Irish company challenges scientists to test 'free energy' technology

[thegathering]

Originally Posted by yahoonews

Fri Aug 18, 10:10 AM ET

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.
ADVERTISEMENT

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.

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".

Sean McCarthy, Steorn's chief executive officer, said they had issued the challenge for 12 physicists to rigorously test the technology so it can be developed.

"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.

"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.

McCarthy said Steorn had not set out to develop the technology, but "it actually fell out of another project we were working on".

One of the basic principles of physics is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change form.

McCarthy said a big obstacle to overcome was the disbelief that what they had developed was even possible.

"For the first six months that we looked at it we literally didn't believe it ourselves. Over the last three years it had been rigorously tested in our own laboratories, in independent laboratories and so on," he said.

"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.

"But for us to be able to commercialise this and put this into peoples' lives we need credible, academic validation in the public domain and hence the challenge," McCarthy said.

Well this is interesting. I can't say that I believe them, but we'll see how this technology develops.

[Pat McCarthy]

Yessssss, a possible scientific breakthrough by a McCarthy!
The article definitely doesn't give enough explanation on how the technology works. I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes of this.

[Mike]

A machine that actually broke one of the primary laws of thermodynamics, and had the capability of ending world hunger, global warming and pretty much every other problem, would not have its owner making ads.

It would have its owner indefinitely in debt to the world, with every leader of every nation kissing his shoes, literally. Kissing his shoes. Right now.

I don't see that happening, so I call shenanigans.

[KenWittlief]

"In this house we obey the laws of physics young lady!" - Homer Simpson

you can find literally hundreds of claims like this on the internet. Here is the bottom line: if you can generate energy from nothing you dont need anyone to validate your claims, or to test your system

you build one to power your house. Then you build one to power your Smart electric car. Then you build a bigger one and power the houses in your neighborhood....

if you really have discovered free energy you dont need to prove it, the massive amounts of electricity flowing from the two wires coming out of your basement is all the proof you need.

Edison did not have to prove to anyone that his generators could produce electricity, he simply turned them on, hooked up his light bulbs, and let them run and run and run for all to see.

[artdutra04]

"One point twenty-one jigowatts?! Great Scott!"

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Hm... Sounds too good to be true. Didn't some company in Canada invent an engine that burns practically anything but the oil companies bought them out? I think one of my friends' family has stock in the company or something. But yeah, this is one of the sturdiest laws of physics. I don't believe it.

The ad thing makes me a little suspiscious to begin with.

[Andrew Blair]

Hmmm...anyone catch the whole "travel 'round the magnetic fields" part?

I don't know exactly what they have here, but I think they've rediscovered inductance. A little research would've saved 'em the time to write the article.

I think this kinda sets the bar...
Potential Uses


See for yourself!
Steorn

[Bill Moore]

Why would I need to travel in magnetic fields? I get all the energy I need from a Do-It-Yourself Fusion in a Jar kit, and I don't have to travel anywhere!

[DonRotolo]

As Pat McCarthy noted, and Ken Wittlief put so eloquently: Always beware claims that...

1. Acknowledge they break known physical laws, but are "so revolutionary that people can't believe it'

2. Are short on technical details, but long on hyperbole (like quoting Shaw)

3. Want experts to 'validate' it - having someone knowledgeable look at it seriously lends it credence.

4. Quote 'experts' nobody has ever heard of, or that have a history of non-scientific methods. (Google all names).

5. Have companies looking for money.

As we all should know: If it's too good to be true, it is. this will serve you well in life, and robotics.

Don

[Peter Matteson]

I'll stick with the "free energy" technology I've been working on for the last few years. Here's a link to some info on the latest protoype provided by our customer:

http://www.yourownpower.com/Power/

That is the closest thing to "free energy" currently available. But as with all other "free energy" sources you still have to pay retail for the powerplant to harness it.

Pete

[KenWittlief]

I have been utilizing my own form of free energy for the last 10 years, about once a week:

Has never cost me a 1¢ to operate.

http://members.aol.com/wittlief/hobieMe.jpg

[Queen_of_Mascot]

BoingBoing remarked on this--

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/18...ims_to_ha.html

The reader comment is the best part, though, because it details someone else coming up with the idea, and then proving that it won't work.

Reader comment: Scott says:

When I was a teen, I thought I had come up with a perpetual motion machine which relied on magnetic fields like this one does. The ring that moves around is a magnet on a wheel with the outside all of one polarity. It is attracted to one pole of a horseshoe magnet, as magnets of opposite polarity are, then repelled by the other pole as it moves past. The idea is that the attraction and repulsion of the magnets allow it to spin forever, and could allow a little energy to be drawn off to use for something else. The problem is the magnet on the wheel will instead come to rest caught between magnetic fields. It doesn't work unless the horseshoe magnets are electric so they can be turned on and off, and that takes more energy than can be extracted. My Dad, a physicist, let me build my machine and see the problem for myself. Nice to see I wasn't the only one fooled by the idea.

From what it sounds like, if this rig /does/ work, the rig is rigged, and a computer can be easily programmed to give false output...

[petek]

These kinds of "discoveries" remind me of when (back in the 60's) my uncle tried to get my father to invest in a scheme to convert milk into gasoline. My father, who was a chemical engineer, pointed out that besides the fact that it wasn't scientifically sound, the cost difference between milk and gas was so small that even if it did work, the milk feedstock would cost more than the gas it supposedly would produce. My uncle insisted that the inventors had a "secret formula" which obviously was their key to success, and proceeded to lose a bundle to the scam.

Maybe they'd have had better luck if they'd modified a "100 mile per gallon carburator" to run on milk...

[KenWittlief]

one of the mistakes that people looking for free energy often make is not knowing their math.

Ive seen so many inventors who think if you pulse a motor on and off, instead of supplying it with a steady power, that it will use less input power than its putting out

and they proceed to build devices, usually getting obsessed with how the motor wires are wound, but the dont understand the concepts of DC power, AC peak, average, Root Mean Square (RMS), phase shift...ect.

This is what all that math you learn in college is for, if you are going to be an engineer, so you understand the differences. But these basement inventors use typical meters (analog or digital) that are not able to measure pulsed waveforms correctly, and give you the true RMS current or voltage

so as a result they are sitting there with Fluke 83 DMMs, and sure enough the meters are saying the system is putting out more power than is going into it

but if they had spent a few bucks more for a Fluke 87 (True RMS DMM) they would see that the laws of physics really are laws, and you cant break them.

its very possible the guy in the link has made a similar mistake, and really believes he has made a breakthrough - but usually when they are asking for investors they know their system doesnt work.

The real test would be to hook the output to the input. If its putting out more power than it takes, it would run faster and faster and faster, all by itself, until it self destructs from the centripital forces.

Thats the video I wanna see!