Steorn

King Mob

So apparently a web promotions firm was better at physics than physicists, and have solved the worlds energy problems forever.

I'm going down to their demonstration thingy tomorrow, to personally thank them for breaking science and glory at their mighty perpetual engine.

Anyone been there yet?
Thoughts?

robindch

When and where's it on?(*)

(*) I'm looking after my 3yo tomorrow and casting about for entertaining things to do.

5uspect

Info here:
http://www.steorn.com/demo/

Odd that after the expert panel reported that there was nothing to see they're back with yet more nonsense.

King Mob

According to the website there's meant to be a "validation and replication" in January.

I wonder what they mean by this.
And I wonder how they're going to do it when their independent panel left.

Fanny Cradock

These guys are stunningly good salesmen. They have effectively produced nothing, and yet people are still talking about it all these years later. I wonder will they move into marketing?

King Mob

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

These guys are stunningly good salesmen. They have effectively produced nothing, and yet people are still talking about it all these years later. I wonder will they move into marketing?

Yea, it's good promotion but they're not selling anything else really.
Just this thing, which anyone who'd be interested in buying some like it will know it's bullcrap.

It leads me to believe that they have been honestly duped.

5uspect

They're selling crappy USB Hall sensors amoung other rubbish.

King Mob

5uspect wrote: »

They're selling crappy USB Hall sensors amoung other rubbish.

Yea just noticed them.
What are they meant to do exactly?

King Mob

So browsed around for a explanation of how the machine doesn't work, and came across this post of the JREF forums.

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5415317&postcount=22

And it's a D-cell battery. Geez. That will run it until the audience gets bored and then some.

Let's do a Fermi back-of-the-envelope calculation about how long we expect this thing to run. Think about a cheap but low-friction bearing: a toy gyroscope, say. Maybe the rotor weighs 200g and has a radius of 2cm. Let's call that a moment of inertia of 4x10^-5 kg-m^2. You spin it at 100 radians per second, that gives it 0.4 Joules of kinetic energy. How long does it take a gyroscope to spin down due to friction? About a minute, or 100 seconds? Great, that tells us that friction/air resistance will cost the device 4 milliwatts of power---0.004 joules per second, or 0.004*60*60 = 14 joules per hour.

How many joules of power can a D-cell battery deliver? Wikipedia says that a NiMH D-cell can do up to 10,000 milliamp-hours at 1.2 volts. That's over 40,000 joules.

A NiMH D-cell battery, with NO RECHARGING, can keep a toy gyroscope spinning for over 3000 hours, or about four months.

And remember, that's with the cheapo bearings. Steorn's fancy bearings, sealed atmosphere, and low RPMs may well require LESS power to keep spinning.

Let me put this in a large font, in case Steorn's prospective investors have the brains to Google for this demo: It does not require any special energy technology to keep a gyro spinning for a long time. If Steorn is showing you a gyro spinning for a long time, you should congratulate them on their nice bearings and not on their special energy technology. Why is Steorn choosing to do an unimpressive, misleading demo---one which amounts to "take my word for it that this battery will last for years instead of months"---rather than an impressive or convincing demo? Perhaps because they don't have an impressive or convincing demo. Perhaps because every time they try do set up a "convincing" demo, it doesn't work, because their effect doesn't exist.

1) What makes you think the D-cell is actually being recharged? What evidence do they show? So far (and for the next four+ months) the demo is consistent with "we have a low-friction gyroscope powered by a battery". No instrumentation at all, no way to confirm or refute the "recharging" claim.

2) Why is there a battery there at all? If there's a current coming in---that's what "recharging a battery" means---and a current going out---that's what "the battery drives the motor" means---then why not just hook the wires together and let it run in a loop?

3) If you need a battery there for some reason---smoothing out some sort of cyclesis the usual excuse---why is it a D-cell, the exact sort of battery that prevents you from seeing the special energy effect at all? Why not a AAA? Why not a button battery? (Following the Fermi calculation above, a button battery with 30 mAh capacity would be expected to run a cheap gyro for 10 hours or so---so a 100-hour run with one of those would be closer to being a convincing demo, wouldn't you think?) Why not use a capacitor?

It's like saying "I have a magic spoon that makes water appear out of thin air at a rate of 0.1 cm^3/second". To demonstrate it, would you:

a) dip the spoon into 25 ml of water and show that you could turn it into 50ml in a few minutes?
b) dip the spoon into an Olympic-sized swimming pool and claim that the spoon-water would prevent the pool from evaporating away?

So basically it'll run for ages and ages without any recharging effect, then when it gets close to wearing down: oops! mechanical failure.
When you're "repairing" it you swap out the battery for a fresh one.
And boom, perpetual energy.

crassus

Hey the numbers for the package seem funny.

the 419 email scam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/419_%28number%29

could all turn out to be a huge hoax no breath being held I hope

King Mob

Well when to the thing yesterday with a mate of mine.

The place is very fancy and modern looking. It's got lot's off screens around the place displaying quotes for various scientists declaring it's not true. (My favourite being - "It's a fraud" Michio Kaku.)

In the middle there's three of the devices on a clear plastic stand. all running when I was there.

While we were look at it a fella came down to take some measurements apparently. He answered our questions as best he could despite "not being a scientist" and me being a bit of an asshole.

Most of the stuff he said to me was the scripted stuff that's on the website.
He wasn't able to answer the main question "Where's the extra power coming from?"
He also tried to pull some untruths on me as well.
He said that the independent jury was spilt on the results, while the Irish Times quoted them as being "unanimous".
He also said the device contained superconducting wires, but unfortunately I didn't catch that one till after I left. Honestly not sure if this was a deliberate lie or if he didn't know what it meant.

The most telling part was when I said that "if this thing worked you really should be going down the science route rather than the commercial one."
He replied: "Yea, we tried that and didn't get the result we wanted so we're trying the commercial way"

He said we should come back in January after the other experiments, which I do intend to.

Also you get a free t-shirt, which I intend to wear to my physic exams.

Also here's a photosynth of the device made by my friend.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=d726c7d8-2eaf-4cb5-92af-20996c4f9cec

jonnyfingers

Just wondering if anyone has kept up to dates with the most recent experiments? There's a good discussion going on here

Also a prominent french inventor has replicated some of the Steorn experiments and is quite interested in what he's found. I'm still skeptical that it's a free energy machine but it could well be a form of super-efficient engine which is still useful.

pH

jonnyfingers wrote: »

Just wondering if anyone has kept up to dates with the most recent experiments? There's a good discussion going on here

Also a prominent french inventor has replicated some of the Steorn experiments and is quite interested in what he's found. I'm still skeptical that it's a free energy machine but it could well be a form of super-efficient engine which is still useful.

Super efficienct brushless DC motors already exist (well in labs anyway), efficiency normally drops as the motor is forced to do more work, and is made more rugged to last and perform in the real world.

For example, the following is real science, by credible scientists on high efficiency DC motors - that are doing work - I haven't checked the post by King Mod but his claim of 4 milliwatts seems reasonable - compare this to useful powers in the 100W range being demonstrated below.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20090403/168295/

Steorn on the other hand are spinning a flywheel and playing "Oh look at these funny lines on my expensive oscilloscope".

Nothing about their claim makes sense in this reality, and nothing they've demonstrated so far backs up their ludicrous claim even slightly.

jonnyfingers

pH wrote: »

Super efficienct brushless DC motors already exist (well in labs anyway), efficiency normally drops as the motor is forced to do more work, and is made more rugged to last and perform in the real world.

For example, the following is real science, by credible scientists on high efficiency DC motors - that are doing work - I haven't checked the post by King Mod but his claim of 4 milliwatts seems reasonable - compare this to useful powers in the 100W range being demonstrated below.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20090403/168295/

Steorn on the other hand are spinning a flywheel and playing "Oh look at these funny lines on my expensive oscilloscope".

Nothing about their claim makes sense in this reality, and nothing they've demonstrated so far backs up their ludicrous claim even slightly.

I agree with you. But if I was in their position and had something of substance I'd be keeping my cards close to my chest and only showing potential investors what's really going on. Either way, as an electronic engineer, all the fancy lines on oscilloscopes, and magnets peaks my interest! I'll wait and see what, if anything, comes of the orbo.

5uspect

jonnyfingers wrote: »

I agree with you. But if I was in their position and had something of substance I'd be keeping my cards close to my chest and only showing potential investors what's really going on. Either way, as an electronic engineer, all the fancy lines on oscilloscopes, and magnets peaks my interest! I'll wait and see what, if anything, comes of the orbo.

Not quite true in this case.
If they publish this with fully verifiable tests then this would become the greatest discovery since, well forever.

They make naive and short-sighted claims about how their device will mean you'll never have charge your phone again etc. If such technology works the entire ****ing world will change totally. Unlimited energy will come from nothing. World economies will dramatically change if not collapse, never mind the need to rethink our current scientific knowledge. Society and politics will be totally transformed.

Imagine a world where you don't have to pay any energy bills.
Factories can not only produce products with minimal cost but factories themselves can be built just as easily. It will cost next to nothing to mine and produce resources only labour. But everyone has cheap stuff and free energy so labour is cheap.

You can go anywhere in the world for next to nothing because fuel is free.
Emigration will become a non issue and probably countries as we know them.

Since we can live without any energy losses but actual gain we don't all have to work. In fact huge amounts of people may be unemployed but without any real consequences. All we need to do is produce food. With energy for nothing we can build as many artificial greenhouses as we want. It also doesn't matter how much we automate the most trivial jobs with machines. Since energy is free we can build huge complex inefficient machines to simply pick your nose.
They can be set to do all our work for us running on free energy with no emissions.

Yet they seem to think of the technology like a some small patent that they can make a few bucks on...

jonnyfingers

Again I agree. The fact that google news has only one real article about their most recent experiment speaks volumes.

I expect they have an efficient motor and that's about it. As has been mentioned before in this thread super-efficient motors already exist so they may not have anything truly unique but still have something of interest to someone with a bit of money. Their spectacular failure last year and extraordinary claims, with little proof, has tarnished their media image. I think trying to show little experiments every few weeks was planned to drum up some hype again but it hasn't worked.

They should just throw the device into a faraday cage, add a load to it, see if it really does produce more energy than it uses, and just be done with it.

Edit: I see that there are rumours of such a test happening on Saturday. Link

King Mob

Well, the final test went online today.

Very unimpressive.
Just more oscilloscope tinkering and pre-recorded experiments.

There were absolutely no scientific controls on this "experiment" as usual and lots more of their catchphrases.

I notice as well that they didn't show the questions after the demonstration either. Odd that.

And somehow I doubt they'll be as forth coming with the results of the independent experiments they're going on about.