clean free energy source? we'll know tomorrow!

Do you think this is just a PR stunt?

Dublin-based Steorn http://www.steorn.net/ said its technology based on the interaction of magnetic fields allows the production of clean, free and constant energy challenging fundamental scientific principles.


http://www.irishexam...1133-qqqx=1.asp


edited by Matthias: three threads about this topic merged

Edited by Matthias, 05 July 2007 - 11:07 AM.

In my opinion discussion of perpetual motion machines should be something restricted to the free speech forum. What does imminst leadership think?

If it "really" created free energy there would be no need to get sicentific approval, the market place for energy would be its proving ground. It would obviously be worth a gazillion dollars. My guess is that they are measuring amounts of energy so small so as to be out of the tolerance limits of their measuring instruments.

Anyone here ever read "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud " by Robert L. Park?

Great chapter in there on "free energy" devices. They're always popping up, getting a little lime-light, and then they fade away. Bad science or outright hoax is invariably what they turn out to be.

Maybe not this time, but it seems unlikely.

Here's another good thing to read, The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is investing close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist's antigravity machine, although it has failed every test and would violate the most fundamental laws of nature. The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which is supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum. And major power companies have sunk tens of millions of dollars into a scheme to produce energy by putting hydrogen atoms into a state below their ground state, a feat equivalent to mounting an expedition to explore the region south of the South Pole.

There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?

What's with the capitalisation of the word irish? Is it less likely coming from an irish firm or something?

Do the Irish have a special exemption to the laws of thermodynamics? Perhaps would explain leprechauns...

Nah, we break the laws of the universe using a substance known as potcheen......

They are really playing it up. Check out the website...

Webpage

Over the past two to three years, 90% of the scientists the company asked to examine the technology refused. He said the 10% who investigated drew the same conclusion as the company that it can create energy.

- They've been sitting on this data for 3 years.
- 90% of scientists have refused to look at the data. Ding Ding Ding.
- Note the exact wording of the quote "...that it can create energy." I can create energy by squeezing my buttcheeks. It's not free energy though.
- Website with a poll, forum, video, registration, etc.
- They had to pay money to advertise their claim.

[spam]

An interesting msg on the message board...

Two fields we're used to, electrical and gravitational, are conservative fields; the energy imparted to an object as it is acted on by a conservative field as it travels a closed path is net zero. (this was the "walking up and down a hill" analogy -- which was supposed to be a counterintuitive contrast of the new technology) This is also true for magnetism, if we're only talking about the regular 2-pole magnets we're used to, using pure repulsion of like-poles, and attraction of unlike poles.

What this company has claimed is possible is to be able to use a *small* amount of energy to dynamically "turn off/on" the magnetic field (by repositioning a shield), in such a way that an object traveling through a closed loop can accumulate energy (think of a magnetic field that always pulls a nail clockwise -- it will just spin faster and faster).

[This is the technology applied to their low-energy actuator patent, except the magnets are aranged in a line, not a circular fashion, like would likely be used in an electrical generator.]

Now then, Physics (yeah, capital P) has a few things to say about this:

1) If they are really just distorting the magnetic fields so that the magnets don't act on each other, the energy required to push the shield in place will cost at least as much energy as is gained in the actuator. [so, assuming their product works, it is not working with this technology (i.e. current technology)]

2) If they actually found a way to "cut through" the magnetic lines of force they could, in effect, separate the two halves of a bar-magnet and, instead of ending up with two smaller bar-magnets (with N and S poles), end up with an isolated North pole and and Isolated South pole. (Phsics calls these "magnetic monopoles." Google them.) Monopoles have never been found in nature; current physics does not disallow them, however, so if this company has been able to manufacture them, it would be the biggest advances in physics since Einstein. (my judgement, but whatever). No, scratch that. It would be the biggest development since the first few planck seconds of the universe. Now that I mention Eninstein.... Such a device would create energy from nothing, Fundamentally altering the space-time continuum! (different from just rearanging the matter/energy already in it)

Anyways. Conclusion: I won't hold my breath. Maybe I'm completely wrong, though...

Although I believe that this is most likely a hoax/scam, I must disagree that wanting proof before releasing it constitutes evidence that the technology is fake.

Think about it. The concept of free energy has been pounded into the ground over the years to the extent that anyone even mentioning the possibility of creating it is laughed out of the room. If I had created technology capable of generating free energy, I doubt I could pay people to use it. (I'm exaggerating, but not by much.) I would definitely want proof that it worked before I tried to sell it to the general public for fear of permanently smearing my reputation.

As stated above, a magnetic monopole (Which is what, technically, they claim to have created.) would create energy. If they have managed to create a monopole, then they have validated their claim. This is extremely unlikely, but it is possible.

There is no such thing as free energy. Even schemes which are not known for a fact to be physically impossible (e.g., magnetica monopoles) won't give us free energy. The energy comes from somewhere.

Thinks about it. Nuclear power is basically free energy. You don't have to burn anything, there is no steady supply of fuel and oxidizers (typically oxygen itself). You just stick this metal rod in water and it drives an engine, and drives it, and drives it... it's free energy.

Of course, we know how it works: the energy isn't coming out of nowhere. The mass of the rod very slightly reduces with time, as mass is converted into pure energy.

But it's basically free to you and me.

Even if we somehow discover a way to tap into "zero point energy", it won't be free. But like nuclear energy, the changes to the background energy field will seem minor (and would dissipate likely at the speed of light, or near it), much like the reduction in mass of a uranium rod seems minor compared to the energy extracted.

There's no free energy. But there are technologies waiting to be discovered that'll certainly seem free, by current standards.

Is this one of them? Probably not. I figure we'll get maybe one or two legitimate "free energy" technologies in the next 50 years. These things pop up annually, pretty much. So at least 95% of them are going to be bunk. The legitimate ones will most likely come out of academia anyway, which means probably 100% of these will be bunk.

There is no such thing as free energy.

A permanet magnet creates a force that is for free.
The gravitation does the same. A machine that somehow would run of gravitation, or magnets would "create" enegry for free.
This device would be the closest you get to a perpetum mobile.

A permanet magnet creates a force that is for free.

Force and energy are not the same thing. That force has to act through a distance to provide energy. As a magnet pulls another magnet towards itself, it's doing work, it's providing energy. At some point, the magnets get as close together as they can. The flow of energy stops. The only way to get the magnets to do more work is to first pull them apart. Doing so requires work, i.e., energy. Exactly the amount that was released when they came together, plus a little extra for inefficiencies (friction, air resistance, etc.).

That's anything but free energy. Free energy is a system that provides a force capable of moving something through a distance, without using up its "potential energy", i.e., without having to be reset with an input of an equal amount of energy.

Magnetism and gravitation both provide forces, but the energy they provide comes from "potential energy". Using the potential energy necessarily reduces the amount of potential energy left. A system providing "free" energy would have a source of potential energy that doesn't get used up very quickly, if at all. For example, with nuclear power, the "potential" energy is the mass of the uranium atoms, which is slightly more than the mass of the 2-3 particles it breaks into when it fissions. There's so much of it that a normal nuclear reactor can extract energy from a uranium rod for a year or more. But it does get used up eventually.

In order to extract energy from a gravitational field, in a "free" sense, you'd have to find a way where the system didn't need to be reset. Doing so goes counter to the known laws of physics. The best you can hope for is to tap into an gravitational system with so much energy that we can't drain it fast enough to even notice. The tides are an example. The tides are "free" energy, in the sense that the energy is actually pulled out of the earth's rotational kinetic energy. The moon pulls on the earth, giving rise to the bulges on the near and far side that we call tides. As the earth rotates, these tides rotate as well, rising and falling in any one particular location. The energy extracted slows the earth's rotation, but by a trivially small amount. Eventually, the earth's rotation will slow until it matches the orbital period of the moon (billions of years from now). So it's not really free, but it's close enough for government work.

Yeah, I totally agree with you jaydfox, and you know... there are a lot of people who still think nuclear energy is free (most of my chemistry class last year infact) it really saddens me that people don't take the time or care to understand these things... but oh well, their loss. [mellow]

Irish psuedoscience.

20% more tipsy than British or American pseudoscience.
Bend the laws of physics - with the luck of the Irish.
The pot full of limitless free energy at the end of the rainbow.
Sit down and have a pint, while challenging fundamental scientific principles.

An experiment in marketing or the dawn of a new era?
See www.steorn.com, and the latest Google news.

Is this the same thing discussed here:
http://www.imminst.o...=ST&f=1&t=12056

Or is it something different?

Same one. I came across it when I was reading the Economist. They have a full page ad in the first few pages of the magazine.

http://www.siliconre...ryid=single8713

Irish technology claims energy breakthrough

04.07.2007 - Today, the public have been invited to come and observe Orbo technology, developed by Irish company Steorn, which produces a free, constant supply of energy that will change history if it does what it claims.
Orbo technology, which Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn said was discovered accidentally, theoretically produces energy from nowhere using magnetics.

“The law of conservation of energy has been very reliable for 300 years, however it’s missing one variable from the equation, and that’s time,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy explained to Silicon Republic that Orbo technology works on the basis that occurrences in magnetic fields do not happen instantaneously, and are therefore not subject to time in the way that, say, gravity is.

This time variance allows the Orbo platform to generate and consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

“This is as big a claim as you can possibly make in the world of technology and science,” said McCarthy.

“Five years ago if I was watching this story from a distance I would be thinking it was complete bull. Having said that we are in absolutely no doubt that this works.”

Steorn, based in Dublin, was founded in 2000 and employs 22 people.

Last year the company took out an advertisement, publicly inviting the scientific community to come and test the revolutionary claims of its Orbo technology. Scientists have been putting the energy machine through rigorous testing since January.

Meanwhile, academic testing aside, McCarthy said that he wants the public to observe it too. Today at 6pm in the Kinetica Museum in London, Orbo will be unveiled and will run for ten days.

McCarthy said in order to ensure complete transparency, the self-rotating wheel will be housed in clear plastic, allowing members of the public to “inspect it for a hidden battery”.

The Orbo will also be viewable live on the internet from 6pm this evening at www.steorn.com/orbo/demo, with four webcams focused on the machine 24 hours a day.

If this technology is proved to work and be transferable and marketable, it will change not only how we think, but how we live.

“It’s too good to be true but it is true,” said McCarthy, “It will have such an impact on everything we do.”

“The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn’t real,” said McCarthy.

By Marie Boran

Link to the online demo:
www.steorn.com/orbo/demo

Edited by winterbreeze, 05 July 2007 - 01:25 PM.

Only two hours and ten minutes until the "live demo", as I type. This thing is so scammish that the best explanation I've heard so far is that they are secretly funded by oil companies in order to discredit alternative energy research in the public mind.

Whoa. I sure hope it works.

Unfortunately, I can't stay up to watch the demo (I'm assuming it's an online video), because it's getting late here, and I have to get up for my summer job at 5:10 AM. But I'm sure it will be available tomorrow too, especially if it is a success.

Could you please post a link to the demo video when it comes online? Perhaps you planned to do that anyway, but extra thanks from me if you do.

Link to the video:

www.steorn.com/orbo/demo

Edit: Sorry it's on the article, forgot to paste it.

Edited by winterbreeze, 05 July 2007 - 01:24 PM.

1) That link doesn't work
2) Big claims and no explanation of how it is accomplished usually sets off my BS detectors big time.

I am highly, highly, highly skeptical.

http://www.engadget....rated-tomorrow/

Update 5: Jeebus, what a non-event. Even though they wield supreme control over the laws of physics, Steorn had to cancel tonight's event "due to technical difficulties." We'd laugh if it wasn't so pathetically tragic. The live stream is now rescheduled ambiguously to the 5th July. Now move along folks, there's nothing to see here.

Apparently this is a prototype of the devic (with very jerky video):

No Live Forever, I think that's a fake video.. that dosen't even look like the devince they show you.

But yes, mostly skeptical about it.

Now I'm sure it's a fake.

"We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting. We have commenced a technical assessment and will provide an update later today. As a consequence, Kinetica will not be open to the public today (5th July). We apologise for this delay and appreciate your patience."

Yeah, that's a red flag...

Steorn might just be a classic Paycheck Mill. Fleece the "High Net Worth Investors" and pay yourself and your friends a huge salary. Leave the country when it finally blows up.