Is there any way to make the Earth into a giant electric motor / battery?

a magnetic field is present

spin is present

Here is the previous recent thread on this topic
http://tokyo3.org/forums/holiday/?main=http%3A//tokyo3.org/forums/holiday/topics/7628/

Using long cables located on land seems more interesting to me, but the consensus on SciForums (from 2005) seems to be:

“There are thousands of miles of conductors running north-south such as telephone wires etc. We see fluctuations on these, but not enough current to be very useful. “

Tidal power probably has a lot more potential.

CrazyNeutrino said:

Is there any way to make the Earth into a giant electric motor / battery?

a magnetic field is present

spin is present

no

wookiemeister said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

Is there any way to make the Earth into a giant electric motor / battery?

a magnetic field is present

spin is present

no

How about tapping tectonic pressure to create energy?

Postpocelipse said:

wookiemeister said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

Is there any way to make the Earth into a giant electric motor / battery?

a magnetic field is present

spin is present

no

How about tapping tectonic pressure to create energy?

A little hard to control.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Postpocelipse said:

wookiemeister said:

no

How about tapping tectonic pressure to create energy?

A little hard to control.

There are a variety of tectonic sheers to choose from. Starting with defining these and defining the challenge presented by each would at lest be interesting. Obviously tapping thermal systems would be simpler. Would the tectonic action around turkey be less difficult to do something with than others?

CrazyNeutrino said:

Is there any way to make the Earth into a giant electric motor / battery?
a magnetic field is present
spin is present

As I said before the answer is yes, but only at the expense of loss of spin kinetic energy. So what it’s really doing is converting kinetic energy into electrical energy. It isn’t creating energy out of nothing.

That said, satellites frequently extract energy out of the Earth’s magnetic field. Only a small amount, but enough to stabilise satellite orientation. See
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetorquer