Electro Harmonix (EHX) founder Mike Matthews is making headlines again, proposing a massive, decades-old energy scheme—but this time, it’s framed as the solution to the artificial intelligence (AI) energy crisis.
The company, best known for its legendary guitar effects pedals, baffled subscribers to its recent newsletter with a bold claim: it has a plan to tap the magnetosphere for a near-infinite supply of energy, specifically to meet the skyrocketing demands of AI data centers.
AI’s Insatiable Thirst Fuels Matthews’ Push
The core of Matthews’ renewed proposal, which echoes points he made in 2022, is the growing strain AI is placing on the global power grid.
AI Power Usage
AI’s extreme energy usage is a well-documented concern, far surpassing that of traditional computing. Forecasts suggest that electricity needs from data centers could double between 2022 and 2026 due to the sheer scale of AI operations.
“The increasing energy requirements of artificial intelligence datacentres redouble the need to figure out how to tap the magnetosphere’s energy,” the company’s communication suggests.
The Magnetosphere: Earth’s ‘Compressed Spring’
Matthews’ long-standing plan involves harnessing the potential energy stored within Earth’s magnetic field.
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The Mechanism: Energetic particles from solar winds—charged ions—collide with and compress the Earth’s magnetic field on the side facing the sun.
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The Analogy: Matthews likens the magnetosphere to a “compressed spring,” storing a huge, planet-wide amount of potential energy.
In 1999, Matthews wrote to NASA scientist David Stern seeking a calculation of this energy. Stern provided a rough, “back-of-the-envelope” estimate for the sun-facing side of the magnetosphere: $6.9 \times 10^{14}$ joules (or 690 trillion joules). While an immense figure, Stern admitted the calculation was inexact and an order-of-magnitude estimate—a crucial caveat for such a planetary-scale number.
EHX’s Bold “Space Wind Farm” Proposal
So, how does the guitar pedal company propose to capture this colossal energy?
Matthews outlines a mechanism involving:
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Partnering with organizations to deploy parallel satellites orbiting Earth at approximately 500 miles.
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These satellites would contain “electronics to build up an increasing oscillation,” designed by EHX and Bell Labs alumnus Bob Myer.
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The goal: to tap the energy 500 miles up, with initial applications including refueling spacecraft and supporting defense and cryptocurrency mining uses.
Skepticism and the Pseudoscientific Question
The proposal is, in a word, ambitious. Space-based energy generation transferred back to Earth remains firmly in the realm of science fiction. The fact that this “energy revolution” was communicated via an email blast to the guitar pedal community has left many subscribers scratching their heads.
Accusations of pseudoscientific thinking have plagued the plan, amplified by its massive scale and scattershot list of applications.
Adding to the controversy is the mention of Thomas Henry Moray, an inventor from the 1920s who claimed to have a device that extracted energy from “the metafrequency oscillations of empty space itself”—a concept similar to zero-point energy, which never materialized. Matthews’ release states that Moray inspired Myer and posits that Moray’s machine could have worked by tapping into the magnetosphere, a claim currently unverifiable.
Despite widespread skepticism and the low likelihood that the plan will be enacted, Mike Matthews remains passionately committed to his long-held vision for infinite energy—now repurposed as an answer to the AI power challenge.
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