Steorn delivered as promised. No, not Orbo and its promise of "
infinite clean energy." Not even the technical details behind their seemingly improbably invention. Rather, they've produced a rather uninspiring Q1 video update for a "rightly skeptical world." We now know that of the 5,000 applicants for the jury, just under a 1000 were qualified to participate. Of these, only 22 experts had the scientific know-how (and, free time) to assess the technology -- testing which seems both under way and about to begin depending upon how you interpret the release. Nevertheless, in July Steorn will host a public demonstration of the technology in London. The event will allow anyone to "pretty much get hands-on with who we are and what the technology does." Fortunately, it will also be broadcast live across the Intertubes. Until then, you'll have to make do with the video update after the break with the possibility of more details later in the day.
[Thanks, Chris]
Update: Steorn also "updated" their
tech specs page, with more of the same totally jargon-tastic claims and not much new information. Operating on the principle of "time variant magneto-mechanical interactions", Orbo will supposedly convert mechanical energy to electrical via normal means of generation; they expect power density of 0.5 Watts per cubic centimeter. Any physicists in the room prepared to dive in?
posted April 13th 2007 7:36AM
What's another 3 months for infinite clean energy...?
I was actually expecting a verdict on the technology. On one hand he says, that there is no doubt that the technology works, so why don't they just do a public demonstration? Why not submit it to a public jury?
All this waiting while listening to confident patter has me suspicious....
I love Ireland...
Isn't this video about 12 days late?
zzzzzzzzzz...Thats quite a bit of hot air with nothing to back it up...
First, I really don't believe either way on this. Time has proven that you can never really be sure.
On one hand, if this is "real", there are a lotof considerations that must be taken into account. It's not as simple as just "releasing it to the masses". If the device or technology requires a large, complex device to produce a useable amount of energy, it wouldn't be practicle to have in every home or car. Therefore, power plants will still be necessary. To get that power to the end user still requires infrastructure, and infrastructure will still need to be mantained which will still cost money. Therefore, the companies that license this technology, will still need to "charge" for it until the economics of retrofitting and getting it into homes is worked out.
Also, as time has proven, it doesn't pay for a company to just "blurt out" findings. The fellows that thought they had cold fusion found this out the hard way and sullied the reputation of their institution in the process. They gambled, and lost. It's quite possible that Steorn is just proceeding cautiously to protect their already established business. It's quite possible that they were testing something for their current business and "found" an anomaly that they decided to investigate further. Being their previous business was fraud prevention, they would be in a good place to see this since a good part of that sort of tech is based in magentics. History is full of companies and individuals that were trying ot come up with a new way of doing something, but inadvertently "discovered" something else. Also, they would have a good idea on how to protect their new "invention" to keep others from copying it and beating them to the punch.
On the flip side, time has also proven that you can never underestimate someone's willingness to play on the world's concerns to make a quick buck.
Looks like we'll just have to wait and see. Honestly, I want this to be real. It would have the potential to make life a lot better for a lot of people...not just the oil barons that make record profits on our wants and needs for petroleum based products and services.
I have to agree to Jeff C... I want this to be real... but the probability that they have disproved the very fundamentals of what modern physics is based on is quite slim....
@Jeff C:
I don't really buy the whole "proceeding cautiously" thing. If you want to proceed cautiously, you don't take out full-page adverts in newspapers and boldly claim that you have produced technology which "definitely works" despite violating one of the most fundamental scientific principles. By doing this they've already made the mistake of the cold fusion guys by "throwing down the gauntlet" to the world. However, instead of also telling the world /how/ they did it, like cold fusion or every other published scientific discovery and thus opening up the possibility of being wrong, they are sitting with their fingers in their ears singing "we're right but we're not telling you how".
Good point, tree trunk. If "caution" was the motive behind their method, they should've definitely done it differently.
This probably is just a hoax of some sort...be it a viral marketing ploy, or otherwise.
I guess a big part of me wants it to be true so badly, I'm willing to forgive some "marketing/business" blunders... not to mention the fact that the scientific laws their challenging have been in place for quite some time.
Thanks for killing the optimist in me...he was getting annoying anyway. ;)
Now it all makes sense. *This* is why Leopard is being delayed to October! Remember, "secret features"? ;-)
Steorn are updating their website at 6pm GMT with some technical details.
kilters @ Apr 13th 2007 10:03AM
Steorn are updating their website at 6pm GMT with some technical details.
And those "detailed technical specifications" are quite unimpressive.
"Orbo is based upon the principle of time variant magneto-mechanical interactions. The core output from our Orbo technology is mechanical. This mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy using standard generator technology either by integrating such technology directly with Orbo or by connecting the mechanical output from Orbo to the generation technology. The efficiency of such mechanical/electrical conversions is highly dependent on the components used and is also a function of size.
Orbo technology is subject to continuous development. This development is focused on improving the manufacturability of the technology, production costs and power density. Orbo was initially developed as using stop-start mechanisms (with a power density of 0.5 Watts per cm3), Steorn is currently finalizing the development of constant motion systems and a significant improvement in power density is anticipated."
From http://www.steorn.com/orbo/technology/
Essentially I suppose what I'm saying is:
They've already "blurted out" their findings. If they're wrong, it doesn't make any difference whether they discover this themselves or whether someone else does once they've released it. Indeed, it would be EVEN WORSE for them to "verify" the technology themselves only to see someone else prove them wrong afterwards than it would be for them to just release it straight away. There is simply no reason for not releasing this other than that it doesn't work.
Comments disabled on youtube video? Hoax, right there, thats all the evidence you need.
"Thanks for killing the optimist in me...he was getting annoying anyway. ;)"
Don't get me wrong- it would of course be awesome if it were true. It would be the end of all our energy problems, virtually the end of pollution, and if someone could come up with a way of turning an infinite source of energy into a human-usable form it'd be the end of world hunger too. We could send things infinitely far into space- but forget about that, because we could just knock the planet out of orbit and move that instead (moving away from the sun may be a short-term problem, but infinite electrical power should deal with that quite nicely).
The further you take this idea to its logical conclusion the more ridiculous it seems.
am I the only one that had to read the comments before I knew what the poster was talking about. Or am I the only one that didnt know who Steorn is?
I was half expecting their offices to blow up in the night of the 12th.....
"Steorn is currently finalizing the development of constant motion systems..."
Being that I have been schooled in the institutions of the United States; I had to get my trusty thesaurus out to look up some words. Turns out that another word for constant is perpetual and sometimes people will refer to a system as a machine. Wait a minute, GOD NEWS, someone finally invented a Perpetual (Constant) Motion Machine (system).
As Willy Wonka said "Never ever doubt what no one is sure about"
Yeah, I have a comment: my BS detector is pegged. Really, guys, don't bother saying anything till you can demo. We don't need specs and descriptions of the underlying "physics" if you can show us a working model. And by the way, we've heard it all before...cars running on water, using the earth's magnetic field to generate energy, flying cars, the whole gamut. So, if you know it's possible, why can't you show us something? What? No working prototype? Go away.
And by the way, here's the *real* link to their YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBp5ag6SJH4
(yes, it's a joke)
@Peter:
I feel almost ashamed for admitting this, but that link you posted is hilarious- I just laughed till my eyes watered.
As expected, standard pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, littered with unnecessary words to make it sound impressive to the layperson. Engadget, perhaps you would like to include the following "translation":
"Orbo uses magnets and moving parts, like a motor. The output is mechanical.
Mechanical energy may be converted to electrical energy with a generator. Generators vary - YMMV. Both of these statements are completely general and tell us nothing abour Orbo.
We're still working on it. Originally it didn't work continously and we're "finalizing" getting it to (read: it still doesn't work)."
So, from these "detailed technical specifications" we have learnt two things:
1) Orbo uses magnets
2) It doesn't work
Here's the thing - we have these things called "patents". They have them in Ireland too. Ironically, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing for which patents were invented - to protect novel technology and process embodied in a physical device (as opposed to software patents which should never have been allowed to exist - but that's another story...).
If this is real tech, then Steorn just had to patent it, then they could have let everyone in on the deal. In fact, they would have HAD to let everyone know since public disclosure is one of the consequences of applying for a patent. Oddly, by going this route, they may have invalidated their own ability to get a patent on the technology.
Meanwhile, for those not able to read sf-speak, "time variant magneto-mechanical interactions" translates into "generator", although in this context, since it generates mechanical energy, it's more accurately a "motor".
The problem so far is - ok - all of this is nice - but you can't get significant mechanical energy from a static magnetic field, and usually, you can't get a dynamic magnetic field without moving something - which takes energy. Usually more than you get out. This is obvious from the laws of thermodynamics.
Therefore, either there's some wholly new physics going on - which is unlikely - or there's something we're not being told - like where the gas or electricity goes in.
Now, it IS possible that they've hit on some really novel *battery* technology - and .5W/cm isn't that bad - a cubic metre will get you 500Ws, especially if it's quick to recharge and is durable, but so far, it all sounds like a lot of handwaving.
On the other hand, it's entertaining to watch. :)
I think they tried to patent it but apparently this kind of free energy device is unpatentable under patent laws. they also tried to patent the actually parts of the 'device' but they were ..err.. not worthy of a patent, not very distinuishable or special in any way .
5:23 of saying absolutely nothing. That guy really likes the sound of his own voice.
He looks like a mix between Josh Stamberg and Pete Rose. I don't know if that combo bodes well for him.
@Jeff Lewis
"Now, it IS possible that they've hit on some really novel *battery* technology - and .5W/cm isn't that bad - a cubic metre will get you 500Ws, especially if it's quick to recharge and is durable, but so far, it all sounds like a lot of handwaving."
100*100*100 = 1 000 000 cm^3
That's 500kW per cubic metre, that's a lot of energy.
@Peter:
Setting aside my fundamental problem with the whole "perpetual motion" thing, you can't just scale something up by a factor of a million and expect its output to increase linearly like that. Also, power densities only have any useful meaning if the basis is specifed (eg. area of blades on a wind turbine, volume of piston displacement in an engine, power to weight for a battery), which isn't given here, so we don't have a clue what the supposed 0.5W/cm^3 actually refers to. It would be quite unusual for it to refer to the "volume of the device as a whole", as at this stage this is entirely arbitrary, so for all we know the actual unit could be orders of magnitude bigger.
Or alternatively, as I'm becoming increasingly convinced by the complete lack of scientific rigour in providing any meaningful data or even qualitative description of how the device (apart from what comes down to "it uses magnets") he just made it up, and it doesn't really refer to anything. As such, the reason no basis was specified was because there isn't one.
this would be claim number one gazillion plus/minus 2 million of Energy Utopia, what it's doing on the front page of this place
is just mystifying
If it walks like a duck...
Steorn has bold scam written all over it, So much for wise and lietrate readers
I'm amazed that engadget is humoring those guys with PR at all...
Since the dawn of the intellectual man, smart-asses have tried to fool not-so-smart asses with their perpetual motion devices. This is just another one - and a very classic one!
These guys are trying to fool less intelligent people into believing that they have found "new technology" etc. Pushing PR and media into bringing stories and building a name, investing in the scam, and then harvesting other people's investments, just to clean the money through some friend they have delivering parts or something... When the whole thing blows, they'll be gone, with a whole lot of investor's money. That's at least what they're trying, but I really doubt that ANY investor is so stupid as to fall for this classic "Look my machine can move, indefinitely"-trick. Unless they're very young and very stupid or just want to spend money very quick...
Hi.
Its also possible that the "magic" component is a slab of near-room temperature low-Jc superconductor around the magnetic rotor.
If the permeability is just right the Tc and Jc will interact to slightly lead the magnets as they rotate. Voila, "nearly" free power. of course it requires continuous feedback to keep the superconductor stable (not too hot or cold)
just my $0.02 worth.
-A
@andre:
Firstly I don't quite understand what you're proposing let alone how it would result in the generation of free energy. The "Tc and Jc would interact"? Do you mean critical temperature and current? How do they interact? I'm also not sure how this would result in motion. Don't superconductors just statically repel magnets? I suppose it might be a way of reducing friction, a bit like Maglev trains, but the step from very efficient to over unity is the giant/impossible one.
But anyway, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the best superconductors still way, way below room temperature? According to Wikipedia the record is -135 degrees, which is still ~150 degrees below room temperature. Getting down that low requires substantial energy to begin with!
You mean a *lack* of energy ;P
j/k... being stupid... too tired.
on wikipedia, there are links to youtube videos and forum posts, etc., describing how this technology works. The basic idea is that if you have magnets rotated at ninety degrees to one another, then for some reason, if you swing one magnet past the other, if it's moving at the right speed and the fields are set up right (right distances), instead of the magnets attacting and getting stuck together, the moving magnet gets kicked away by the stationary one, with more force than was used to push it there in the first place. Voila, free energy.
search for steorn on youtube and you can see videos where people have built "ktoys" and "ctoys" which are basically little demo units of the phenomenon.
The start-stop thing is the idea that this thing "kicks" to generate the excess energy, so you have to either just store that straight into a battery and reset the thing or find some way to get a few of these going in parallell so they seem to continue on forever.
It's all very interesting and doesn't violate the law of physics, it takes advantage of previously unknown flux in magnetic fields. It's like saying windmills violate the law of physics because they generate free power. They don't, they take advantage of flux in the atmosphere.
Hard to imagine, but there was once a world without wings. And once a world without Orbos.
So it's basically an adaption of the good-old magic wheel. Good luck with that!
I think there's a problem with basic physics here. I'm not convinced a magnet can give you "more force than was used to push it there in the first place", but even if this is true, it doesn't mean free energy. A simple lever or set of gears can be used to generate "more force", but the energy (force x distance) is exactly the same (actually less, because you always lose some).
All of these contraptions I see on youtube seem to involve some arrangement of wheels and levers, with someone pushing something causing them to move. I can see to a layperson how the output moving further or faster or for a longer time might seem to indicate an increase in energy, but it simply doesn't. People are coming up with some elaborate arrangement of magnets, levers and flywheels which would actually be quite difficult to analyse and it's only their lack of understanding which is "generating energy", not their machine!
I did a little research on this "90 degree" thing, as I'd never heard of it before, and as I suspected the problem is a lack of understanding of the basics.
This site for example:
http://www.fdp.nu/free_energy.asp?book=90
Scroll down a little to where there's a nice curvy graph with a peak in the middle. The author seems to think that because the peak is bigger than the troughs then he's gaining energy. But that's simply not how it works- the ENERGY is the AREA ENCLOSED BY THE CURVE, and it's pretty clear to see that the area of the two negative parts adds up to the positive one.
He even posts a video of it "working", and I can see how someone without a physics background might think that because it ends up going further than he pushes it then it's gaining energy, but it isn't. Referring back to the graph, initially he pushes against the magnet to counteract the repulsion (first negative peak). As soon as he pushes it over the crossing of the axis the torque switches direction, and the rotor moves off with an energy given by the DIFFERENCE in areas of the second and third peaks (one in one direction, one in the other), which is exactly the same as the area of the peak he had to overcome in the first place! Thus energy out = energy in and thermodynamics still applies.
If this is really the principle Steorn are working on then I pity them, as it simply FUNDAMENTALLY DOES NOT WORK.
This is a scam! It's all smoke and mirrors, with no real data. For anyone interested check out http://www.phact.org/e/z/freewire.htm. "The Basics of Magnets and Wires for Free Energy Buffs". The only thing that is working is a scam.
the last 30 seconds of the video where you're staring at a black screen pretty much sums up my impression of the content of this vid...
This will power my Phantom game console nicely while I play Duke Nukem Forever with my Optimus keyboard.
@Peter
No, it's a lot of *power*, not energy. Have to be careful about that sort of thing when discussing perpetual motion machines!
There's no free lunch with energy conversion or generation. Especially not with magnets. Maybe if this guy had a tiny black hole in a jar or something I'd think he was onto something. It'll probably just be a decent efficiency energy converter and high density battery on par or slightly better than today's current tech. Or maybe a lot worse.
I have just written them a lengthy email requesting information (detailed of cause) on their claims, as a physicist (well a physicist in training), hoping for some justification of their claims, i'll post again if i find anything intersting, or if they plain ignore me.
I have been following this story since the day the Economist published the original advert, and having a basic knowledge of physics I am very sceptically, BUT... where is the punchline?? this thing has been running for almost a year now and no requests for funding, no share flotation, no Xbox, in fact no anything really, this smells fishy, in a fishy kind of way, I have heard no convincing argument of what sort of scam this could be, and find it hard to believe an R&D company with a proven track record would blot there copybook without a very good reason... Steorn if you read this, LET US KNOW WHATS GOING ON!!!
Steorn has stated they will demonstrate their technology openly in London next month and place it on the web. We, Magnetic Power Inc., are also developing magnetic energy conversion technology and have been actively involved in this field since 1984, the year the late Dr. Robert Forward, then a physicist at Hughes Aircraft, published a paper in Physical Review B, suggesting we could convert Zero Point Energy into electricity. Our technology differs from Steorn in that it includes both mechanical and solid-state devices. This is new science and new technology, even though it raises a perpetual commotion. The IPCC and National Academy of Science Reports recently published, suggest we have a window of only 8-10 years to substantially reduce the use of fossil fuels if we are to avoid cataclysms that could end human life in a few more decades. Magnetic energy conversion systems and non-food biofuels may be one path to the needed changes.
"Orbo technology is subject to continuous development. This development is focused on improving the manufacturability of the technology, production costs and power density. Orbo was initially developed as using stop-start mechanisms (with a power density of 0.5 Watts per cm3), Steorn is currently finalizing the development of constant motion systems and a significant improvement in power density is anticipated."
Holy Cow. Okay, first of all my car's 4-cycle engine is a stop-start mechanism in that the pistons come to a complete "stop" twice per cycle, at TDC and BDC. It's also a constant motion machine because it keeps itself going with inertia plus the input of volatile fuel, also it permits waste to evacuate out the tailpipe.
The guy Sean seems so reasonable in his videos, so confident and extremely well-spoken, but is it possible that Steorn was in such desperate straits that they pulled this stunt without checking some fundamental derived measurements like energy and power? That they don't understand elementary concepts like integrating force over distance to compute energy? That they went out half-cocked, shooting off their mouths with half-baked utopian nonsense, ultimately to wind up looking like a bunch of total fools? I mean this would be an entire company of fools here, with not one of them having the brains or background necessary to conduct a grade 11 high school experiment to measure energy or power. Now granted, I've met many engineers who are just as incompetent; but at least they were simultaneously honest enough to admit they are not "numbers" people. I've met people who didn't back up their claims with -any- background research, but at some point under pointed questioning they always get shifty-eyed and admit, yes, they never actually looked into it themselves, personally. And I've met complete BSers before, and if you keep peppering them their claims always get more and more outrageous until something truly outlandish gets spoken, i.e. yes goddamit, I really was born on the moon!
What I figure happened is this: their company was flat broke, they were working on nonsense problems like making a micro windmill to run a CCTV camera to monitor an ATM (as if an ATM doesn't run on electricity); the management is essentially non-existent and permits this craziness to continue unabated while the business is evaporating around them. The CEO Sean is bewildered and desperate because the company is down to its last 84 euros, so the foolish yet well-meaning "mad inventor" of the company says hey boss, it's not all bad, why, this generator seems to be over-unity. So the boys get together and take a look and sure enough, to their damn uneducated eyes it appears to deliver more force than required to operate it, which they all foolishly (and fatally) mistake to mean it is overunity. So the CEO, who is nothing but a charming and well-spoken salesperson and who has a knack for speaking convincingly emulating his old University profs (whom he actually learned nothing from) manages to bamboozle some private investor and raise some funds to keep the operation afloat while they investigate "the phenomenon". Next comes 8 interested parties who one after the other debunk the claim, but their explanation is lost or misunderstood or deliberately befuddled so you can't say "for sure" that it is completely disproven; and of course they wish they never got involved with this crackpot organization. Meanwhile the young lotto winner / elderly fool benefactor just laps it up, story after story, never questioning why they don't just make the perpetual motion machine so he can watch it run non-stop for a few days and have his own proof (somehow, Sean talked him out of the necessity of it and substituted the need for "scientific validation"). Oh, and if you read the Steorn entry on wikipedia you'll see that Steorn is "unusual" for not claiming a conspiracy to bury free energy; but you see they really did make precisely that claim by insisting on scientific validation, which has the unspoken inference that science somehow disbelieves the claim and therefore conspires against overunity. At this point we look darkly at one another and mutter "Fleischman and Pons", the other victims of that scientific conspiracy against free energy. Oh, and the quip about being stuck between energy utilities, the scientific community, and oil producers: the "worst possible" environment to try to release this technology.
Now we come to today; supposedly there are 22 scientists around the world beavering away in phase 1 of proving or disproving the phenomenon. What is truly unnerving is that not one of them has publicly declared it a hoax. On the other hand there is no evidence that there really are 22 scientists doing anything because we have no list! Supposedly these guys are on the hook to publish their result at some time in the future, so why do we permit Steorn to keep their identities secret? If they truly do exist, that is: because what if Steorn committed a little bit of fraud, and received 5,000 answers to its challenge of which 1,000 were competent, yet never hired a single one even though they said they did?
July is nearly here. July is 31 days long. I believe that is all the time there is that Steorn has left in its claim. I don't know where Sean is going to work after this is over; I'm pretty sure he won't work as an engineer ever again. On the other hand he is one hell of a salesperson; perhaps he'll wind up selling electronic gadgets at the circuit city store.
In the meantime I can see him pounding on his "mad scientist" for the next 4 weeks: you get me that perpetual motion machine, damn it! This is it, you idiot!
I bet they run for the Caymans or something; or slink away behind some rock or other.
Iyou want to check out the bona fidas of Steorn- at least from a financial/company compliance point of view, check out the Irish Companies Registration Office at www.cro.ie and run a search on their company compliance records. Their last set of accounts submitted was only made up to Dec 31,2005. Irish law mandates they must do this every year, at the annual return date of the company in question.
Looks to me (just my opinion)like they are playing company director and having fun with their initial venture captial- check out the 'fun' photos on the steorn web site. Doesn't look like reasonable use of company funds to me. Anyone from the Office of Corporate Enforement reading this?