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 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 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 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.
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...
Talkback
You're probably right, it's just a publicity stunt. Laws of physics don't just die in the vicinity of a couple of magnetic fields.
But I'd really like it to be true (I guess they are counting on this type of expectations to get attention...)
Pseudojournalism. There are very good reasons for Steorn to take their approach, losing control of their invention is not the least of them. As you should know, no patent office in the world will touch this because it is an over-unity device. Therefore, the only way to protect their invention, and potentially patent it if they can get the good scientific data they are petitioning for, is to keep it a trade secret. By disclosing how it works without a patent, it will become 'prior art' and cease to be patentable. I hardly see how placing an ad in The Economist requesting great scientific minds to test their device backs up your claims of pseudoscience. Citing your advertisers as the pinnacle of science-driven technology doesn't make you look like less of a shill.
The claim by the Irish company Steorn of the over unity generator and the challenge is a good way to get others to do your research with out paying. Then they can claim the patent if it succeeds because they started it and the reseach was done for them. Smart.
The first law of Thermodynamics may not be broken by this device (if true). Physicists currently can't locate 90% of the universe i.e the dark matter/energy. So ii is entirely possible for such a device to be tapping into this dark energy and making it visible energy (heat/light via work). Thus the energy of the universe is preserved you have simply changed from one form to another.
I fully sympathise with any inventor of a device that seems to break the laws of physics. You only have to read the blogs wrt Steorn to realise that nobody with a career in physics would admit to testing such a device.......bye bye career irrespective of the result!
Read their patent application... it's plugged into the wall. They have 2 configurations. 1 uses electromagnets (Where's that electricity come from?) and the other uses permanent magnets and a sheild to "actuate" them. The patent application says the shield can be moved by several methods such as solenoids or worm gears, which would require outside energy.
Alexander Kushelev: Steorn's free energy - real.
But it is a toy in comparison with microwave power...
We hope, that after recognition Steorn, the scientific community will pay attention to microwave power creation process.
New paradigm is well forgotten classical paradigm with Maxwell's radioether which has a huge stock of internal energy.
This energy can be taken with the help of magnets, but with the help of microwave resonators it is better...
Main page (Russian): http://www.nanoworld.narod.ru/
Details (English): http://nanoworld.pointclark.net/nanoworld/forums_copy/rassylka/index_eng.htm
Discussion: http://www.nanoworld.org.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=2371#p2371 (Russian & English)
There are some aspects of physics that are never taught and therefore never considered. If you add the magnetic field (B)from a bar magnet to one from a current carrying coil wound on that bar (deltaB) the field everywhere is a the sum of two terms, B+deltaB. Energy density goes with the square of the field, so expanding the square of the sum we get B^2 +2BdeltaB + deltaB^2. B^2 is the original energy from the magnet. deltaB^2 is the energy from the coil. 2BdeltaB is excess energy gained from where? That is not a trivial amount of energy, and it can be shown that it comes from the quantum domain. It is ignored because over a full cycle it is generally not available to us. Can an electro-magnetic theory which ignores magnetic energy shuttling about within our machines be considered complete? Is it not possible that someone will eventually discover how to tap into that ignored energy flow?
I would like to know how much Goodwins is getting paid by the nuclear industry to write this..I'm also curious as to why he chose the word 'curiously' in describing how expensive, because he says it's 'publicity stunt'..lol..GOOD!!..That's how one markets their product, you know like the nuke people BRAINWASH.
What could be more dangerous, dirty, and EXPENSIVE than nuke power..Got a place for the waste??..Talk about a brain dead world!..Then the same peope tell us to worry about terrorism, sure is 'CURIOUS' alright!
What could be more
I knew Einstein, Maxwell, and all those other fools were wrong! I can't find out how it works, but I really believe this must be true and I know that they must be right. This must be a very well kept secret, because if it gets out, ...well it will wreck havoc on the world's economy. I'm wondering what the real impact of this great discovery will be as it will kill many, many industries. There goes the entire oil industry (thank god for the departure of Exxon!), the entire utility industry (I sold almost all of my utility stock anyway), Eveready, Duracell, and the like...gone! The wire and cable industry will also be hard hit as we will not longer need overhead or underground cables and wires.
I'm now very worried about all the extra energy that will be polluting the earth. Think about it, if this discovery is more than 100% efficient, you know what will happen, some people will abuse the process and generate more energy than they need and all this extra energy will be running around ruining the environment! Were going to have to pass more laws to prevent this. I'm going to start the new non-profit organization Citizen Revolt Against Pollution from Extra Energy.
Dark Matter, zero point energy etc, etc. aside, everyone seems to forget that there is a qualifier in the first and second laws of thermodynamics. They both refer to closed systems, and are born out of pure mathematics, unprovable in the real world.
Why? Because nobody can seem to find a closed system.
In fact, quantum theory, due to such principles as uncertainty, and entanglement to a lesser degree, would seem to indicate that it is impossible for a truly closed system to exist.
One may argue that the universe as a whole is a closed system. To them I say, if you can prove that, you deserve a nobel prize.
You would then have to prove that no other universes exist, or that if they do, entanglement cannot take place between particles in two separate universes, and that they cannot interact with each-other in any way (worm holes, black holes, etc). You would further have to prove that there is no causality taking place. That the very existence of one, does not cause anything in the other. Of course, then there would be no way to prove it..... would there? Because it would be completely and utterly undetectable.
Simply saying "It must be the case, because these rules seem to hold true" is not good enough. Any scientist familiar with experimentation knows that one time in a billion you may get a different result, and that one time can point out something very important.
Men like Hawking and Kaku do not rule things like this out, so why should we.
The more we learn, the less we know.
"I knew Einstein, Maxwell, and all those other fools were wrong!"
Go back and read maxwell's equations again. He predicted two types of energy transmission.. Scalar, and Longitudinal. We only use Scalar.. However men like Hertz and Tesla knew about Longitudinal waves and how to transmit power based on this, and it all conformed to Maxwell's equations. Maxwell simply thought it was a less likely way to transmit energy, and hence encouraged focus on scalar. Since then most have ignored longitudinal wave theory completely.
There are a few applications of it however. Navy VLF communication, and ground wave communications, for example. And teslas radiant energy transmitter. Which they couldn't slap a meter on so was given the Kabash.
Neither general or special relativity, his work on brownian motion, nor his work with the photoelectric effect prevent this on the basis of physical prediction, so I'm unsure what you meant by your Einstein reference.
In fact Einstein's work explains why the light medium was not detected by the Michaelson-Morley experiment, rather than disproves it. Since light is a fixed speed from all points of reference regardless of the speed of the eminating body
I agree with Rich Weber. We must at least entertain Steorn until the idea is proven false.
It is possible although extremely unlikely that this thing works.
If it is a hoax then it should'nt be too hard to prove wrong now should it?
A glass of water and a resistor?
The extra energy claimed by the invention is a miniscule amount, a gain that would be immeasurable with the crude equipment you suggest- likely they are hand-picking scientists from major universities who have sensitive testing devices. They have posted the patent information on their website which is being dissected by physics-background visitors. You have to want it to find it -- in the face of harsh criticism from all corners, I completely understand why they wouldn't hand it out to every hack wanting to test it with a resistor and a cup of water, and pronounce the whole thing as a fraud.
If they have stumbled upon the holy grail of physics their approach is the correct one -- choosing a number of reputable, well-financed physicists to draw accurate conclusions with cutting edge technology. If it is true, and may well not be, but if it is, then the next question would be whether a miniscule gain will traslate to a major energy gain if a large version of the device is built.
How many world-altering innovations have been discovered by accident? Just google "accidental discovery Nobel Prize"
In answer to the question about how much I get from the nuclear industry - all the yellowcake I can eat. It's scrummy.
As for whether it's possible that Steorn's magic box really does tap energy from dark matter/alternate universes/longitudinal leprachauns - who am I to say? (although I really doubt it's from 'the magnetic domains', which is one of the suggestions Steorn came up with).
I don't know. I do know that they're following the classic pseudoscience path - that's not a matter of conjecture, you can tick off the attributes yourself - and can't really explain why. Also, that if they abandoned all attempts to capitalise on the IP and put every tiny detail in the public domain tomorrow, they would soon be as rich and famous as they could possibly desire. They would have changed the world more even than Einstein managed (honestly - you could build a practicable c-speed space drive out of one of these.).
So, no. I don't believe. But hey, there's nothing I can or wish to do to stop them doing whatever they like. I'm just a journalist.
Rupert
Dear unemployed anonymous aristocrat... what you say bears no resemblance to what the CEO told me yesterday, either about the amount of energy involved or the amount of information available on the website. (He did say there'd be more information posted later in the week, but just some test results, not anything which would enable independent analysis of the claims.
Feel free to point us all at the documents, though. I'm entirely open to substantive arguments..
Rupert
It will sure be fun to parade around you and your article when this is proven to be true!
Sort of like the baseball pitcher whose throw is hit out of the park for a homerun record.
Its easy to throw the naysayer pitch, but painful later on.
You are probably right but you are pushing a few points as fact that are not quite. A photon cannot be patented, but using a photon to do something can. A person cannot patent magnetism, but using magnets to generate electricity can, and was. If they patent this invention now, people will see how it works are would be able to replicate it - the only protection for the idea resting with the law.
My impresion is that they could be onto something so big that it would be foolish to share. If their claim holds up, they havea technology that threatens the largest industry in the world. Dangerous, and valuable. Very valuable.
These guys are not independent researchers. They have no government funding. They are looking to profit, and it appears they are protecting that goal.
The people who are involved in the development and production of free energy magnetic devices should be lauded as heros and celebrated by the world. Comparing the new inventors with the scientists who run like scared cats from free energy is a very ironic observational sport that I take great delight in. I have seen evidence enough of free energy in my own laboratory to make me a believer, so I can relax in contentment and observe the drama unfolding before the world, knowing that with the power of the internet the knowledge of free energy devices will not be kept from the masses of common engineers and scientists for much longer.
The announcement that Steorn had discovered free energy was made on the 1st of April.
http://www.steorn.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2501&page=1#Item_0
The link was on the following page, but has since been removed from Steorn's web site.
http://www.steorn.net/en/coverage.html
Google's cache of the page still displays it:
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:L8SzMcpHqCgJ:www.steorn.net/en/coverage.html+site:steorn.net+april&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=1
The only people keeping the 'secret of free energy' secret are people like Steorn, who have it and won't say. Or so they say.
It's really quite fun to be accused of being part of the great campaign to deny the truth when I spent nearly an hour on the phone to them trying to get them to tell me what they were on about, and then wrote a two page article about them which can be instantly accessed by half a billion people. My goodness, what if someone finds out?
As for patents - they say that they spent two to three years trying to get their paper into peer reviewed journals. That means the information in it has already been 'published' according to patent law, which is very strict on this point. Just showing something to a third party without a strict contract in place is usually enough to count as publishing.
I'll be utterly delighted to be proved wrong on this - really. You think I'd care about being wrong if we had the sort of energy source that could get us to the stars? (This plus an ion drive would be really fun).
But nothing can change the facts - and they are facts which not even Steorn denies - that Steorn's behaviour exactly fits that of pseudoscientists, and that in two hundred years pseudoscience hasn't thrown up enough of worth to buy a Sainsbury's own brand AA battery.
Rupert
What about tom beardan who has created the motioless electromagnetic motor... another over unity device that doesn't claim to be a closed but open system. he claims the energy comes from the void... or that 90% of the world thats just sittin there.... similar concepts, it doesn't neccesarily be creating energy but taking it from somewhere. either way more out then in
Carlos Luna has been a leading researcher at Steorn and the related company Fraudhalt for several years. His name is on several Steorn patents fron 2004.
Carlos Luna did PhD research at the Group of Magnetism and Magnetic Nanomaterials
Institute for Materials Science of Madrid, CSIC
His Phd work is described as follows:
1) Laboratories for Bulk Magnetic Characterization
High-field temperature-dependent magnetic and magnetotransport characterizations are performed at the Laboratory of Magnetometry and Magnetotransport.Facilities include a Vibrating Sample Magnetometer, VSM, under maximum field of 1.5 T (low-temperature measurements in preparation), a superconducting coil (maximum field of 12T, function of temperature), lock-in, impedance bridge,
and other equipments to determine high-frequency Giant Magneto-Impedance, GMI, and Magnetransport (Magnetoresistence, MR) properties. Prof. Francisco Batallán is responsible for this Laboratory, where Dr. Badini and Ph.D students Carlos Luna and David Navas are measurements responsible. General facilities of the Institute include a SQUID magnetometer, AC Susceptometer, and High-field Vibrating sample Magnetometer.
2) Laboratory of Technical Magnetism
General studies on magnetism, mainly on soft magnetic materials, are performed at the Laboratory of Technical Magnetism
including techniques to measure low-field hysteresis loops, fluctuating and temperature dependent switching field studies,
magnetostriction by Small Angle Magnetization Rotation, magnetoelastic properties and field-induced rotation of levitating magnetostrictive wires, etc... Prof. Manuel Vázquez is responsible for this laboratory where Dr. Kleber Pirota and Ph.D. students Karin García and Carlos Luna are also involved.
Citations:
“Temperature dependence of remagnetization process in bistable magnetic microwires”, M. Vázquez, A. Zhukov, K. Pirota, R. Varga, K. García, C. Luna, M. Provencio, D. Navas, J.L. Martínez, M. Hernández-Vélez, J. Non-Crystalline solids 329 (2003) 123-130 (Invited, V Int. Workshop Non-crystalline Solids, Mexico. Feb. 2003)
" Induced rotation of magnetic wires by magnetic and mechanical excitations", M. Vázquez, V. Raposo and C. Luna, Electromagnetic Fields in Electrical Engineering. ed. A. Krawczyk and S. Wiak. IOS Press 2002. pp.525-530, (Invited, ICEM Conf. Krakow, Sept. 2001)
“Inducing rotation and levitation in magnetostrictive wires and rods: correlated amplitude and frequency of exciting ac axial magnetic field”. V. Raposos, C. Luna and M. Vázquez, Sensors and Actuators A 106 (2003) 274-277
“Magnetic nanoparticles: synthesis, ordering and properties”, M. Vázquez, C. Luna, P. Morales, R. Sanz, C. Serna and C. Mijangos, (Invited, At the Fontiers of the Condensed Matter Conf., Buenos Aires. Jun. 2004 ), Physica B 354 (2004) 71-79
“A magnetopolymeric nanocomposite: Co80Ni20 nanoparticles in a PVC matrix”, R. Sanz, C. Luna, M. Hernandez-Velez, M. Vázquez, D. Lopez and C. Mijangos, Nanotechnology 16 (2005) S278-281
“Exchange anisotropy in Co80Ni20/oxide nanoparticles”, C. Luna, P. Morales, C. Serna and M. Vázquez, Nanotechnology 15 (2004) 293-297
Effects of surfactants on the particle morphology and self-oragnization of Co nanocrystals, C. Luna, P. Morales, C. Serna and M. Vázquez, Mater. Sci. Engineer. C23 (2003) 1129-1132
- “Multidomain to single-domain transition for uniform Co80Ni20 nanoparticles”, C. Luna, P. Morales, C. Serna and M. Vázquez, Nanotechnology 14 (2003)268-272.
Excellent article! I have been reading quite a lot about the exercise in question, and trying to fathom what on earth Steorn hope to achieve from this? Are they going to rebrand themselves as a PR company, or is it an exercise by their PR company to show how successful they are at capturing the media's attention? No matter. Once again an excellent article.
If you look into Steorn's patent applications (note: "applications," not "issued patents") they describe a "low energy magnetic actuator." Supposedly, the arrangement of two or more magnets can allow the magnetic fields to "balance," so that a "magnetic shield" can be moved between them with low actuation energy.
It's not in the patent application, but, if this could be done as claimed, you could indeed use the switching of a magnetic field to create motion and thus to extract work from the device.
However, the claims in the application are not practicable. If you move a shield between the magnets, there is indeed a mid-way point where the fields balance. However, on either side of that point, the shield will be attracted to the closer magnet, and increasingly strongly as it approaches the magnet. The work required to move the shield back away from the magnet will not be negligible, and overall the device will require more energy to operate than can be recovered from its output.
The picture will be complicated when the external apparatus is in place, because it will affect the magnetic fields. However the basic principle will continue to hold: the claim that you can move a magnetic shield with only negligible work input is not practicable. (unless the shield is so far away from the magnet that it is not effectively changing the magnetic flux - but then the device wouldn't do anything.)
This does not even consider the losses due to eddy currents in the shield that will occur if the shield is moved quickly.
1st of April was the date chosen by the company to announce that they had discovered free energy.
http://www.steorn.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2501&page=1#Item_0
The link was on the following page, but has since been removed from Steorn's web site, presumably to hide the fact that it was a joke, so they could continue the joke for as long as possible.
http://www.steorn.net/en/coverage.html
Google's cache of the incriminating page is still available:
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:L8SzMcpHqCgJ:www.steorn.net/en/coverage.html+site:steorn.net+april&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=1
Google: 1
Steorn: 0
What a cynical world? If any lone inventor proposes a revolutionary idea, he is attacked mercilessly to submission. Usually these inventors are lone geeks with lesser social skills and shy to take on ignorant critics.
I have a friend who has invented a solution for online GUI components, which may be used to build complex online application, than possible before even on desktop platforms such as Windows or Apple computer systems, at fraction of cost. When he was presented privately to potential partners/investors, he was insulted.
He also proposed a revolutionary component based software paradigm, which can alleviate so called software crisis.
These technologies are not complex and any qualified software engineer can validate in hours. He posted all the information on e web site, http://www.cbsdf.com. Still few people calling him fool and fraud, with out showing a shred of evidence that his technologies have any flaw.
http://www.cbsdf.com/technologies/DHTML-Wi...ECH-Summary.htm
He has posted necessary basic source code in the web site. Any junior developer can use this to create complex online GUI applications, which is practically impossible to top researchers at Google or Microsoft.
The world is so cynical that no qualified person willing to spend couple of hours to verify themselves. A single individual cannot build and provide full-fledged products and services to get this into market. Until fellow researchers verify this and acknowledge their experience, such technologies do not attract customers and investors to bring it market.
If such technologies do not reach market or delayed for several years, whom do you think biggest losers? The inventor who created out of his curiosity or the world? Who is going to suffer the consequences? Such inventions can add trillions of dollars to world economy and energy independence to poor countries.
They should have posted all the process to construct a device openly as my friend hosted in http://www.cbsdf.com web site. I don’t know about the free energy, but I know cynics killed other good inventions. Please don’t call them fraud, just because you are too lazy and incompetent to validate the invention.
"Still few people calling him fool and fraud, with out showing a shred of evidence that his technologies have any flaw. "
30 seconds on his site reminds me of this:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=406
"The more incompetent someone is in a particular area, the less qualified that person is to assess anyone's skill in that space, including their own. When one fails to recognize that he or she has performed poorly, the individual is left assuming that they have performed well. As a result, the incompetent will tend to grossly overestimate their skills and abilities."
(which can be applied to the Steorn case too, of course).
Buzz marketing, as effective as it can be, is a dangerous game of gambling corporate credibility and the stakes are directly proportionate to your ability to deliver. For Steorn, given that 68 percent of the people who responded to their online poll that asks "should that scientific community accept our challenge" said NO, their wager seems to be equivalent to going "all in" without having the right cards to pull it off. -- copywriteink.blogspot.com
You make a very valid point regarding Steorn’s possible publicity stunt, but consider this, conventional science has yet to come up with a fool proof explanation for the creation of the elements and if it has, it has definitely not proven it in a laboratory setting. Conventional science also rejects anything that claims over – unity or perpetual motion on the basis that it violates the first law of energy conservation that states that energy can not be created or destroyed only converted, but if this is true then science is also admitting that energy is infinitely recyclable, everything we observe in nature is expressed in cycles, where energy is constantly changing forms or is this incorrect. Another troubling dilemma is our explanation depicting atomic structure, where we say that electrons orbit around the nucleus composed of protons and neutrons in a fixed and permanent path, is this not a form of perpetual motion, and what about our proven knowledge of planetary orbits, wouldn’t this also be a form of perpetual motion. In what concerns magnets, if you place two magnets of opposing polarity at a distance sufficient to engage their field attractions you would have to exert a constant force in order to keep them from coming together, it is then obvious that the magnets are involved in consistently recycling energy that feeds of the two attracting magnetic poles and will continue this process until they are able to come together, wouldn’t you agree, if so wouldn’t this also be considered a form of perpetual motion! I am not saying that we should believe any crap that is thrown our way but lets try and be a little open minded, in the end it does us no harm, let the experiments and properly calibrated instruments do the speaking.
Hi rupert -- you are very good at speaking thru your hat
I am aware of technology that has been demonstrable yet unacceptable to the 'scientific communtiy' -- which is nothing new as we review discoveries of the past
people's education and training unfortunately creates limitations that are difficult to overcome the majority of the time -- things that dont fit the parameters of understanding are and have been typically poopooed
those limitaions predefine potential progress and outcomes, preventing and intimidating creativity at a cost to all mankind
true it is as I heard some time ago, it's hard to stay in the groove without getting in a rut
Thanks for this, I was caught up by the ad in the Economist and the Steorn web site, but reading your article brought me back to my senses. Good writing and a lot of fun. Keep up the good work. (As an American, I'm working up my Photon Patent application right now).
If McCarthy and Steorn are proven right, the benefits to humanity will only be eclipsed by the joy of seeing this self absorbed, pontificating, uncredentialed, eructator forced to “eat crow”.
Great hoax, invest in the memorabilia
Steorn now has, according to its website, a very large and targeted email list (over 40,000 at last count) that it is free to sell to any and all comers...that will pay for the PR firm, the Economist ad and more!
Very well done!
Wow! This article sure brings out the weirdoes! But it's right on the nose-- thanks so much for writing so clearly about this subject. The whacko free energy types are truly annoying and you've brought them down to ground. Unfortunately they won't recognize it, LOL!
An excellent article. Rupert. You do know what you are talking about.
About six years ago I published an article on Xogen, a
company in Calgary, Alberta, who were making free energy claims based on "pulsed electrolysis". Xogen was partly owned by a public company called Tathacus. I am reasonably convinced that the managers at Tathacus truly did believe the claims, at least at first. As the saga played out, however, you could see the acrimony between Tathacus and Xogen rising, and (if I read it correctly) the doubts setting in. It must have been hell for the managers, as they slowly came to realize that they had been made massive fools of. Tathacus eventually dumped Xogen and changed both its name and profession. Xogen just disappeared.
I am always amazed at people who stand up for these cons based on, well, nothing really. It seems to do no good to point out that this drama has been played countless times before in history, and it always comes out the same, and that maybe we should be learning from that.
It reminds me of someone who keeps playing Monte (the shell game), and just won't be convinced that the whole thing is fixed.
Of course, I am very sceptic about Steorn's claims, yet like everybody else I wish a miracle to happen. :) By the way, there is a lot of "free" energy around us: a kinetic energy of spinning Earth, an energy of rotating Moon and so on. Enough for billions years. We just need to find how to use it properly. ;)
Can energy be destroyed? No. What does it all end up as? Answer; Heat. All energy degrades eventually to heat. If everyone in the world had access to Free Unlimited Energy, it would ALL end up as environmental heat, WHATEVER it was used for. We would be measuring "global warming" in degrees per day, not degrees per century. The world would become uninhabitable. Any form of Free Unlimited Energy would be a DISASTER.
Arthur C. Clarke agrees; He said that although free and unlimited sources of energy would eliminate fossil fuel emissions, it should also be remembered that the use of electricity always results in heat emissions. If energy was completely free and unlimited to the entire 6 billion people of the Earth, the planet would heat up, way beyond what we could survive.
Proof of Fraud:
1) On their website they give an approximation of size to power ratio (cell-phone sized device for example).
2) If it produces more power than you put in, then one could feed a portion of the output back to the input; create a feedback loop.
3) You now have even more energy coming out than previously, and more going back to the input; the feedback loop continues and makes ever increasing amounts of energy.
4) If true then:
a) You do not need to "plug it in" as it appears ones does for their device, after it is initially started.
b) Power to size ratio is meaningless; any size of device can make any amount of energy.
By giving size estimates of the device, they have implicitly proved that it cannot possibly work.
to Matthew Martin regarding your so called proof of fraud.
Just because they have indicated a size to the device is not proof of fraud. The device could very easily be limited in the amount of power that is able to be input into the system meaning that you could not feed the resulting power back into the system and create a feedback loop.
I for one welcome our new Steorn Overlords.
Rupert...
"Also, that if they abandoned all attempts to capitalise on the IP and put every tiny detail in the public domain tomorrow, they would soon be as rich and famous as they could possibly desire."
How would they be rich if they gave up the IP? Explain, please.
They have in fact, maybe. After my theory is very probable, created with your Circle electromagnetic field for example Unique effect of The Electromagnetic Twister. This effect is draining entire energy from an Determinated Area. Take away this energy from One Central Point is very heavy.
Steorn's probably proved carry out.
enjoyed the article, wqell written, and nice opinion
This article is a disservice to its readers. What's the author saying: There is the knowable and the unknowable. And the unknowable ain't gonna be known by anyone? Well, thanks for telling us that. And make sure that you WON'T tell us how YOU found out about that.
How about Black Mass and Black Energy? Unthinkable. Unbelievable. Unvisible. But more and more proof emerges nowadays that there is MORE Black Mass and Energy than VISIBLE mass and energy exists.
The Naysayers, like this author will NEVER advance anything, other than the pocketbooks of the vested interests.
Law's can be broken... or bent!
Magnets are very strange things. They actually give off large amounts of energy without even moving. That field around them that pushes and pulls to other magnets or metals... that's energy and some spacial distortion. If you play with it introducing some crafty mechanics, you'll be very amazed! Behold the magnetic shield...
Magnets have no inherent energy density. The poster of the above comment doesnt understand basic physics.
To John Smith:
Good point. It seems that at the very least there must be a point (size) of diminishing returns for the device - much like quantum dot architecture doesn't work over a certain size.
If it is the case I still wonder about its wide applicability. Many things occur in a non-intuitive way on a small enough scale, but we haven't been able to necessarily harness the effects in a useful way on a larger scale.
My gut feeling is that they have most likely picked incorrect boundaries for their energy balance calculations - a pretty common mistake, particularly in regenerative systems (consider a preheated air system and heat exchanger on a refinery process heater and what happens if you leave the heat exchanger out of the equation).
In any case I personally really would like this to work - a new start for humanity at the least (probably no reason for war any more...), but I need to see the proof.
There was earlier a report of a "Perpetual Motion Machine" made as an object of art by an artist. In this a two inch diameter steel ball is running on a circular rail. The rolling ball brings and removes magnets into the path, which attracts and maintains the motion.