one described in their previous work. The device is a cylinder made of manganese ferrite and zinc that functions as a magnetic shield.
To conduct the experiment, they oriented the cylinder north-south at a 57-degree angle, making it perpendicular to both the Earth’s rotation and its magnetic field. They placed electrodes at both ends of the cylinder to measure the voltage generated. The result: The cylinder produced 18 microvolts of electricity without an external power source.
The experiment conducted by these physicists demonstrated that the cylinder they designed generated 18 microvolts of electricity.
According to the physicists, the most plausible explanation for this electricity is the Earth’s rotation. When Chyba and Hand first proposed this idea, critics argued that any voltage produced would cancel out as the electrons repositioned themselves, generating an electric field. Their successful experiment, however, proves that capturing such a voltage is possible.
Although 18 microvolts is a small amount of electricity, the key takeaway is that the concept works. The team aims to scale up their technology to produce more electricity, potentially enough to be practically useful. However, it’s important to note that other scientists have yet to replicate their experiment, and additional testing is needed to confirm that the voltage wasn’t generated by an external source they may have overlooked.
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