eli5 why can’t we harness earths magnetic field to create electricity?

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From my understanding when a magnetic field passes through a coil it generates a current. What prevents us from being able to create a coil that can harness earths magnetic field to generate a current/electricity? Would it need to be huge? Is the earths magnetic field to low? Idk I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently and I just don’t understand why it wouldn’t work.

In: Planetary Science

10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You can, NASA has done a few experiments with what is known as an electrodynamic tether.

They can be used to generate electricity by extending a long conductive tether in orbit, the orbit lowers as the power is extracted.

They can also be used to raise a satellite’s orbit by feeding in power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether

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