Irish company challenges scientists to test 'free energy' technology

[YankeyMCC]

(snip)
DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irish company has thrown down the gauntlet to the worldwide scientific community to test a technology it has developed that it claims produces free energy.
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The company, Steorn, says its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy -- a concept that challenges one of the basic rules of physics.

It claims the technology can be used to supply energy for virtually all devices, from mobile phones to cars
(snip)

(snip)
"The energy isn't being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It's literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy," he told Ireland's RTE radio.
(snip)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060818/bs_afp/irelandscie...

All our problems solved!

[FloridaPat]

1. I don't see why they just can't make a car or electrify a house with

this technology and invite everyone in. If nothing else, just make it a multi-level business. Tons of people will join in buy.

[theophilus]

2. July 2040: Coming soon to a theater near you (or whatever passes

for a theater) "Who Killed the Magnetic Generator?"

[RonHack]

5. From www.steorm.net

(snip)

Steorn has decided to publish its challenge in The Economist because of the breadth of its readership. "We chose it over a purely scientific magazine simply because we want to make the general public aware that this process is about to commence and to generate public support, awareness, interest etc for what we are doing."

(paste)

Okay, but my not ALSO the scientific journals as well, give it a full head-on critique?

Plus, no way to learn how to replicate the experiment......

I smell a rat.

[RonHack]

3. Hmmmmm.........

Sounds like cold-fusion to me.......

Is there anyplace I should go to, to learn how to replicate their "discovery"?

Science advances when new ideas are analyzed and tested again and again.

[BlueJazz]

4. I have no idea what it is but it's Bullshit.

There isn't any "Free Ride"

[Occulus]

6. All we need to know:

"Steorn issued its challenge through an advertisement in the Economist magazine this week quoting Ireland's Nobel prize-winning author George Bernard Shaw who said that "all great truths begin as blasphemies".

Someone's been watching "Stargate Atlantis":



(For the uninitiated, that's a "zero point module", or ZPM, a device which creates a bottle universe from which vacuum energy is drawn. Each device supposedly lasts thousands of years.)

[htuttle]

7. Brilliant!

[trotsky]

14. LMAO

[NNadir]

8. These cases never stop.

I recall hearing somewhere that the patent office required all patents for perpetual motion machines to be accompanied by a working model.

[AZCat]

9. I don't know...

It looks like they might not even open the door.

Source: USPTO Inventor Resources Page

<snip>
What cannot be patented:
Laws of nature
Physical phenomena
Abstract ideas
Literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works (these can be Copyright protected). Go to the Copyright Office.

Inventions which are:
Not useful (such as perpetual motion machines); or
Offensive to public morality
</snip>
(emphasis mine)

[WePurrsevere]

10. Sounds like one of Tesla's ideas. Sadly even if someone did discover

a way to create or get truly free energy it would probably be suppressed, legislated or ridiculed into oblivion. If not then power companies will have figured out how to charge for it.

(edited for spelling typo)

[Miss Chybil]

19. We will never know what it is until energy companies do figure out how

to charge for it!

I agree with an earlier poster, though. If it was legit, they should have published it in scientific journals as well as in periodicals targeting the general public.

[Xithras]

11. Hey, I built one of these once!

I had an array of magnets, set up in a "special" configuration. When you took your special container, a super secret array of metallic conductors, and moved it around the magnetic fields...starting and stopping in the same position of course...you ended up with MORE power than you started with! For only $99.95 I'll SEND YOU THE PLANS to build one yourself. Without sarcasm, I absolutely promise you that it will work! This device will generate an infinite amount of free energy, as long as you keep moving the super special array around the magnets! Buy now before the oil companies bury it!

/sarcasm off (well, not really. If you're dumb enough to send me a hundred bucks, I really will send you the plans to do what I said above. No refunds when you realize your foolishness though).

Here's the million dollar question. Quoting from the article: "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," McCarthy said. Where does the energy to propel the "device" around the magnetic fields come from? Does the power gained from the movement exceed the power required to induce the movement? The laws of physics say NO. While I admit to not reading much on this particular invention, the basic description given so far indicates that they've built some kind of rudimentary generator. Move the "armature" around the magnets and you get a very small electrical charge. Move it quickly and you'll get a bigger one. Faraday would be so proud of these guys!

[Phoonzang]

12. If its fake...

...and "free energy" is impossible, then this "invention" should be easy enough to disprove, right? Then legitimate scientists should accept the challenge and disprove it....unless such heresy is so far below their notice that they don't even want to investigate the claim. After all what does investigaton of things that we KNOW are impossible have to do with science?

That being said...has anyone else heard that this is a possible viral marketing ploy for Halo 3?

[BadgerKid]

13. "unable" and "off the record"

"But we have been unable to get significant scientific interest in it. We have had scientists come in, test it and, off the record, they are quite happy to admit that it works."

OK, but it won't stop them from duping people nonetheless.

[mainegreen]

15. They built a generator?

BFD.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Article in The Guardian

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 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.
...
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.
...
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 to electrical 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.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.h...

It all seems very strange. If they really were a genuine engineering company before this, then doing something like this would ruin their reputation - and you'd also think they'd be able to prove to themselves what was going on. Are they really refusing all investment? Where did the £2.7m they've spent so far come from - profit they could have taken out of the existing company, bank loans, their own pockets?

[Occulus]

18. Hmm. Okay, let's assume- for kicks- that this really does work.

I can think of one very good reason to keep it as secret as they are, refusing investment, etc.

Oil companies. There's no money in 'free energy'; even selling one of these would ruin their hold on global energy markets. Such a device- were it to actually work- would signal the death knell of the oil industry. I think such large, powerful corporations would be willing to do anything under the sun- up to and including the murder of the developers of the technology- to keep it off the market.

No required. Those people mean business.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. Not necessarily

wind and solar energy are as 'free' as this - you have to build a machine to get them. They say they've spent £2.7m building prototypes, so the machines aren't stunningly simple, either.

Anyway, saying "we've got a marvellous secret about energy, but we haven't told anyone else" is the perfect way to make yourself a target, if anyone were unscrupulous enough to consider murder. It would be safer either not to tell anyone, not to put adverst in The Economist, etc.; or to tell everyone the secret, so that it couldn't be suppressed by killing you.

[bemildred]

17. Just start piping energy into the grid.

Or shut up.

[Ready4Change]

20. So, any takers yet? nt