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Anyone can make any sort of wild "forward looking statement". I may have designed a zero emissions perpetual motion power generator. If I can get enough hits to my site, and persuade enough investors, I'll make a fortune!

It's been done. But I get the sense they're more desperate than filthy rich.

Ya. I have gray hair... The cake is a lie!

I love that you have gray hair and said, "The cake is a lie!" In fact, I'd say this shows we've already entered a brave new world even if flying cars haven't really panned out. Fact is, it's 2000 and things are different. Even in my lifetime (no gray hair yet) computers and communication have become completely pervasive in every aspect of our lives. Things will be different in 2100 in ways you can't imagine—and won't really need to worry about—but it's just that the reporters get carried away and want to know every potential application of things like this. And the scientists who spend all day in those cramped labs start daydreaming about sex-bots and life goes on.

Here.
</joke>

>>This is really ridiculous.

No, you're not thinking 4th dimensionally.

You guys, it's magic hair.

These guys use the magic hair too... http://www.steorn.com/

Remember Steorn? Looks like they're still in business, but they haven't file many news blurbs lately. In July they made some kind of stink about their independent testing process being "insanely great" (Steve Jobism by me, not them), but not a whole lot since they started in 2006.

Nah, say whatever you want, skeptic. When my ORBO arrives, I'll be the one laughing!

You're right. They should just use this instead.

Are they actually asking for money now? I've just skimmed their site, and the closest I've found are that they let you contact them about "accessing" the technology. There's an Investor Relations page, with numbers that are four years old and that doesn't seem to be linked from the main site any more. There doesn't seem to be any clear way to join the project as an investor though. If they're trying to scam people, it's a modest effort.

My guess is that the company fervently believes they've worked out free energy, but only out of some hazy measurements that they haven't yet nailed down. They're seeing the mirage of perpetual motion in some device they can barely analyze because their equipment sucks and because they lack experience. They'll improve their instrumentation eventually, work out the kinks, and quantify that it's not outputting more energy than that input, and move on.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Until, that is, it's understood. They don't understand what they've done and haven't been able to quantify anything, they think it's something impossible (read: magic), but eventually the truth will emerge and they'll drop it.

Orbo is based upon time variant magnetic interactions, i.e. magnetic interactions whose efficiency varies as a function of transaction timeframes.

It is this variation of energy exchanged as a function of transaction time frame that lies at the heart of Orbo technology, and its ability to contravene the principle of the conservation of energy. Why? Conservation of energy requires that the total energy exchanged using interactions are invariant in time. This principle of time invariance is enshrined in Noetherâ(TM)s Theorem.

The time variant nature of Orbo interactions can be engineered using two basic techniques. The first technique utilizes a method of controlling the response time of magnetic materials to make them time variant. This is achieved by controlling the MH position of materials during permanent magnetic interactions.

The second technique decouples the Counter Electromotive Force (CEMF) from torque for electromagnet interactions. This decoupling of CEMF allows time variant magnetic interactions in electromagnetic systems.

I may as well get out my cheque book, I'm convinced.

Did anybody else have the name Steorn come to mind?

We have Steorn, and Blacklight Power!!

It seems the universe is plump with energy and needs only a little squeeze to send it gushing forth.

Come on, the top invention of 2007 has got to be Orbo.

By 2050???
I hope I'll be in a flying car powered by a perpetual motion machine (think Moller meets Stroen).

Just kidding, by 2050 I want to be teleported to wherever I want to go!

It doesnt seem they included this device in their calculations. I wonder why? :)

Are you honestly telling me that if I eat all burgers and fries (supersized!) in the world, BUT pass on the sugar water, I'll be thin?

I hate "silver bullet" articles.

Fructose has been known to be not diabetic friendly for ages now. Where's the news?

One way or another, fructose is but one of the reasons for obesity. There are plenty of ways to get obese and, yes, shockingly, the most common ones include eating all sorts of calorie rich food without giving your body a way to expend those calories (the other include illnesses messing with the ability of the body to metabolize properly).

You know the laws of thermodynamics. Energy doesn't come from nothing (much to Steorn's shock), and doesn't become nothing.

People prefer there was a simple way they could eat pizzas and coke all day long and sit on their asses, and just flip a switch, and it's all gone!

...year of Free Energy!

I'm a good judge of character..and these guys strike me as, at minimum, sincere. I want badly for it to be true -- bring on the Holodeck next -- and replicators! I'm ready for the future!

However, the proof of the pudding is under the crust. Have a look a their Disclaimer, which says it all:

"Steorn and its suppliers further do not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within the Materials or Ideas."

Indeed.

There is a *surprising* update on their website about the live feed:

Update 4/7/07 23:30 - Due to slight technical difficulties we will now be publishing the live stream as of Thursday 5th July.

You can't get energy from a static magnetic field. (You can get it from a *changing* magnetic field, and the Earth's magnetic field is changing; but it's doing so over a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, so the energy you'd get would be very, very small).

The company knows this perfectly well. They're not claiming that they've found a way to get energy out of a static magnetic field in a way that's in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics. From http://www.steorn.com/orbo/claim/:

"The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy"

"The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%"

So saying that they claim that their machine breaks the laws of thermodyanmics is really not actually a "bad logical deduction", since they're perfectly happy to admit that that is exactly what they are claiming...

mod parent down,

if you really RTFA you would have seen that on the site they clearly state that they have 22 scientists reviewing it right now

http://www.steorn.com/news/releases/?id=1001

posting as AC because i don't want to waste the mod points i already gave out to people who deserved them

-daedone

And for those that don't RTFA.....

Getting published is probably right up on top of his list, since he's paying 22 scientists to review the device and provide their findings back to him (a peer review, if you will)

http://www.steorn.com/news/releases/?id=1001

...22 were appointed to test Steorn's claims. The review process began in January 2007 and is still ongoing. Steorn will publish the results of the process following its completion.

Getting past the ad-heavy blogodreck, the company's actual web site is Steorn. There is a critical Wikipedia article on Steorn. The company has been making noises about this since last year.

Steorn says they can't patent the thing, and that's why they're so secretive, but the USPTO takes the position that perpetual motion machines are patentable. All they ask is a working model. Their official position is: "With the exception of cases involving perpetual motion, a model is not ordinarily required by the Office to demonstrate the operability of a device."

There have been some good fake perpetual motion machines. David Jones, who wrote as "Daedalus", for New Scientist, had a bicycle wheel on a stand which rotated endlessly with no visible source of power back in the 1990s. This was a really good demo. It was stolen from its display by some students, who returned it embarrassed that they couldn't figure out how it worked. It continued to rotate while they had it. One of his machines is at the Vienna Science Museum, still turning.

From http://www.steorn.com/ - "Steorn is a leading Intellectual Property development company."
This is exactly the type of company I expected such a profound invention to come from!

The views of the readers here have all been expressed before on the Steorn Forum. This site, hosted by Steorn, can be found here: http://www.steorn.com/forum/.

I'm so glad I'm not an investor.

(when I say forseeable...I mean it. There's actually a VASTLY more efficient way to do interplanetary, and even interstellar, travel that doesn't involve fusion or fission plants...)

Are you talking about this?

Ok, just for the record, I know of one inventor who tried this route. Even when the scientists were given his devices to test and ask only to publish their reports they would meet him in private and say it worked, but in public, well they wouldn't say a thing. At this time he has spend over $1,000,000 on trying to get a scientific jury to do tests and report the results. Maybe soon but not today! His device uses proven planetary flyby methodology with magnets and it works.

I also know how cruel the scientific establishment is. They nearly ran out of the profession the MD who discovered Stomach Ulcers were bacterially caused. It took nearly 20 years after his discovery before they would let his work be published. I could go on and on with real stories like these and nobody would believe them even if I gave names and dates unless they wanted to.

I have seen obvious outright contradictions in published articles showing that Einstein's Special Relativity is a messed up theory. I get whacked as troll if I even point out that that is for real what an article that is referenced in /. says. Don't expect a peer-reviewed journal to say much of the truth.

Mercury is a known toxin of serious danger in microscopic amounts. Yet the American Dental Association still supports its use in people even though it is an obvious danger. In fact it is very dangerous and they will run out of the profession any dentist that even admits that fact. I guess they are just mad as a hatter at the truth.

Don't say or imagine that seeing reality is legal in the peer-reviewed journals. It is a fact of their process that in order to publish an idea it must already be "proved" by other published articles. As a result you are not allowed a new discovery or observation.

If you're gonna dream, at least dream of something more idealistic, panacea-like, and less complex. :-)

The issue is not can you make money doing it.

The issue is can it be done at a net energy profit.

I'd be more optimistic if we were looking for ways to turn hudson's bay into a hydroelectric site to run the pumps.

That graph is one of the reasons I've held off on having kids. You better hope those guys at Steorn have something. Or sometime, between now and ~2030, someone comes up with something similar. Or makes fusion work. Or we're all toast.

Free energy? http://www.steorn.com/

HTH, HAND