Free Energy ??

SkepticOne

Here's how I think a scam might work:

1. Produce publicity. Generate controversy.
2. Get as many expressions of interest as possible.
3. Get some "scientists" to produce papers favourable to the "invention".
4. Present these to some of the people who expressed interest and seek investment.
5. Pay themselves huge salaries and expenses over several years with the
6. Go bust.

In one of their interviews McCarthy said that they would not be releasing names of scientists to the public and that there would be NDAs involved. They also mention that the scientists who said "off the record" that the device worked were also bound by NDAs preventing both Steorn and the scientists (if there were any) from identifying who they were. McCarthy, in the interview, seemed to use the excuse of the NDA (written by Steorn) to explain why he could not release the names.

jonski

SkepticOne wrote:

3. Get some "scientists" to produce papers favourable to the "invention".


In one of their interviews McCarthy said that they would not be releasing names of scientists to the public and that there would be NDAs involved.

While your theory makes some sense , there are some flaws in it . While they did say that they would not release the names of the scientists and that there would be NDA's , they also said that when the papers were published , the scientists would be named and those names would stand up to review .

SkepticOne wrote:

They also mention that the scientists who said "off the record" that the device worked were also bound by NDAs preventing both Steorn and the scientists (if there were any) from identifying who they were. McCarthy, in the interview, seemed to use the excuse of the NDA (written by Steorn) to explain why he could not release the names.

I don't see the problem with this , as we have seen and read , any sceintist seen to be investigating this kind of energy scorce is usually ridiculed . So why wouldn't they want an NDA protecting themselves .

Hobbes

Well they have gone from a system where they claim it has already been verified by "unnamed scientists" who refuse to claim it works to something that will take a month to verify, to something that can take 18 months to 10 years to verify.

Sounds like BS to me tbh. If they are geniune about it I would say they are more likely to have misconfigured thier reading equipment.

pH

I'm not sure how they could be getting incorrect readings - here's my summary:

"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"

Surely this is not open to any subjective measurements, for each revolution of the machine, it increases in velocity. I'm presuming he means kinetic energy, there doesn't seem to be any other type of energy that can be gained.

If this is true, they have a machine that once started, builds up speed each revolution until the amount of 'energy' being created in a revolution is equal to the amount being lost as heat due to friction/resistance.

That such a machine works is self-evident, the only reason you need 12 physicists is to try and explain where the energy is coming from.

I would be absolutely amazed if one of these machines ever leaves Steorn's lab into the hands of an independent scientist.

I think in general people fail to understand how fundamental 'conservation of energy' is.

If I asked people what are the chances that Hitler is alive and well today and living on Mars - they'd agree that the odds where massively long, but they're a 'good bet' compared to the chances that the law of conservation of energy has been overturned.

The conservation of energy is a consequence of Noether's Theorem

The conservation of energy is a common feature in many physical theories. It is understood as a consequence of Noether's theorem which states that any theory whose description is not sensitive to a starting time will have constant energy. In other words, if the theory is invariant under the continuous symmetry of time translation its energy is conserved. Conversely, theories which are not invariant under shifts in time (for example, systems with time dependent potential energy) do not exhibit conservation of energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

I'm thinking that a consequence of this should be that if you run the machine backwards it should destroy energy (well it did create it didn't it!) - anyone?

Hobbes

My guess is they have created a flywheel with magnets attached.

blorg

This is nothing new, you can even buy one on eBay. Note that this is _not_ a perpetual motion machine but harvests energy from gravity using the tornado effect. So there.

BendiBus

blorg wrote:

This is nothing new, you can even buy one on eBay. Note that this is _not_ a perpetual motion machine but harvests energy from gravity using the tornado effect. So there.

And it works with any colour or flavour of air! Excellent! :cool:

blorg

BendiBus wrote:

And it works with any colour or flavour of air! Excellent! :cool:

I particularly liked the guy asking if it could power his submarine:

Q: this is amazing, can I use this generator in my submarine? Only I have purchased some missiles, but sadly no payload, but I cannot buy a nuclear powerplant for my submarine, and this looks like it might be superb. Are there any dangers with using this device underwater?
A: Yes you can use it for submarine. there are any dangers with using this device underwater. it is very simple and safe comparing nuclear powerplant.

Ice_Box

Steorn just posted this on their website


Folks,

We will be doing our final live interview (for the moment) today after four (BST) on Dubin' Newstalk 106 radio station. Several interviews that we have already done will (we believe) be coming out over the next week or so.

We have achieved what we set out to achieve. We have challenged a fundamentalist attitude in the world of science with respect to conservation of energy. We have made the world of science angry enough to apply to come and test our technology.

After the closing of applications on September 8th we will focus our efforts on selection of the Jury and the actual testing of the technology - what this has been all about.

This forum will remain open so that you can, as always, express your views, comments etc.

We would like to say thanks to EVERYONE who has taken the time to comment.

The Steorn Team.

SkepticOne

jonski wrote:

While your theory makes some sense , there are some flaws in it . While they did say that they would not release the names of the scientists and that there would be NDA's , they also said that when the papers were published , the scientists would be named and those names would stand up to review .

In the interview on Steornwatch they said that they would not release the names of the scientists.

Basically, no one will know who is working on the project. All they need is one or two scientists to come up with favourable reports which they can then feed to selected members on their mailing list to solicit investments. Steorn at all times remain in full control of the information flow. We will not hear from scientists who do not agree that this thing produces free energy.

Not the way science is meant to work, of course, but then I don't believe that science in its normal form would suit Steorn's purposes.

What I would like to see is a high profile publication step forward and challenge Steorn to demonstrate their technology to a panel of scientists selected by Nature, not Steorn. There have been plenty of instances in the past where vested interests have paid scientists to produce work favourable to them.

jonski

SkepticOne wrote:

In the interview on Steornwatch they said that they would not release the names of the scientists.

Basically, no one will know who is working on the project.

They said they would not release the names of the scientists that already tested it , the question of the 12 testing being named is a bit unclear I think . Just listened to that interview again and james suggested that they would be named and Steorn's Sean did not correct him on it .

bonkey

The Steorn Team wrote:

We have achieved what we set out to achieve. We have challenged a fundamentalist attitude in the world of science with respect to conservation of energy. We have made the world of science angry enough to apply to come and test our technology.

They seem to have forgotten to add the followings paragraph after the above:


Having made the world of science angry, and having made much noise about the lack of willingness to test, we will now refuse most of those who rose to our bait the opportunity to do what we said we wanted them to do.

We want our system tested as thoroughly as possible. Thats why we, the non-scientists, are the most qualified people to select which scientists from amongst our applicants are suitable testing-candidates.

There is no valid, science-relevant reason for us to do this. It only makes sense from a business perspective.

What I would like to see is a high profile publication step forward and challenge Steorn to demonstrate their technology to a panel of scientists selected by Nature, not Steorn.

Sod selection.

If they won't give anyone who expresses the wish to do so the freedom to have a crack at it then they're hiding something.

kurisu

im sure this has already been posted but i havent noticed

but i was wondering has anyone looked at the map in steorns contacts us section of their webpage. the map looks like it was made using microsoft paint by a 4 year old and it doesnt seem to actually pinpoint steorns offices or headquarters, why cant they even give us a location for us to see they exist?

Son Goku

pH wrote:

I think in general people fail to understand how fundamental 'conservation of energy' is.......
The conservation of energy is a consequence of Noether's Theorem
.......
I'm thinking that a consequence of this should be that if you run the machine backwards it should destroy energy (well it did create it didn't it!) - anyone?

Also Noether's theorem says that for each conserved quantity generated by an invariant translation (in this case energy's conservation is generated by time translation invariance), there is corresponding divergenceless "current".

In Energy's case the corresponding current is the "Stress-Energy" Tensor, which is what causes the warping of spacetime.

Energy not being conserved would mean that Stress-Energy isn't divergenceless, which would mean Einstein's Equations are incorrect. Which would be difficult to explain as the match observations.

And this is just one thing which depends on Energy Conservation.
There are too many things, which would be incorrect if conservation of energy wasn't true, but match evidence. So it would be difficult to see how energy is not conserved and they are somehow correct.

jonski

As mentioned in the first post , I know nothing about any of this , but is it not possible that they are converting some kind of energy that up until now we knew nothing about , thereby not breaking any Scientific laws ?

My head hurts .

Hobbes

Best way to guess what it is. Check the history and what they are saying.

For example. thier promo was something like "Imagine never having to charge your mobile phone or put gas in your car again". Silly. If you had invented free energy it would go more like "Imagine never having to worry about energy in your home, life, etc. Dependacy on forigen oil, etc".

Second. The company previous was working on building kinetic batteries. Basically a battery that charges while you move. Which would happen in the case of a mobile phone or car.

Its most likely they have a modified kinetic battery.

pH

Hobbes wrote:

Its most likely they have a modified kinetic battery.

They may indeed have some form of kinetic battery (for mobiles, mp3 players but not cars!) and all this has been a huge publicity stunt. Steorn ride a media buzz and announce that what they have is 'As good as ..' or 'Free(for you) energy'

Are there any precedents for this (in business advertising)? Where a company has deliberately made false claims (for a product) to generate press interest and then released a far more mundane product on the back of the hype?

jonski

pH wrote:

Are there any precedents for this (in business advertising)? Where a company has deliberately made false claims (for a product) to generate press interest and then released a far more mundane product on the back of the hype?

Segway , Segway , Segway , Segway .:D

Gurgle

Hobbes wrote:

Imagine never having to put gas in your car again".

Actually, its hypothetically possible to make a car that would never need gas again. It would have to be 100% frictionless, including the body, all bearings and moving parts, and it would have to recover all the kinetic energy when it was slowing down.

jonski wrote:

is it not possible that they are converting some kind of energy that up until now we knew nothing about , thereby not breaking any Scientific laws ?

Yes, of course its possible.
Its just much much more likely (think billions of times more likely) that its just incompetance.

blorg

Gurgle wrote:

Actually, its hypothetically possible to make a car that would never need gas again. It would have to be 100% frictionless, including the body, all bearings and moving parts, and it would have to recover all the kinetic energy when it was slowing down.

Of course such a car couldn't drive around on roads, or in an atmosphere, which would be a slight drawback.

Gurgle

blorg wrote:

Of course such a car couldn't drive around on roads, or in an atmosphere, which would be a slight drawback.

The roads part would be a bit inconvienent - you would want high friction there rather than none. Atmosphere wouldn't cause undue concern, the energy used in displaced air could be recovered from the air returning to equilibrium. Some kind of forcefield manipulation would probably be required to reach the back of the slipstream. I'm not too hot on fluid dynamics.

pH

Gurgle wrote:

The roads part would be a bit inconvienent - you would want high friction there rather than none. Atmosphere wouldn't cause undue concern, the energy used in displaced air could be recovered from the air returning to equilibrium. Some kind of forcefield manipulation would probably be required to reach the back of the slipstream. I'm not too hot on fluid dynamics.

Sadly here the 2nd law of thermodynamics kicks in :
1st Law - You can't win - the best you can do is break even.
2nd Law - You can't break even .

Basically the 2nd law is saying (simply) that when you lose energy to heat there's no way to get it back again (without expending even more energy!), put another way heat doesn't flow uphill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

Capt'n Midnight

pH wrote:

Are there any precedents for this (in business advertising)? Where a company has deliberately made false claims (for a product) to generate press interest and then released a far more mundane product on the back of the hype?

Anyone remember the Sinclair car ? C5

or

The Blair Witch Project

or

Many Microsoft Products (based on the fact that they need major service packs to work and features are dropped so it can be shipped )

Capt'n Midnight

pH wrote:

1st Law - You can't win - the best you can do is break even.
2nd Law - You can't break even .

I prefer the longer version
1st Law - You can't win - the best you can do is break even.
2nd Law - You can only break even at absolute zero.
3rd Law - You can't reach absolute zero.

What is the energy density claimed ?

Because you have to pay for the device you have lost money that could be invested elsewhere at a profit. You also have to pay for maintainance too. These costs mean that a device that costs €1m to buy and can generate energy forever, but produces only as much as a bicycle dynamo can't be considered free energy. (But NASA could still be interested in one.)

You only have to look the history of wind, wave, tidal and solar to see plenty of examples where a free source of energy is available, but it was still considered uneconomic to use.

Hydroelectic is the main exception to the previous lack of interest in "free energy" from renewables since you can extract quite a lot of energy compared to the capital cost of doing so.

woodyg

According to Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy, "We put in a small amount of mechanical energy and we get a large amount out ... but until this thing is validated by science we won't be doing anything commercial with it."[21] In an apparent reference to the idea of free energy suppression, McCarthy has been quoted as saying "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." [22] However, unlike free energy claimants in the past, Steorn has not yet implied that there was an outright conspiracy to supress its technology.

So from that statement they confirm that its not a free energy source and is not in fact a perpetual motion device as it needs an energy source to initialy instigate a reaction.
But there clain of 400% efficiencies is a little ammusing as this clain would break the fundamental laws of Thermodynamics. i.e. were getting back 400% energy from a small input.
From my knowledge there is not 1 device or natural phenomena that does not loose energy some where in the creation of a new source of energy so there is nothing that exists that is even 100% efficient!
Even the big bang lost energy to another form of energy.

Hobbes

A machine that requires a little energy to start is a perpetual motion machine. Anything that gives out more energy then what it takes in.

mike65

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-energy_p20493,00.html

Mike.

lostexpectation

someone need to lok into the staff and investors

http://www.steornwatch.com/steorn-whos-who/

Sean McCathy [ aka “Shaun” ] - Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Michael Daly - Chief Operations Officer (COO)

Roger Hatfield - Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Michael Moriarty - Corporate Financial & Strategy

Richard Walshe - Marketing Manager

Dave King - Intellectual Property Manager ?

Alan Simpsons - Product Development ?

Seamus Flanagan - Business Development Manager ?

carlos lunas

STEORN INVESTORS
(non-employee stockholders)

Michael Brannigan - Kilkenny, Ireland

Patrick Corbett - Kilkenny, Ireland

Goodbody Stockbrokers Ltd. - Dublin, Ireland

Eamonn McKenna - Waterford, Ireland

James Meenan - Dublin, Ireland

James P. Murphy - County Cork, Ireland


STEORN PARTNERS

Citigate Dew Rogerson - Public Relations

i do think that company could be connected with them withs microgenerators etc

im also wondering where most magnets come from?

Dave!

Any progress on this?

lostexpectation

they've updated their faqs, nobody seemed interested enough to profile/interview all their investors, geeks don't like people?

You say you stumbled upon the principle of this device, can you talk more about that?

Answer:
We were working on a security system for ATM monitoring, which involved real time verification of ATM cards coupled with an environmental visual capture facility. The latter required numerous camera combinations and we were investigating way of independently powering these (motivations were convenience for individual camera installations (we don’t like cables!) and security of the system). One of the options we examined was small scale wind generators. Of course been the technologists that we are we had to break open the wind generators and started playing around with them, looking at, (amongst other things), the positioning of the magnets and testing the outputs – one of these configurations produced some strange results… And here we are today!

what small scale wind generator already had magnetic parts?


Carlos worked for us as a software developer, developing software for anti-counterfiet products. Carlos continues to work in this area for a partner company (he is one of the best software engineers we have ever worked with). He is not the Carlos Luna with a PhD from Madrid.