So what do you all think about Steorn?

[Mike C]

They have been making some buzz around the net as of late. I´m looking foward to the results. If confirmed, oil is going to get real cheap real quick!

http://www.steorn.net/frontpage/default.aspx?p=1

[XYNaPSE]

I have a friend thats been working on Ed Leedskalnins magnetic perpetual motion. It's pretty interesting to say the least. hopefully its not a hoax because this would solve some major problems. I'll be waiting for September to come around to see if its true or not.

[XYNaPSE]

Heres a good article that talks about Steorn.

http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020505,39281444,00.htm

Steorn's free energy seems curiously expensive Rupert Goodwins (mailroomuk@zdnet.com)
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/b.gif
ZDNet UK
August 22, 2006, 10:35 BST
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http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/b.gif http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/z/gl/tbk/talkback.gif (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/?PROCESS=post&AT=39281444-39020505t-21000010c) Tell us your opinion! (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/?PROCESS=post&AT=39281444-39020505t-21000010c) Amazing claims require amazing proof. A good Web site, top-notch PR and costly adverts don't quite measure up http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/b.gif

http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/b.gif http://www.zdnet.co.uk/i/z/ads/ha/2006/05/jobsite/images/336x280-zd.gif
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e.g: "IT Manager", "Programmer"


(http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/)http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/ad/mpu.cms.zdnet.co.uk/insight/comment;sz=336x280;csize=Toolkits_:_Recycling_and_ Sustainable_Technology;channel=insight;var1=commen t;var2=;pagetype=story;ptile=2;dcopt=ist;ord=2400? http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/b.gif http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/b.gifhttp://comment.zdnet.co.uk/i/z/gl/ad-str-148-up.gif In spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. In late summer, though, it's more a case around here of what on earth to write about. It is the journalistic silly season, when everyone's on holiday and nothing's really happening until September.
Canny people know how to fill that space. One lot who got the timing just right is Steorn, a company apparently composed of three people working from a business park in Dublin. Flicking through the seasonally adjusted pages of an anaemic edition of The Economist last week, I saw their full page advert claiming a "blasphemous" breakthrough in energy generation. Thence to their Web site, which is a creditable production (http://www.steorn.net/frontpage/default.aspx) saying the company has a small bundle of aluminium, motors, disks and wires that effectively produces power out of nowhere. Interested scientists are invited to apply to become part of a panel of 12, which will then be asked to test the device.
Coo. And Steorn is putting its money where its mouth is. A full-page advert in the Economist costs many tens of thousands of pounds. The Web site is very professional, and the London PR company (http://www.citigatedr.co.uk/) involved is one that also handles ITV, Halifax, John Lewis and others of that stature. This is a substantial investment — and, since it doesn't seem aimed at selling anything, inviting investment or producing anything measurable, it's a huge chunk of their own money in what even the company will cheerfully admit is a PR stunt.
It is also pseudoscience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience) of the highest order. The general idea has been around (http://www.zpenergy.com/) for a while and has spawned many impassioned claims: you spin magnets around in a clever way and get more energy out from a system than you put in. This is generally agreed as impossible: it's perpetual motion, it breaks the laws of thermodynamics, and in the long and gaudy history of pseudoscience it ain't never worked yet. Which is not to say it never will: science is full of astounding discoveries that turn the accepted truths on their head. History is also full of total balderdash masquerading as science.
Fortunately, there are easy ways to tell pseudoscience: grand claims with no way to verify them, important facts that are alluded to and not presented, claims of conspiracy or closed-mindedness by the scientific community, production of claims by press release rather than scientific papers. Steorn more than fulfils all of these: it is, by any objective test, pseudoscience.
So what on earth are they playing at? In a long and very impassioned phone call with Steorn's chief executive Sean McCarthy, I had some theories flatly denied and others half-confirmed. It is not a teaser for an Xbox game It is nothing to do with a TV programme It has nothing to do with promoting anti-fraud systems (Steorn's corporate history is in detecting and preventing high-tech fraud), which was my personal favourite.
The official story — and one they are at pains to emphasise — is that the idea of convening a panel of 12 top scientists to do secret tests is the best way they can think of to get their ideas accepted by the scientific community. Time after time, McCarthy said, they'd tried to get people to look at what they were doing, but nobody was prepared do so. Those who did refused to go on the record.
None of this makes sense. Here's why.
There are two sorts of scientific discovery: the predicted and the unpredicted. Predicted is great: you have a theory, you come up with some physical ramification of that theory...
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[NorthQuad]

If you want to see people get wacked, wait around and watch these guys disapear from the planet. First thing that comes to my mind when I hear "free energy" is collapse of world market.

[Mike C]

That issue came up when I read there chat session which is on their site. I´m sure they will cross that bridge if they ever get that far. Even if they get wacked, the patents can be seen (if they get approved...more conspiracy). Goodwins is pretty skeptical, as most people should be based on these claims. It doesn´t seem good enough for him however that the jury of 12 is going to get the job done. He uses words such as "handpicked", which suggests manipulation and favoritism. Me thinks the man owneth a bunch of BP stocks.

NorthQuad I wonder about the collapse theory. Even if this invention pans out, it´s going to take some time for it to appear...but not too long. The oil industry will take a hit just like the whaling industry did from the past.

I just got my hands on one of these everlasting flashlights that need no batteries. Pretty cool.

Flashlight (http://wonderfulbuys.com/everliteflash.asp?tag=egtp2&prod=3-005130)

[artsyguy1954]

If you want to see people get wacked, wait around and watch these guys disapear from the planet. First thing that comes to my mind when I hear "free energy" is collapse of world market.

Hahaha, I was thinking the same thing. Not good for capitalism. (For Alberta's sake, let's hope this Irish start up company and its 'perpetuum mobile' is nothing more than a bunch leprechauns running around inside a hamster wheel. lol:zombie: :D ) OK, this is the worst case scenario. Best case scenario is : Exxon/Mobil comes along and buys this company and its patent and makes it disappear. This way, nobody gets hurt. (This is assuming that there is something to this technology.)

[XYNaPSE]

Hahaha, I was thinking the same thing. Not good for capitalism. (For Alberta's sake, let's hope this Irish start up company and its 'perpetuum mobile' is nothing more than a bunch leprechauns running around inside a hamster wheel. lol:zombie: :D ) OK, this is the worst case scenario. Best case scenario is : Exxon/Mobil comes along and buys this company and its patent and makes it disappear. This way, nobody gets hurt. (This is assuming that there is something to this technology.)
Screw that. i'd rather see it everywhere. These guys would be dumb to sell it off.

[artsyguy1954]

Screw that. i'd rather see it everywhere. These guys would be dumb to sell it off.
Yes, I want to see it everywhere too. But what if these guys decide to sell out and take their millions to the Bahamas? Or if they don't sell out, yet they are made an offer they can't refuse. What if they do disappear, Jimmy Hoffa or Karen Silkwood style? Lots of "what ifs". The status quo is a powerful motivator to those in power.

[XYNaPSE]

Yes, I want to see it everywhere too. But what if these guys decide to sell out and take their millions to the Bahamas? Or if they don't sell out, yet they are made an offer they can't refuse. What if they do disappear, Jimmy Hoffa or Karen Silkwood style? Lots of "what ifs". The status quo is a powerful motivator to those in power.
Ya. It's probably a hoax anyway.

[artsyguy1954]

Ya. It's probably a hoax anyway.That's what I think. No point worrying about the stability of world markets quite yet, at least not because of this.

[Mike C]

Well, I registered at their site. When I get the results, I´ll post them.

[XYNaPSE]

More about Steorn. I like the way they are going about it. They pretty much put everything at stake.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html
These men think they're about to change the world

Heard the one about the two Irishmen who say they can produce limitless amounts of clean, free energy? Plenty of scientists have - but few are taking them seriously. Steve Boggan investigates

Friday August 25, 2006
The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

Do you remember that awful feeling as a child on Christmas Day when Santa left you the toy you wanted . . . without any batteries? This feeling comes to me as I meet Sean McCarthy and Richard Walshe, two men making the claim that they are about to change the world - for ever.These dynamic and personable businessmen from Dublin insist that they have found a way of producing free, clean and limitless energy out of thin air. And they are so confident that they have thrown down the gauntlet to the scientific community in a bid to prove that they have rewritten the laws of physics. Last week, frustrated that they couldn't persuade scientists to take their work seriously, McCarthy, Walshe and the other 28 shareholders of Steorn, a privately owned technology research company, took out a full-page advertisement in the Economist. In it, they called upon scientists to form a 12-member jury to decide whether their free-energy system is real, hoaxed, imagined or incorrectly well-intentioned.
So, as they prepare to demonstrate this wonder of science to me at their modest offices near the Liffey, I feel all the excitement of Christmas Day. There is a test rig with wheels and cogs and four magnets meticulously aligned so as to create the maximum tension between their fields and one other magnet fixed to a point opposite. A motor rotates the wheel bearing the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. The magnets, naturally, act upon one another. And when it is all over, the computer tells us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient.
That's a lot of "free energy" and, supposedly, a slap in the face for one of physics' most basic laws, the principle of conservation of energy: in an isolated system (the planet, say), energy can be neither created nor destroyed; it can only be converted from one form into another.
"We couldn't believe it at first, either," says McCarthy, chief executive of the company. He is a 40-year-old engineer born in Birmingham but brought up in Dublin. After a couple of decades in the oil industry, McCarthy, Walshe and two others set up Steorn as a technology and intellectual-property development company. "We did difficult things. If someone had an idea that they wanted to make work, we'd work on it with them, help them recruit staff and get them through to their first product."
Then, by chance, came their "discovery". They were called upon by the police to help gain forensic evidence against "skimmers" who cloned the cards of people using ATMs. Subsequently, when banks approached asking how they could prevent such fraud, Steorn advised that the best way was to catch the small number of people committing most of the crime. They came up with a system of 16 tiny CCTV cameras that could guarantee recording the identities of the perpetrators.
"We wanted the cameras to be independently powered, so we tried out small solar and ambient wind generators," says McCarthy. "We wanted to improve the performance of the wind generators - they were only about 60-70% efficient - so we experimented with certain generator configurations and then one day one of our guys [co-founder Mike Daly] came in and said: 'We have a problem. We appear to be getting out more than we're putting in.'"
That was three years ago. Since then, McCarthy says, the company has spent £2.7m developing the technology. Steorn has also gone into partnership with a European micro-generator company to develop prototypes.
In Steorn's theory, fixed magnets could act upon a moving magnet in such a way as to make it a virtual perpetual motion generator. In an electrical appliance - a computer, kettle, mobile phone or toy - that would provide all the power for its lifetime. Of course, free-energy cars, power plants and water-pumping systems could follow. A better world indeed.
But then that Christmas Day feeling kicks in; doubts about the power source. According to McCarthy and Walshe, the marketing manager, there have been no fewer than eight independent validations of their work conducted by electrical engineers and academics "with multiple PhDs" from world-class universities. But none of them will talk to me, even off the record. I am promised a diagram explaining how the system works, but then Steorn holds it back, saying its lawyers are concerned about intellectual property rights. And that European partner, the one with the moving, almost perpetual, prototypes? It won't talk to me either and Steorn has undertaken not to name it.
"It's the Pons-Fleischmann factor," says McCarthy, and he and Walshe look at each other darkly. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were the last experts to excite the scientific community with free-energy claims when, in 1989, they reported producing a nuclear-fusion reaction at room temperature - what happens in the sun at millions of degrees centigrade. The subsequent controversy resulted in the scientists being pilloried, even though the scientific community remains divided to this day over claims of "low-energy nuclear reactions".
"No one in the scientific community wants to become embroiled in the kind of controversy that Pons and Fleishmann faced," says McCarthy. "With our challenge, we're hoping to provide a respectable public platform for serious evaluation of the technology. Then, perhaps, scientists will feel confident enough to challenge the conventional view."
Certainly, the Steorn team seems genuine and well-intentioned. Walshe says that if the technology is accepted it will be licensed to manufacturers, but given away toelectrical and water projects in developing countries. And, until their claims have been assessed by the jury, McCarthy says they won't be accepting any investor offers. So if this is a hoax, it would appear not to be a money-making scheme; Walshe says the Economist ad alone cost £75,000.
"Before we went public, we realised that if we're wrong it could have a very adverse effect on our business, so we're not doing this lightly," says McCarthy. "We expected stick, and we're getting it already. We've had a lot of abusive emails and telephone calls -people telling us to watch our backs, that sort of thing. Someone even published my home address on a website."
The conspiracy theorists are, indeed, having a field day in a forum section set up by the company on its website, www.steorn.com. (http://www.steorn.com./)
"We've been accused of being a publicity stunt for the next Microsoft Xbox gaming system because some of the artwork on our website was similar to theirs," says Walshe. "Some people have said our offices don't exist and one accused us of simply being a call centre in Australia because one of our telephonists has an Australian accent. My favourite is the one that says we are a CIA or oil-industry front intended to discredit research into free and clean energy. In other words, our claims are deliberately false and when they are found out to be, it will be a blow for all free and clean research."
Steorn says it has seven patents pending on its technology, though it is difficult to see what can be patented; magnets already exist and so do the 360 degrees of a circle. Yet it is the positioning of the magnets that seems to be at the heart of this "new" energy. And, as McCarthy points out, the Patent Office rejects inventions that fly in the face of such fundamental principles as, say, the conservation of energy. Nevertheless, as of yesterday, almost 3,000 people claiming to be scientists had expressed an interest in sitting on the Steorn jury. The 12 best will be chosen at the end of the month and then testing will begin.
"We've been advised it could take between a week and 10 years," says McCarthy. "We don't have any doubts. We've conducted meticulous research and we're getting such phenomenal results - up to 400% efficiency - that small glitches and errors in testing can be ruled out. We really believe we've found something that can change the world."
The rest of us can only wait and see. In the meantime, I ask Martin Fleischmann, the cold-fusion scientist, now 79 and retired, what he thought of the Steorn project.
"I am actually a conventional scientist," he says, "but I do accept that the existing [quantum electro-dynamic] paradigm is not adequate. If what these men are saying turns out to be true, that would be proof that the paradigm was inadequate and we would have to come up with some new theory. But I don't think their claims are credible. No, I cannot see how the position of magnetic fields allows one to create energy."
With great charm, Dr Fleischmann wishes the Steorn team luck. And if their "free" energy can light up a developing-world village or the eyes of a child with a toy, then perhaps we all should.

[XYNaPSE]

Heres a little discussion about it. Can you imagine what this would do to everything? I imagine it would be like when the first time electricity was harnessed. Only better.
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/08/another_steorn.html

Another Steorn entry: sorry, can't resist

http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/steorn1_small.jpg The Guardian gave the Steorn "free energy" story a once-over on Friday (see our earlier discussions here (http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/08/free_energy_to.html) and here (http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/08/steorn_and_free_1.html)) and it makes for an interesting read (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html).According to McCarthy and Walshe, the marketing manager, there have been no fewer than eight independent validations of their work conducted by electrical engineers and academics "with multiple PhDs" from world-class universities. But none of them will talk to me, even off the record. I am promised a diagram explaining how the system works, but then Steorn holds it back, saying its lawyers are concerned about intellectual property rights. And that European partner, the one with the moving, almost perpetual, prototypes? It won't talk to me either and Steorn has undertaken not to name it.
"It's the Pons-Fleischmann factor," says McCarthy, and he and Walshe look at each other darkly. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were the last experts to excite the scientific community with free-energy claims when, in 1989, they reported producing a nuclear-fusion reaction at room temperature - what happens in the sun at millions of degrees centigrade. The subsequent controversy resulted in the scientists being pilloried, even though the scientific community remains divided to this day over claims of "low-energy nuclear reactions".
Then, for a nice conclusion to the article, the author tracks down Fleischmann himself. He's skeptical too:"I am actually a conventional scientist," he says, "but I do accept that the existing [quantum electro-dynamic] paradigm is not adequate. If what these men are saying turns out to be true, that would be proof that the paradigm was inadequate and we would have to come up with some new theory. But I don't think their claims are credible. No, I cannot see how the position of magnetic fields allows one to create energy."
There's nothing in the article that convinces me this isn't crockery. However the article does address a number of questions raised in discussions here, and, to its credit, Steorn isn't accepting new investors until the technology is validated (or invalidated.) At this point, I'm less convinced this is a marketing ploy, and more convinced that these guys have somehow fooled themselves into thinking they have found a source of free energy.
Nevertheless, the marketing has been extraordinarily successful. After 10 days some 3,800 scientists have signed up to test the technology, and more than 45,000 people have given their e-mail address to Steorn. I'm guessing at least a few of you are among that total.


Posted by Eric Berger at August 28, 2006 12:18 PM

[Mike C]

Wow, I checked the poll results from Steorn´s website. The question is: Do you think the scientific community should accept our challenge? Nearly 114,000 people voted. What I found surprising is that only 42% of those who voted, voted yes. 58% said no. I figured the yes vote figure would be much higher.

Perhaps too many people out there are worried about job security? Or do you think many are saying no because they believe it´s all a crock and science shouldn´t risk taking a credibility hit investigating such wackyness?

[Mike C]

Steorn announces end of selection process for jury of scientists and academics to test its free energy technology


Dublin, 10th November 2006: Steorn, the technology development company, has announced that it has completed its selection process for appointing scientists to an independent jury that will test its free energy technology. Steorn issued the challenge via an advertisement in the Economist to the world’s scientists in August 2006 and received more than 5,000 responses by the deadline of 12 midnight, September 8th.
Steorn’s technology is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy. The technology can be applied to virtually all devices requiring energy, from cellular phones to cars.
Steorn will complete the signing of contracts with the chosen scientists by Friday December 1st at the latest.
Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, commented: "We have been thrilled by the excellent response we received as a result of our challenge. We are now confident that we have found the most qualified scientists and we are looking forward to the start of the validation process itself."
Steorn anticipates that testing will begin early in the New Year. The precise timetable for the testing phase will be determined by the jurors, as will the location and format of the test process. Once the testing is complete the results will be made public via the Steorn website.

www.steorn.com

[NorthQuad]

Why would they go through all the trouble if they couldn't prove it? I'm interested to see how it turns out.

[Mike C]

They can, they want the sceptics to do it themselves.

[Wise Young]

I hope that people don't mind that I moved this from Politics to Science. It has more to do with science.

There is quite a good article on the subject of Steorn in Wikipedia http://peswiki.com/index.php/Site:LRP:A_Proposed_Proof_of_an_Overunity_Asymmetr ic_System_to_be_Tested

“In an interview Sean [McCarthy, CEO of Steorn], described the unit’s operation this way: "What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy."

Rigorously that fits a description of a magnetic rotary device where the field interactions are asymmetric, right from the source magnets. And that is a type of Maxwellian system that can and does exist in nature, but that Lorentz arbitrarily discarded in 1892, just to get simpler equations easier to solve algebraically. Steorn is making three (3) claims for its patent-pending technology as follows:

"1. The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
2. The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the : degradation of its component parts.
3. There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).

The sum of these claims is that our technology creates free energy.”


It would be preferable that the latter statement had been “the sum of these claims is that our technology produces free energy from a previously undetermined environmental source."

Meanwhile, for awhile now we have also been urging several inventors and groups, highly skilled in nonlinear magnetics, to develop little “rotary toy” kits of nonlinear magnetic assemblies with just such overall asymmetry in the line integration of F dot ds around the closed loop taken by the rotor. The condition for overall rotary asymmetry is that the line integral of F dot ds around the circular path does not equal zero, but is greater than zero. That’s exactly what McCarthy in Ireland (with that Steorn unit) describes. And that “nonzero line integral condition” type of system is exactly what Lorentz discarded way back in 1892, and what our EE departments still arbitrarily discard from electrical engineering.

Another way to put it is that, in a symmetrical permanent magnet system, the forward mmf is equal and opposite to the back mmf. So in the forward mmf region, the system self-accelerates and freely gives you some power, but in the back mmf region it is self-braking and freely takes back power. If the two are equal and opposite, then the device deliberately takes back as much as it gives, and it cannot self-power anything. Specifically, that and the manner usually used for a rotary closed loop, means that the system is arbitrarily symmetrized, and the symmetrical fields are arbitrarily fixed and do not change." (http://www.explorepub.com/articles/beardon/overunity.html))

To tell you the truth, I am not sure that I understand what is being said above. On the other hand, there is something really very interesting about magnets. Permanent magnets indeed can be used to oppose gravity, to accelerate moving objects, and also to translate movement into electrical energy. As a student, I was always fascinated by magnets and the notion that they do provide a source of motive force that seems to be always present and does not deplete over time, or at least not seeming to deplete over time. The energy system being claimed is apparently possible from the perspective of theoretical physics:

he self-enforcing symmetry way is precisely the basic way we are taught to build all our EM systems, so that we have to put in energy continually, lose some, and get some out to the load. The only reason we input energy (such as cranking the shaft of a generator) is to forcibly break symmetry by forcibly producing an internal dipolarity in the generator. Then the proven asymmetry of a dipolarity (separated opposite charges) will absorb ordered virtual photons (and their virtual energy) from the vacuum and coherently integrate it into observable real EM photon energy, and thus emit real observable photons continually without any observable energy input. When there is a broken symmetry, then “something virtual has become observable”, according to Nobelist Lee. The two scientists Lee and Yang, of course, predicted broken symmetry in physics back in the early 50s (particularly 1956 and early 57). So startling was this proposed giant revolution in physics -- if real -- that experimenters promptly proved it (Wu and her colleagues proved it experimentally in Feb. 1957). Again, this was such a giant revolution in physics that with unprecedented speed the Nobel Committee then awarded the Nobel Prize to Lee and Yang, in Dec. 1957. And since then, the implications of that vast revolution in all of physics has not even made it across the campus from the physics department to the electrical engineering department. (Nobel Prize Awarded To Lee and Yang [1] (http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/031304.htm) [2] (http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/071502.htm))

The article goes on and I still don't understand it but am sufficiently impressed to think that there is something to this claim after all.

Wise.

[Juke_spin]

The article goes on and I still don't understand it but am sufficiently impressed to think that there is something to this claim after all.

Wise.

Maybe God is in the details.:thinking::p

[Wise Young]

So, I began to look for critics of the claim. Here are several.

Rupert Goodwins on ZDNet UK published the following article on 22 August 2006:
http://opinion.zdnet.co.uk/comment/0,1000002138,39281444,00.htm
Steorn's free energy seems curiously expensive

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet UK

Published: 22 Aug 2006 10:35 BST

It is also pseudoscience of the highest order. The general idea has been around for a while and has spawned many impassioned claims: you spin magnets around in a clever way and get more energy out from a system than you put in. This is generally agreed as impossible: it's perpetual motion, it breaks the laws of thermodynamics, and in the long and gaudy history of pseudoscience it ain't never worked yet. Which is not to say it never will: science is full of astounding discoveries that turn the accepted truths on their head. History is also full of total balderdash masquerading as science.

Fortunately, there are easy ways to tell pseudoscience: grand claims with no way to verify them, important facts that are alluded to and not presented, claims of conspiracy or closed-mindedness by the scientific community, production of claims by press release rather than scientific papers. Steorn more than fulfils all of these: it is, by any objective test, pseudoscience.

So what on earth are they playing at? In a long and very impassioned phone call with Steorn's chief executive Sean McCarthy, I had some theories flatly denied and others half-confirmed. It is not a teaser for an Xbox game It is nothing to do with a TV programme It has nothing to do with promoting anti-fraud systems (Steorn's corporate history is in detecting and preventing high-tech fraud), which was my personal favourite.

The official story — and one they are at pains to emphasise — is that the idea of convening a panel of 12 top scientists to do secret tests is the best way they can think of to get their ideas accepted by the scientific community. Time after time, McCarthy said, they'd tried to get people to look at what they were doing, but nobody was prepared do so. Those who did refused to go on the record.

<snip>

Whatever Steorn is doing — and in the utter absence of any testable data, the chances of it being a significant scientific achievement are closer to absolute zero than the contents of Lord Kelvin's freezer compartment — it's an expensive experiment. For the price of that Economist advert and whatever they're paying their PR company, they could have built 10 apparatuses that actually demonstrated their effect and Fedex'd them to the major centres of scientific excellence on the planet.



Steorn recently released a video that gave more rationale for their effort at creating a scientific challenge:

http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/08/steorn_and_free_1.html
Steorn and free energy: the plot thickens
video_t1.jpeg
McCarthy

Steorn has now posted a slick, five-minute video that features interviews with company CEO Sean McCarthy as well as the company's marketing director. For more background, see our earlier discussion.

Like I said, the video's slick, and not too heavy on scientific detail. But it's worth checking out if you're interested in the topic, it does begin to explain the company's motivations for choosing to issue a challenge in the Economist:

McCarthy: The first roadblock is science. We wanted to go behind closed doors. But with the academic community, it might take five to seven years before being able to get to a consensus position. As a business, that makes absolutely no sense.

The video explains that a "quiet" campaign was plan A. The direct marketing approach currently being taken is Plan B. If this fails, the marketing director jokes, Plan C is building a car that never needs to go to a fueling station. Then the CEO says the current tactic is the best, quickest approach to gaining scientific approval:

McCarthy: The claim does rail against so much thinking from ordinary people, through the engineering community to the academic community, it's a prerequisite that this is accepted by science, and that this is embraced by science.

Then, he concludes by saying it's Steorn against the world.

McCarthy: We have to fight public opinion, we have to fight the scientific community and we have to fight the energy industry. We couldn't pick a worse battleground.

The more I think about this I am of two minds:

1. These guys really do think they've succeeded in breaking the laws of thermodynamics.

2. Recall that Steorn is a former e-business company that saw its market vanish during the dot.com bust. It stands to reason that Steorn has re-tooled as a Web marketing company, and is using the "free energy" promotion as a platform to show future clients how it can leverage print advertising and a slick Web site to promote their products and ideas. If so, it's a pretty brilliant strategy.

So, what are the consequences if Steorn is correct and everybody is wrong? First, it means that we would have to discard the First Law of Thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Second, we would have to discard the Second Law of Thermodynamics as well, which says that the entropy of a system not at equilibrium tends to increase. It is based on the observation that heat cannot of itself pass from a colder to a hotter body (Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics)). If it is possible to create energy from a cold magnet, it is transferring heat (energy) from a colder body to a hotter body. Nether of these are trivial.

Wise.

[Mike C]

I´m really looking foward to seeing the best brains they could pick try and rip this thing apart...and hopefully fail. I hope they all turn into billionaires because we need to deep six oil and coal ASAP.

[Mike C]

Steorn finalises contracts for jury to test its free energy technology


Dublin, 1st December 2006: Steorn, the technology development company, today announces that it has finalised and signed contracts with an independent jury who will test Steorn's free energy technology.
This is the latest milestone in Steorn's efforts to get validation for its technology, which began when the company issued a challenge to the world's scientists via an advertisement in the Economist in August 2006.
Steorn's technology is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy. The technology can be applied to virtually all devices requiring energy, from cellular phones to cars.
The Steorn panel was oversubscribed several times with hundreds of qualified scientists applying to be part of the jury. The final jury hail from several of the world's leading academic/scientific institutions and there will be representation on the panel from the US and several European countries.
The jury have all agreed to see the testing process through to its completion and have their names and findings disclosed once the testing is complete. Steorn has agreed not to identify members of the jury until the results are made public, to protect their privacy and avoid unnecessary interruptions to their work.
Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, commented: "We are very excited to have the contracts in place with this group of highly qualified individuals, because it means we can finally get on with the validation stage. We ourselves have always been confident in the technology but believe that the calibre of the jury will play an important part in helping us to convince the sceptics."
Steorn anticipates that testing will begin early in the New Year. The precise timetable for the testing phase will be determined by the jurors, as will the location and format of the test process. Once the testing is complete the results will be made public via the Steorn website www.steorn.com (http://www.steorn.com).



http://www.steorn.net/en/news.aspx?p=2&id=911

Hope this can be checked out and verified before all those billions of dollars are thrown into the recently announced international fusion project. Fusion energy is however worth pursuing if this technology doesn´t pan out.

[IanTPoulter]

I smell a gigantic hoax, motives unclear.

[Mike C]

Really? Is it because the scientist´s names won´t be released until the eval is complete, or some other reason?

BTW, your not alone. The forum at Steorn is rife with sceptics. I fail to see the motivation behind a hoax though....especially when an entire companys reputation is on the line. If it was some fly-by-night start up, I would agree with you.

[IanTPoulter]

Mike, its just a combination of things from looking through their press releases and their web site. There just doesnt seem to be any detail about anything and evasive explanations. Id like to believe, who wouldnt like to see oil companies go broke lol, but it just doesnt gel for some reason. I just cant see if they had made a discovery of this importance that anyone would go about this method to market it. Plus the physics as Dr Young pointed out, for this to be real several scientific principles need to be overturned. I remain a skeptic, they are selling something but I dont know what yet.

[Mike C]

http://www.steorn.net/en/news.aspx?p=2&id=981

Steorn announces plans for widespread deployment of its free energy technology post-validation


Dublin, 11th January 2007: Steorn, the Irish technology development company, has today announced that its free energy technology will be made widely available to the development community immediately after the independent scientific validation process that is currently underway.
Under the terms of a modified general purpose licence and for a nominal fee, Steorn's intellectual property will be made available concurrently to all interested parties, from individual enthusiasts to larger research organisations. Steorn is taking this bold move to accelerate the deployment and acceptance of its technology for both humanitarian and commercial products.

.....

Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, commented: "We have experienced enormous levels of interest in our free energy technology from the product development community.
"Experience tells us that opening up access to technology to all interested parties via the internet allows for rapid third party development. We believe that our technology can have a profound impact on people's lives and are confident that the delivery of our intellectual property via this type of online development and engineering support environment will lead to the rapid deployment of all kinds of different products."

[Mike C]

http://www.steorn.com/

Steorn has now named it´s new technology "Orbo". They have completely redone their website, but the real meat and potatoes of this won´t be coming out until the end of the year. Interesting is the contract made with the jury. They (Steon) are apparently totally convinced that their technology does what it says it does. What do you all think?

Richard Branson is offering $25 million prize to the scientists who devise a way to lower greenhouse gasses. If this pans out, they win hands down.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Claim

Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy - that is our claim. By free we mean that the energy produced is done so without recourse to external source. By clean we that during operation the technology produces no emissions. By constant we mean that with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely.
The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy, perhaps the most fundamental of scientific principles. The principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, it can only change form.
Because of the revolutionary nature of our claim, not only to the world of science but to the world in general, Steorn issued a challenge to the scientific community in August 2006 to test our technology and report their findings. The process of validation that has resulted from this challenge is currently underway, with results expect by the end of 2007.

Our Licencing Model

"Our free energy technology will be made widely available to the development community immediately after the independent scientific validation process. Under the terms of a modified general public licence and for a nominal fee, Steorn's intellectual property will be made available concurrently to all interested parties, from individual enthusiasts to larger research organisations. Steorn is taking this bold move to accelerate the deployment and acceptance of its technology for both humanitarian and commercial products. Further details will be made available during the first half of 2007."

[rdf]

I think Branson is offering the big money to someone who develops a way to get rid of the billion tons of CO2 already in the atmosphere. I don't think these fellas would qualify.

[Mike C]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3aaRrEIp-0

Update on what is going on.

[IanTPoulter]

its a scam

[Wise Young]

More update. Beginning to look more and more like a scam.
http://www.badscience.net/?p=444

Wise.

[Mike C]

What a PR disaster that was.

[Lazlo]

Free energy devices based on magnets have always been revealed as hoaxes. It's been attempted so many times throughout history, it's amazing how much hype this particular "invention" has enjoyed.

The only mechanisms I've ever read of that might have any hope of producing "free energy" are ones based on the Casimir Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect). I read somewhere that scientists have already envisioned devices that could produce energy based on this phenomenon, but the amounts are infinitesimal. Still, a fascinating read for the armchair physicist.