Slashdot Mirror
Irish Company Claims Free Energy
raghus writes "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.
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." I can't wait until I can use this free energy to power my flying car and heat my aquarium of mermaids.
They talk in circles and can't provide any definite explanations as to how something like this would work.
About 7 years ago I worked with a fellow who absolutely was buying into some black box he would just plug things into and it would harvest energy from the earth's magnetic field. Sounds about the same thing. If there was enough density of magnetic fields to run a toaster, odds are you'd be suffering some serious and potentially fatal side effects.
Moving around in circles to gather energy, what a neat idea! Um, where do we get the energy to run around in circles? Sounds like that net forces thing, the sum of all forces acting upon my car at the moment are zero, but if I could just remove those coming from one direction, it should move in that direction, right? Hey, how about something that runs on gravity, since there's an unending supply of that, eh?
I'm also of the opinion if we started using something which was naturally in abundance, like earth's magnetic fields, it would cumulatively and ultimately affect something we'd regret later.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I bet it's a false claim
This is ridiculous that anybody is taking this seriously. Look at the team bios or company history - they provide no information that lets you actually look into the history of the company or any individual's work history. Every single person was "at an Irish technology company" or "at a big 4 accounting firm", but never enough to actually do a Google search on them.
However, they did leave some clues. If I look up the domain registration, the two addresses on the domain registration actually exist. One appears on a patent application from 6 years ago for credit card systems. The application was rejected for failing the "nonobvious" criteria and being too vague. This fits with their story of being a (apparently failed) technology company doing transactions.
(The other address, by the way, is now the Gay HIV clinic in Dublin - I suspect that the CEO just used to work out of there, and it is now used for another purpose).
So I'm with this either being a wacky publicity stunt. The names are too perfectly chosen so that nobody can actually research them, and the people look too much like actors...
...puts out a bounty on these guys? ;)
Sugapablo
- The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
- The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts.
- There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).
I hope the coefficient is greater than 0.0001% over 100%. Although all their technology page says is that this alleged free energy solution has to do with magnets. Not much else.Furthermore, they claim they approached universities and educational institutions about validating their findings and recieved little or no support from them. Why wouldn't a university be eager to attach their name to it? Is it because of the patent?
If you're interested in reading their patent, here is the application (pdf warning). If you just want to get the gist of it, visit the Pure Energy Systems Wiki complete with diagram. It looks like a way to block and unblock a strip holding magnets, thus creating magnetic flux around a piece of metal (driving the current I believe).
My work here is dung.
Perhaps I can use this "free energy" to power my PlayStation 3.
I'm not buying a PlayStation 3, you see. I will only buy a Nintendo Wii.
Were the engineers' names Pat and Mike?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Years ago, I harnessed the energy from the monkeys flying out of my ass, and I haven't paid an electric bill since...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
All you have to do is chain donkeys to a big magnetic wheel and have them walk in circles, thus turning a magnetic gear.
Free Energy From Going in Circles!
Speaking of which, shouldn't we harnass this to Congress?
Crackpots and Opportunists say Crazy Crap (perhaps in hopes of securing some cash investments); Film at 11 on You Tube. Why is this on Slashdot?
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
more than a few people think that the whole site is part of another viral marketing campaign by Microsoft and Bungie, this time for Halo 3. Don't take it as gospel quite yet, but it would explain the total lack of engineering and scientific detail that a company of this nature should be showing to the world.
the coolest club on
Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Could this be a viral marketing gimmick? I couldn't help but notice that the "o" in the company logo (that is also the website icon) looks rather familiar in shape and color to the Xbox 360 spiral.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I'll be using this so that I can play Duke Nukem Forever all day long without ever having to worry about my utility bills!
--
This sig utilizes magnetic forces to sig forever
Is it now the policy of slashdot to give headline coverage to every crackpot perpetual motion machine? It might have been mildly amusing had it been filed under humor, but as news? Even the snarky wisecrack from the editor doesn't make up for the misfiling.
/., there is no "Free Energy", no Free lunch, no tooth fairy and there ain't ever going to be flying cars. (We will eventually solve the tech for a flying car but the liability is insoluble.)
But even as humor it should not have been posted since there was a similar one only a week or so ago and I really doubt anyone has a new joke to make about these assclowns that didn't get used then.
Listen up you primitive screwheads at
Democrat delenda est
...Cold Fusion, right?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
My greater fear is that this will lead to both the filching of investors and the feeding stereotypes amongst the less tolerent of Britain - a far more likely outcome than the elimination of energy costs, methinks.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
just harness the power created from free love! Churn that body heat, byaaaaaaaaa!
So where do you get the energy to travel around the fields?
And how fast do you need to travel to make a decent amount of energy? And how much energy would it take to travel that fast?
It's got to come from somewhere.
When Noether proved in 1918 that every conservation law must have a paired symmetry, physics was transformed for-ever. From then on whenever you saw a conserved quantity it implied there was a symmetry that could be seen in space-time.
A lot of physics courses focus on the conserved quality and not the symmetry. Perhaps it's because the maths is a lot neater with conserved quantities than with symmetries. But I argue that the real understanding of the physics is to be had in making sense of the symmetries.
Conservation of energy implies that the laws of physics are constant over time. This is why breaking the law of energy conservation is important. If even one pico-joule of energy is created from nothing in the universe, it destroys the constancy of physical law.
The theory of electromagnetism has been verified to factor of 10**-20. I find it highly unlikely they've found something new in theory to allow this.
The fact they've issued a press release rather than a research paper suggests they're cranks. Nothing to see here, move along.
Simon
For the typical nerd, the outcomes in decreasing order of likelihood are:
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Of course, no details on the website, other than the typical PMM favorite, obtaining energy from 'interacting' magnetic fields. I hope since they took out an advert in the Economist, the Economist will happily publish the results of testing by independent experts. Might be funny.
You can buy switchable magnetic hold-down devices from any good industrial supply catalog. They've been around and patented for over 60 years.
Shielding a magnetic field has been exhaustively studied, both theoretically and practically, for over 130 years.
Not a sliver of a chance of making energy this way.
If there was the slightest possibility this could fly, not only would it have been discovered eons ago, there would be venture capitalists throwing bucketfuls of shekels at these guys--- As differentiated from their making sensational and incomplete pleas for publicity.
Even it they really did find a way to get 'free' energy, it doesnt really matter. I dont even get excited over announcements like this anymore. Because if its false, then everything stays the same. If its true, the current energy corporations will do anything and everything possible to make sure it never sees the light of day...and everything stays the same.
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Would a technology company dedicated to creating free energy use ASP.NET on their web site?
I don't think so.
I CALL PLANET-SIZED TROLL
I already have the patent on several "free" energy sources, but they aren't strictly free. There's the Feline Buttered Bread Commutator for example. It operates by strapping a piece of buttered bread buttered face up to a cat's back, then dropping it from a height. Since a cat always lands on its feet and buttered bread always lands butter side down, the whole apparatus simply hovers and spins in midair. By adding a wire coil to the cat and by putting a strong magnet in close proximity, voila! Free energy. Of course, it's not that there isn't any loss. For example, the cat needs to be fed and the bread gets stale. The cat tends to vomit occasionally, so there is some clean up involved.
But you could use it to run your Infinium Phantom Console.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
McCarthy said Steorn had not set out to develop the technology, but "it actually fell out of another project we were working on"
The other project being the tracking of the purple unicorns on Antarctica.
This is not new. They keep trying to say that it "creates" energy and defies what we know about physics. They would get a better reception if they instead claimed that it is converting energy from a yet unknown source.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
They claim they are trying to have scientists and other find an interest in their technology, and prove or disprove their claims.
Funny thing is that even on their own web pages http://www.steorn.net/ there is no products, description, pictures, technical info, general overview or *anything else* that describes the technology.
I call this bogus
"Fix it"
Whale Oil Beef Hooked
(say it fast)
I've alerted the authorities, and the Science Police will soon arrest them for breaking the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Just create the devices, let's say five of them. Take them with you. Plug in normal devices. Let them run uninterrupted for weeks. Keep watch while they're running. That's all you need to do, none of this "off the record scientist verification shit".
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t= 16610
Most car AC units have an energy coefficiency of somewhere around 400% - for every one watt of power used four watts of heat are removed. So having greater than 100% isn't impossible.
Actually, my physics teacher demonstrated hos to get energy out of magnets. We took a low-power LED bulb, two magnets, and a stabilizing platform to hold the magnets. We set the magnet's south poles facing each other, and wrapped the whole thing in ultra-thin cooper bell wire, which was atached to the LED and a diode. By simply pushing the magnets together the LED bulb would every now and then try to light up, it would flash but we could never keep the light on.
Don't discount it. Remember it onyl takes a tiny weak spark to get massive amounts of power out of gasoline. It just depends on what form that 'spark' comes in, and what form of 'gasoline' you're using.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Maybe these guys are related to the scientists that lived in Ireland before Michael McCloud invented a new type of beverage in his basement.
My army of Korean-made human clones developed this technology years ago, but nobody responded to the ad that I placed in Maxim about it.
" I couldn't help but notice that the "o" in the company logo (that is also the website icon) looks rather familiar in shape and color to the Xbox 360 spiral."
;-)
If by similar you mean round, then yes I think you are onto something
I personally think someone put too much juice in the Irish Coffee.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
These are unusual magnetic fields, that only occur around a blarney stone.....
Exactly. Make it look like they are actually serious. How much VC cash do you think they will rake in between now and the test? After the scientific community announces that this is bullshit, they will claim to need more money to "fix" the issues that the scientists raised. The VC fools, not wanting to admit to themselves that they have been swindled with one of the oldest cons in the book, will happily throw more money at them. They will continue with this cycle until enough people wise up and the lawsuits pour in, then they will disappear to the Cayman Islands.
No, we need to bitch-slap these peckerwoods now, before they fleece too many dumb but wealt- Wait, you know, I think their ideas just might work. Send cash just in case.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nothing to see here...
your joke power system is better than theirs.
Damn Zerg could have let the guy finish his beer before killing him!
Sorry for the spoiler, but the Protoss would never have been so rude!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's not an "Irish Company", it's the Hanso Foundation. And I fear that, due to the events at the end of last season, there may be a setback in general availability in this free energy.
Since when did Bill Murray become CEO of this company?
http://www.steorn.net/en/press.aspx?p=7
Use of energy - however produced - usually creates residual heat due to the inefficiency of our machinery and circuitry. Free electricity could actually cause global warming this way...
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Steorn to Push Tipping Point for Magnet Motor Technology - To solidify the credentials of a radical, new energy approach, Irish Company intents to select jury of 12 hard-core skeptics with high academic qualifications to review existing data, then design testing procedure, test, and publish the results.
Very nice guy. One of the most impressive groups I've encountered in my quest for legitimate free energy technlogy.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
Either that, or they finally found a way to get to the end of the rainbow.
Where were you when the voynix came?
According to my friend, I challenge negative assumptions. Perhaps, as he says, belief is an authentication criteria? That is scientifically testable, is it not, that if individuals attempt to believe, they may repeat the same experiments? I do not know about the technology, but great things are there IF YOU LOOK. There are positive possibilities for everyone. Keep up the good work!
All you slackers aren't reading The Fine Print (TM). Energy created by interacting with magnetic fields is free, everyone knows that.
It's getting the fields to move that's the expensive part....
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I think if we all just believe enough, we would have the strength and the courage to have faith in this. Please send this to 100 people to make sure the children are saved and we can give free power to the world. This will eliminate stupidity and arthritis if you only believe. It is tough getting someone who has a brain to look at this rediculous thing, but with enough faith we will find someone who believes in the power that wasn't. Jesus lives and God bless!
How does that work?
Colonel O'neil, "Magnets!"
Perhaps this is what I could use to power my aquarium of super-intelligent goldfish. Power to go around in circles you say? Just use some silly dolphins - they aren't smart enough to know the difference anyhow.
/* somewhat functional - fix later */
--- SER
I'd:
1. Take a huge short position in Oil, gas, and power distribution.
2. Sell power back to the grid under the guise of it being a cogenerating plant, keeping the real power source secret as long as possible.
3. Undercut competitors in energy-intensive applications such as electoplating or aluminum smelting, once more keeping the methods secret as long as possible.
I would certainly *not* be begging for money anyone, or "acceptance from the scientific community". All of that stuff would come automaticly if you managed your discovery properly. Therefor, their claims are provably false without any need for anyone to lift a finger.
"I've alerted the authorities, and the Science Police will soon arrest them for breaking the Laws of Thermodynamics."
Just hide out a while, and wait for the situation to cool down (it always will). And then it will be safe to come out.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Here's a larger image of the device they are using.
http://www.steorn.net/images/sean5_large.jpg
It's at the bottom.
And all these idiot scientists think there's no such thing as perpetual motion.
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/08/ste orn_and_free_1.html
Quote: "Recall that Steorn is a former e-business company that saw its market vanish during the dot.com bust. It stands to reason that Steorn has re-tooled as a Web marketing company, and is using the "free energy" promotion as a platform to show future clients how it can leverage print advertising and a slick Web site to promote their products and ideas. If so, it's a pretty brilliant strategy."
1. Pretend to invent an impossible technology that nobody will believe in.
2. Promote the heck out of it on the internet.
3. ???
4. Profit.
Well, the infamous missing step three is "Demonstrate to your web-marketting customers that you can market even such a preposterous idea as free energy successfully and they will flock to your doors".
My arthritis sure could use some of those Q-rays that specialized rare-earth magnets emit in such abundance.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
it seems like you need to keep moving to keep the energy flowing, so technicaly, your converting Kinetic energy arnt you?
portfolio
Actually, the energy isn't created. It's induced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_induction
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
From their website: " 17646 people have registered to receive the results".
Flann O'Brien drew his inpiration from his countrymen, in The Third Policeman he details de Selby's theory that night is due to dark air. The long standing sterotype of the Irish as a backwards nation could possibly be unfair but it is not unfounded. I'm of Irish descent and I have faith in this free energy thing. Free energy, dark air and Jesus Christ!
If they are getting this free energy they should use the device to power a particle accelerator. With all of the relativistic collisions plenty of particles will be created and as the mass accretes eventually it will have to collapse through gravitation into a black hole. Heck they could use the mass to create duplicates of the device automatically and fill the universe with black holes asymptoticly at the speed of light, piece of cake. I mean I doubt there is anything to stop them from driving the universe towards infinite density.
Everyone knows that's a crap law passed by the coal mining lobbyists to protect their business models and piles of cash. Much like the water powered car, this would already exist if it wasn't for the greedy politicians and the energy industry that owns them. :p
Anyone else notice that Steorn is an anagram of stoner? Or maybe I've just smoked too much today..
During 2005 Steorn embarked on a process of independent validation and approached a wide selection of academic institutions. The vast majority of these institutions refused to even look at the technology, however several did. Those who were prepared to complete testing have all confirmed our claims; however none will publicly go on record.
Please. Any physicist who figured out how this miraculous technology worked would be more revolutionary than Einstein or Newton. Showing how to violate conservation of energy would be an instant Nobel Prize. If their data really support this, why won't they go on record and become famous? They could win at least $2,000,000 (from the Nobel committee and from James Randi).
"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.
To me, this sounds a lot like a generator. You know, rotating a wire loop through a magnetic field to generate an electic current. That's only been around for, what, 180 years?
Everyone at Steorn would like to thank you for being suckered on the free publicity that they have inexpertly and blatantly generated.
Coming Soon - Aflac throws down the gauntlet on time travel, and Proctor and Gamble says "anti-gravity, go on prove it, I dare you!"
An aquarium of mermaids is hot per se.
in 3...2....1
-- Boycott Shell
In a few days, tune it to see a "portal" opened by this company, and then "evil things" pop out of it. It's a marketing campaign for a new game, movie, or similar. Borrring!
I'm irish so I know how these things go...Just a few Pints of Guiness later. 'Ey I betcha we can beat that bloody Physics thing... You know the one...
Hey, wait a minute-- if you take into account minute changes in the earth's rotational velocity, and the price of chili in China; isn't today April 1st by the Mayan calendar?
This sig is exempt from disclosure under the privacy Act of 1974.
They did a little special on the upcoming pole flip. That we were due for one according to geological surveys. Anyway that field decrease lets us know that the flip is happening right now and pretty soon it'll switch to the other direction after shooting through 0 magnitude.
So the south pole will be north and vice-versa.
Yeah there will be a potential period of solar radiation wrecking havoc with stuff but there are ways we could prop up our own ionosphere with radio waves and maybe avoid the nastiest period.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I think it's ridiculous that you're all doing all this research on a company who has *told* you they've developed a PMM. Move along people, there is nothing to see here...
Perhaps somebody in Ireland go wander out and have a boo at their electric meter. If they're telling the truth they ought to be selling power back into the system hand over fist.
If, on the other hand, they're still drawing from the grid to sharpen their pencils and surf for porn I for one call shannanigans.
These stories are free but worth money.
They are using this 'free energy' to power their computers to process all the email addresses people submit for their spam lists.
Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it right.
What Steom is actually claiming is quite possible, but uninteresting. Steorn is making three claims for its technology:
The coefficient of performance is not efficiency. It's the reciprocal of efficiency. Most refrigerators and heat pumps have a coefficient of performance greater than 100%. 200-350% is typical. The coefficient of performance of an ideal heat pump, and the efficiency of an ideal heat engine, both working between the same temperature difference, will have a product of 1.
So Steom can meet its claims with any off-the-shelf heat pump.
Since they talk about "magnetics" so much, they're probably fooling around with something exotic like a magneto-caloric heat pump. This is a cute idea that's been around for a while, requires very strong magnetic fields, is sometimes used for cyrogenic cooling, and has been considered for auto air conditioners. There are buzzword friendly papers like "Preparation of Superferromagnetic Lanthanide Nanoparticulate Magnetic Refrigerants" on the subject. If they've made that work, they may have something with product potential. Maybe. But it's not "free energy".
BRILLIANT!
So, do you live in CR, or just bike here?
--MarkusQ
The energy that was lighting up the LED came from your hand when you pushed the magnets together (hence why the LED would go out when you stopped pushing)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I'm not the first to say this but: This is a viral marketing ploy for something completely different from free energy. Stay tuned to the site and eventually things should become clearer.
I can think of only one explanation: this is a publicity stunt by some company who is going to pop up in a few days with a big "ha ha, we fooled you, but from today on you can buy our product X". Product X is probably very energy efficient or something. Or perhaps it's a save-the-earth type group looking to generate publicity. In which case we are doing exactly what they hoped we would do. This might also explain why the main stream press hasn't picked this up, they have looked into it, found out is was an ad agency creating the campaign, and abandoned it.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
We travel in a circle about it every day.
Though if we harvest that, thus weakening it, would we doom ourselves to frying in otherwise deflected solar rays..
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Too bad they won't be able to get the patent due to prior art. The Hanso Foundation has doing similar work in their Dharma Initiative Project on their island in the south Pacific. Oh well, Namaste.
I think these "good Ole Irish Boyz" need to head on back down to McCarthy's buy a few more pints, and sing themselves a few ballads.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/4124
The VC fools, not wanting to admit to themselves that they have been swindled with one of the oldest cons in the book, will happily throw more money at them.
The magnets have no clothes! They're naked!!! *averts her eyes out of embarassment*
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I've dabbled in the quantum realm, however my testing has revealed another, even more astonishing application... TELEPORTATION!!!
Shhhh... not so loud.
If the Feline Buttered Bread Commutation is essentially lossless, that means that I can continuously feed the produced energy BACK INTO THE APPARATUS!
Shhhh... not so loud.
Since the problem with quantum tunneling, the basic principle of quantum mechanics that states that teleportation is possible, is that to tunnel anything larger than a subatomic particle across a barrier of width greater than a subatomic particle requires remarkable energy. I figure with this feedback loop, I can essentially turn a cat and a piece of buttered bread into an INFINITE BATTERY! Strapping a car, or chair, or person to the apparatus should then make the TELEPORTER AS UBIQUITOUS AS CATS AND BUTTERED BREAD!!!
Shhhh... not so loud.
Of course, I'm all about small steps, and as a proof of concept, I'm going to use this feedback apparatus to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to power my TIME-TRAVELING DELOREAN!!!
Shhhh... not so loud.
As a member of the Skeptics Society I nominate them to choose all 12 members of this scientific panel. Maybe then we can trust how impartial and factual your science is.
Evil Man
Our device will direct all the energy you could ever need or want from the "void" into your home - for free! Simply plug your appliances, computers, and lamps into the box and be amazed! There's no additional** monthly fees and no newsletter to subscribe to. This is the real thing that SCIENCE DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT!*** It's so simple to use even your mom can run it. There's no off switch because the energy never runs out! Why conserve what's infinite? Stick it to the man - and the hippies! Save whales AND leave your porch light on 24/7. That's what being American is all about!
Buy today! Only $99.98 + tax and shipping!
(* requires a functional electrical outlet)
(** assuming you already pay for electricity)
(*** ignore page 12, 42, 76, 200-278, and most of the rest of the physics textbook)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Mermaid Aquarium! That's an awesome idea! My very own tank filled with little hot mermaids... Where can I buy one?
What's more, it's easy to operate. I just have it on a bracket on my car engine and spin it up with a simple little rubber belt. Mind you, the Mk 1 has a few problems to iron out - I need to find a way of enabling it to keep running when the engine stops, at the moment it stops when the engine does and I think this might be the braking effect of the drive belt. Anyone got any ideas, or know where to get in touch with Mr. Bosch whose name is on the side of it?
Pining for the fjords
They're in the tech industry claiming revolutionary results and their, "About" page contains no less than five pictures of the CEO, three of the marketing manager, two each of their finance and operations managers, and NONE of their tech people.
My little site.
It's called the "Poppycock" engine. What I do is get a bunch of pseudo-intellectual geeks in a room together and present an idea for a machine that, while technical sounding, obviously breaks some major physical/thermodynamical law. This "idea" serves a catalyst for the ensuing cascade thermal-dynamical reaction as all of these pseudo-intellectuals compete to be the first one to rip my idea apart, thus showing themselves to be far more intellegent than anyone else in the room and generating massive amounts of hot air in the process.
Now...if I need more power, I can always start a discussion of the merits of Babylon 5 Vs. Farscape. However, I do run the risk of melting my thermocouples.
Yours Truly,
The Amazing Sarcasmo
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It must be Faith Based energy
You're missing the mechanism, hope this helps
Most everybody here should already know this, but just in case: Thermodynamics asserts that energy can't be created or destroyed, so in the case of the AC that expends one watt to remove four watts of heat, we have what looks like net loss of 3 watts. This is why we need refrigerant -- the AC transfers those three watts into the refrigerant. Certain chemicals like freon can absorb energy better than others, so we don't see a significant increase in the temperature of the freon (so it tends to last a while).
This is not to say they don't have something, but the energy has to come from somewhere. I can think of three possibilities (in ascending order of reality):
All they have to do is build a generator and rake in the money. If it's real of course.
Telsa had a similar crackpot idea with the ionoshpere... and what a crackpot he turned out to be.
certified elipsis abuser
We have free energy at the end of the world.
"Shouldn't we let that take place before we fry them in oil?"
What I don't know and have really little desire to put much effort into finding out, is why they are
doing it. Were they bored and need a good laugh or is it a profit makeing effort?
An example of this, if that paragraph is too vague, is the Zero Displacement Engine. The "inventor" took a simple formula for the output power from an internal combustion engine, and noticed that if you take one of the parameters of the formula, piston displacement, and reduced it to zero, the formula says that you still have power being produced. Get this to run for a period of time, and Voila! Power x time = free energy! Of course, that "running" part is the trick that still needs to be figured out.
However, people should not cast these inventions aside. Whether they work or not is really not important. What they do is brighten our lives a bit with an enjoyable look into human aspirations. How boring life would be if people restricted themselves to the mundane.
Maxwell's demon would never permit you to harvest vacuum energy.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
pink hearts, green clovers, free energy
just use two pieces of buttered bread!
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
_ New Unbreakable Encryption Discovered, good as 1 time pad!
_ Nanotechnology breakthrough! Gray Goo any day now!
x Perpetual Motion discovered! Free energy for all. No really this time.
_ New compression method discovered! Your hard drive in 8 bytes!
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
Of course it works... Both the cat and the bread WANT to LAND... It's what bread and cats DO... It's like... their overarching purpose or something.
While you're correct in theory, the problem is one of simple common sense.
Have you ever tried strapping a piece of bread to a cats paws without
a) cleaving the bread in twain?
b) the cat licking the butter off the bread?
or
c) the cat scratching the shit out of you?
If you have, well then you know what I'm talking about. Yessir.
Free Energy from warm beer. Brilliant!
http://www.guinness.com/us_en/ads/
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
Free as in beer or free as in speech?
I think what we have here is the season 3 premiere to LOST. Anyone going on Oceanic Flight 815 from Sydney to LA soon? Well you're in for a bumpy ride. But for real, why would real scientist go off the record with a discovery this huge? If this was real, then there would be some real noise about it.
Can I bum a sig?
It really sounds to me like they want outside verification, and are willing to pay for it themselves. Shouldn't we let that take place before we fry them in oil?
;-)
Yes, it looks like either
-a honest attempt at getting their stuff verified
-or an outright fake
Considering the stage of development they claim I think there can be no honest mistake like "oops, we accidentylly dropped a zero in our formulas". So I think this one deserves checking out, but if it is a fake I'm for frying the Steorn guys in oil
C - the footgun of programming languages
You forgot about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. See, you got this cat spinning around at the speed of light while you're feeding it a city blocks worth of energy. The problem lies in that the moment that you have enough energy to teleport you can then no longer know exactly where the cat is. (Because you can't know position and energy at the same time.) So at the moment that the cat has enough energy to teleport, it blinks out of the box (because you know that's where he'd be). The next thing you know you have cat that materializes on someone's lawn and as soon as someone looks at it and astutely says "Look a dead cat materialized on my lawn!" It promptly explodes to release all the energy you fed it and you're left in your Delorean wondering why the engine is turning over.
It's an interesting idea but fundamentally flawed.
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Uh... no, if they wanted outside verification, they'd just plain go out and get some. This "jury" thing, on the other hand, is proof they DON'T want outside verification, because the whole thing is clearly designed specifically with the intent of presenting the appearance of allowing outside review of their technology while minimizing or eliminating the chance anyone will actually get a chance to see what it is. Seriously, they're inviting the world to come join a lottery in which the winners get to be told what their invention is after a long dramatic pause of unspecified length while public hype builds? And you think this is a form of public review?
What this "jury" thing actually DOES do is allow them to handpick people to give a dog and pony show to, afterward leave the world still unsure what their supposed invention actually is, and beforehand allow them to generate a gigantic mailing list of people to pitch to later on. The most important element is that "jury" thing allows them to brag-- as they do in a huge box on the front page of their site, as they do in your blockquote-- about the large number of people who have signed up to be on the jury, thus presenting the impression of great public interest in their invention. It's a hype-generating trick, and you have fallen for it hook line and sinker.
And did you not notice this piece of garbage on their website?
How can you possibly take seriously someone who writes a paragraph like that? If you look at archive.org you'll see that Steorn didn't even have an active web page in 2005.
Shouldn't we let that take place before we fry them in oil?
Shouldn't THEY let it (the academic verification) take place before they expect us to do anything OTHER than fry them in oil? Seriously, giving these people the time of day makes about as much sense as halting, before you delete your spam, to wonder whether maybe that e-mail really WAS sent by a Nigerian prince. The perpetual motion machine is after all one of the few scams that's been around even longer than the Spanish Prisoner.
It is my understanding that a magnetic field is a "potential field". In any potential field, the net energy is the same regardless of path through the field. Therefore, the net energy of any closed path is zero.
....assuming I understand them correctly that is.
I.E. if they are getting energy, then they are saying that a magnetic field is not a potential field.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
While we're at it, can we lambaste slashdot for bringing us this mentally putrid shit? I mean seriously, I know you're thinking "you must be may be new here," but is it too much to ask the slashdot NOT be "News for Crackpots, Radio-transmissions-from-my-teeth that matter"?!
Wanna see free energy? Pull my finger....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I just don't see any advantage to your hybrid approach. Wouldn't you do better, if you used two cats or two pieces of buttered bread? Then you only need one set of cat life-support equipment, or one set of bread re-buttering equipment, instead of both.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Yeah, yeah, it's "lodestone." I know.
KFG
BINGO!
Not only that, but they have recently announced that every scientist testing this will receive a free, advanced copy of Duke Nuke'em Forever.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Now I can replace the Cold Fusion generator I have in my backyard.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
So how much are they going to charge for this free energy?
It's "PLOAF," not "P-LOAF." Ask about it.
We have to remember a fundamental rule of science is that nothing can ever truly be proved, only disproved. What is a "law" today may be debunked tomorrow with the introduction of new data. As unlikely as it is that the conservation of energy law will be struck down by this technology (or any other for that matter), as good scientists we must leave open the possibility. We're nothing but bigots if we don't.
Of course, the same argument also shows you cannot extract energy from a magnetic field by moving along such a path...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Are they claiming creation of energy from nothing, like a typical perpetual motion machine, or tapping some previously unrecognized source, like a zero point energy module?
I haven't checked in with the fringe energy crowd in a while, but that was my impression: they're not trying to break physical laws... just trying to tap reservoirs of energy no one has tapped yet, like vacuum energy.
The problem with ZPE is that it always just struck me as a mathematical abstraction someone cooked up to balance some quantum theory equations, and that string theory sort of smooths out the need for all those itty bitty virtual fluctuations.
If you say a vacuum sucks, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
But at least I can then say I own a stainless steel car. That would be enough for me.
So how many leprachorns will I be needin'?
Science - since a long time is based on the principle that you publish your information, and no matter who the other person is - he or she can criticise you (peer review). And, since theories can only be falsified (or to put it in words of a physicist: you can explore in which limit the theory holds), you have to provide openly what you want to falsify. The measure of acceptance for a theory in physics is how many people had the chance to falsify it.
What these guys so is the opposite. They do not publish any information WHAT they acually do. They do not go to a conference ans seek the open criticism. Thy do not go with this discovery to a peer-reviewd journal (this discovery would ensure the Nobel price to the scientist when it is accepted by the peers). No they want to set up a closed jury which they select. Are these people the advisory board or should they just convince the bank? If this circle is closed - may they report on a failure or are they, after beeing selected to be the "jury" only alowed to write positive things about the company. Do they have any kind of NDA? Wre they allowed to disassemble the technology? Will they have financial interests to say yes? Will they be taken to a brainwashing show in a nice hotel in the mountains or will they be sent to the lab? Open questions.....
They claim that Energy conservation does not hold. This either means that the Noether does not hold (and it holds since it is a mathematical law) or that space is not time invariant. An they are right. If you are moving some parts in circles the space is not time invariant. Thats the principle of a generator. But the thesis that the overall energy conservation does not hold is ridiculous - if stated in that way.
Perpetuum mobile exist for a long time and never any Joule of energy was won - still a lot of them are patented. That is because you can apply for a patent without proving that it works.
BTW.: I find it embarassing that perpetuum mobiles are even mentioned on slashdot.
Oh, I know it's nice to be able to state, with absolute certainty, that something is impossible, but those statements are based on belief, not knowledge. They're almost always wrong, and the ones we haven't proven are wrong, yet, are still in testing. The only thing that's truly impossible is proving that something is impossible. That would require knowing everything, and we're not even in that neighborhood, yet.
requires drinking approx 6 pints of Guinness, at which point the core concepts of thermodynamics begin to blur a bit with the game of darts you're playing at the pub.
...and if people don't debunk them, they take root like kudzu or dandelions - people assume that if they haven't been disproven, they must be correct. There is always the "misunderstood me" phenomenon as well, although the misunderstandings are often willful - people want something for nothing, and hope that someone will give it to them (the theory behind 419 scams and Kevin Trudeau, for example). In those cases, while getting the word out keeps money in the hands of lazy, misinformed, and delusional people, it keeps it out of the hands of active liars and thieves, and makes the careers of such scammers shorter and less profitable. One hopes that if such pseudoscience and the people behind it are vigorously stomped, people might cease to scam in this manner (though that's pretty unlikely).
Nice way to gather email addresses. Who wouldn't like free energy?
This came from Ireland. Either the people reporting about it are drunk or the person claiming to have invented it is drunk himself and has no idea what they are talking about. Ireland == Alcohol. Ireland /= Science.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Disclaimer: I believe this,"product" like many other claims, is just a scam. Nothing more. I would like to address the distinction between obvious scams like this, and attempts by experienced scientists to pursue their ideas.
In the scientific community there is often an understandable impetus to wholeheartedly dismiss anything that goes against the established laws. This makes an enormous amount of sense, as scientific laws do not become laws without absolutely overwhelming consensus that anything else is not even remotely possible.
That being said, it seems to be absolute arrogance to assume that there is absolutely zero chance of a discovery that contradicts what has been well-established as being a hard law of science, and such an attitude that goes against the very ideal that has produced some of history's most innovative discoveries. Which is not to say that someone who approaches you with an idea that goes against every bit of science you have ever been taught should be given the benefit of the doubt, but on occasion I've seen reputable people propose the possibility of a dissenting theory only to be dismissed with "No, it's not possible, you are an idiot if you even look into the chance that science may be wrong."
Curtailing academic ambitions because you believe the human mind has figured out an aspect of the universe to such an extent that nothing can possibly challenge that belief is rather ridiculous. This is not to say that people should be openly accepting of radical ideas that attempt to dispel well-proven theories and laws, but if someone accepts that the burden of proof is entirely on them, and does not attempt to use it as a VC scam (like the one we are probably witnessing here), or a means to suck up more than a very modest amount of grant money, then I really don't see the problem.
You can say that they are wasting their time, and most of them probably are, but they should at least be given the respect one who chooses to test the frontiers deserves.
http://www.steorn.net/en/coverage.html
Press Coverage
Steorn Announce "Free Energy" Technology
Irish company Steorn have announced a revoloutionary free energy technology. More
The Guardian | 1 April 2006
Karma: Excer..ex...excellahhh...realll good (mostly affected by drinking not done in moderation)
This is hardley a new idea. I went to a talk in Oakland, California a few years back by some guy who claimed to have communicated with aliens. He described something similar for how UFO's are powered. Also, the idea of the N-Machine has been around for a while, as have numerous rumours of the oil companies supressing such technology. And who can forget little Lisa Simpson. (Homer: "Lisa, in this house, we follow the rules of thermodynamics!")
I think this claim should be given a serious look. It seems incredible, but such a technology would be so revolutionary that it's worth it anyway. Of course, assuming that the conservation of energy still applies to the devices that USE this energy, by generating all that free energy, won't we be contributing to global warming in a way far beyond just trapping solar radiation?
I wonder if this is a startup company, and they are actually using this to hire people. Similar to how Google posted challenges on billboards a few years ago, as part of a pre-interview process. The people who solved the problems and contacted them were given job interviews.
Maybe they are looking for people who will come-in, prove why it won't work, then to hire those people.
Fuck *you* very much. I am part-Irish, you ninny. Of course, apparently unlike some Irish I have a sense of humor.
As for the redundant rating? I was the fourth or fifth post up. Others may be redundant to this post.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I met a graduate-student/physicist some years back who was researching fusion physics. Cold fusion. He was really excited about his work, and said something about having to slightly change a paper he'd written because of results from a hot-fusion experiment that had recently been published. No major changes, because the hot-fusion experiment came out (failed?) just like he thought it would, but he had to mention it.
There was a story a month back: The Energy of Empty Space != Zero. Cosmologists now say that matter-as-we-know-it only makes up between 4% and 7% of the universe. The rest is "dark matter" and "dark energy", "dark" because there's no appropriate candidates in the standard physical model. To me, this means that the standard model needs some serious revision, especially if there's no entry for 93-96% of the "stuff" in the universe.
"Free Energy" devices such as the one referenced in the article are simply a way of tapping into the dark energy that interpenetrates everything. They're hard to get right because we don't have a very good understanding of the principles involved, and the institutions that derive their power from the Energy Wars (The Exxon-Mobil/BP/Shell wing of the Military-Industrial complex) use their might to suppress any innovation which might make them irrelevant.
The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe goes into the history of research into "Zero Point Field".
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I think my cat actually rid itself of the excess energy by producing hairball-equivalents, and the more a cat zooms around the more they tend to puke those things up, never quite reaching lightspeed.
It has to be a hybrid approach. Newton's 4th Law states that two like entities cannot occupy the same zany thermodynamic paradox at the same time.
And having a single piece of bread buttered on both sides won't work either. Only a piece of buttered bread buttered on one side seems to exerts the required rotational force. All experiments to save costs by using this method have seen that the two buttered sides merely fight each other for dominance. Even if we get the amount of butter precisely equal, the bread just lands on its side.
Then the cat comes along and shreds it.
I am surprised they went with a quotation from Shaw. More appropriate would have been the question, "Who is John Galt?".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
... involves the opposing forces of:
(a) Smoke, and
(b) Some mirrors.
Oh, and I'll also actually need (c) A curtain.
Please send all VC monies to my address in the Caymans.
Thank you.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
A website designed to swipe email and contact information demands you surrender your identity.
Lack of documentary papers, academic studies or scientific tests require your suspension of disbelief.
A pithy Shaw quote adds a semblance of authenticity by association.
Honeypot and crackpot!
"Phenomenal cosmic power, itty-bitty [server] space"
Seriously, this is like asking a psychic why they haven't won the lottery. With infinite amounts of free energy, you'd think it would be easier to keep your server from being Slashdotted.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
I thought it was moving, prepatory to a move, that can end with the original, or inverted fields... as in-- north may stay north...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
My dad once got in a bidding war with a bunch of other guys over another magnet motor idea. It couldn't work of course and he knew that. I imagine everyone else did as well. Yet, if you take away the fact that the person who built it missed an important detail in general physics, what was left over was pretty ingenious. He even had a mechanism to make it go in reverse.
It's not, nor will it ever be, a useful machine. Yet, in it's own way, its "art". He still has it among his gadget collection in his study and it still is quite the conversation piece as people try to figure out what it is supposed to be.
So, these guys may be charlatans, perhaps they are self-deluded, perhaps a little of both, yet it's interesting nonetheless.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Perpetual_Motion_ secrets_revealed_good_bye_gas_prices
Look familiar????
Regardless of whether or not it works, I find it pretty pathetic that this company is stealing someone else's idea.
If I had mod points today, I'd mod you funny to try and offset all the morons who modded you interesting and obviously didn't get the joke.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Why do they need any scientific interest in order to commercialize this? They have free energy and have had it apparently for at least three years. Why not just sell this free energy?
First off they must mean a net gain in energy. You put energy into setting things up but then it just creates energy from then on. They also said it could power a cell phone while producing 4x power to the cel phone or something... Problem being I dont think they're creating energy. I think they're taking energy from earth's magnetic field. In which case, we're doomed cause we depend on magnetism. Lets just pretend this thing never existed and get back to our unproductive lives.
Doesn't sound too free to me if you have to pay with your LIFE!
Even free sources of energy require generation aparatus and that equipment can be costly.
Two existing examples are solar and wind. This will be no exception.
They'd plug it into the grid and sell the electricity. Then with that money they would build a larger unit and create more electricity. Soon the enirety of britain would be buying electricity from these guys and they'd be very very rich. The very fact that they want to go public at the prototype stage argues for them being a fraud.
C'mon, it's fun! Enjoy the ride, even if it'll all end in tears.
Next up: A new compression algorithm with amazing efficiency never-before-seen!
... you could fly like a superhero? ... you were given 1 billion dollars? ... you could fly the stars and back?
OMFG! I mean, how cool would that be?!
I can't wait until I can use this free energy to power my flying car and heat my aquarium of mermaids.
They're only brine shrimp.
Havoc Video
The burden of scientific proof is on Steorn. It's not up to the scientific community to accept the challenge. Besides the Irish are notorious for pulling people's legs. The only thing they are getting for free is publicity. Velikovsky would be proud.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Lisa, in this house we OBEY the second law of thermodynamics!
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
This looks like some kind of rejected Flash intro for their website, with logo a bit different.
http://www.gcrogers.com/steorn/steorn.html
No mention of flying cars though - originally some kind of consultancy business.
There is another "Steorn" that appears unrelated to the Irish one.
http://www.steorn.org.uk/
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
I can't wait until I can use this free energy to power my flying car and heat my aquarium of mermaids.
Flippancy aside, I'd be perfectly happy if it could power one of these flying cars for me...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
inside the spinning wheel, ehh make it 'magnetic field'.
I don't see why the hostility.
These guys claim to be doing exactly what a layman should do when he thinks he has discovered technology which challenges a fundamental scientific principle.
Invite as many credible scientific experts as you can find to test it and report the results of such testing in peer reviewed scientific publications and on the Internet.
Free energy is one of the biggest discoveries that people are seriously searching for. That and intelligent extraterrestrial life.
And yes, apart from free energy there is the promise of virtually free energy. I.e. If you could create a small (as in portable) device that can separate Water molecules into the atomic components and burn the resulting Hydrogen for energy, cool. If the energy generated in that process is significantly greater (1.5X to 2X) than what is required to run the machine, viola. Virtually free energy.
Bonus points if it runs on watter too impure to drink and still maintains a positive balance even with the purification process.
So let them be. If it's bogus that will come out in the testing. This has happened before, without the invitations. If it's legit. Whoopee. countries like mine which produce mineral raw materials (bauxite) but import all our energy needs could see a an economic bump.
A bump our politicians will work feverishly to squander, but that's a different story.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Are they affiliated with the Hanso foundation ?
Maxwell's demon would never permit you to harvest vacuum energy.
Aristotle believed that nothing could move unless it is caused to move. Modern physics maintains that bodies move for no reason at all, as if by magic. Consider that movement is a series of quantum jumps. The law of cause and effect forbids the existence of an effect (i.e., a quantum jump) without a cause. It follows that we are immersed and move within an immense lattice of highly energetic particles. Deny if you wish but I have decided to put my money on Aristotle's blasphemy which will soon become a great truth. ahahaha...
Free energy devices: 0
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
A generator that runs on stupidity, it would never run out of fuel.
It's always nice to see the regular bunch of /. forum trolls and idiots speak their narrow minds quick and wide as if they with certainty knew about things they really have no clue of, instead of simply letting time tell. Try apply some retrospective and research to the related saying "All great truths begin as blasphemies", and perhaps you'll come out a bit wiser and with more humble tone.
fission and fusion.
well not completely free, but would be close enough if we built more reactors.
There is another piece to the VC puzzle.
The sure fire, must win ideas (Like a fast food outlet in the middle of the business district) usually run into stiff competition and hence slim margins. What make spectacular 10 and 100 fold returns on your investments are those ideas that are so wacky they couldn't get a commercial bank loan..
You know ideas like "Lets get the same old books that people buy at brick and mortar stores and sell them online" or "Gee, how about if we sell the operating system like it wasn't a part of the computer, but it's own product".
Most of those ideas are actually Waco and money invested in them is lost. Occasionally one hits pay dirt and a VC makes a killing.
What they came up with for that is the "10 bagger". Bet on 10 ideas that _almost_ make sense to you. Fully prepare for 8 of them to completely tank and loose everything you invest, while 1 will turn a small profit and the other makes the kind of returns that capitalists of all stripes salivate over.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Show us a working model. Who are these independent laboratories and so on. Reminds me of around 2000 when someone was haulking 45MB bandwidth through a standard telephone line. You see they did this by eliminating the 'grass' or in other words the sidebands. A lot of people looked very stupid at the time and so will anyone who hooks up with Steorn.
Where are they now
http://web.archive.org/web/20010518000925/http://
davecb5620@gmail.com
Favorite
The Murphy Corollary... yes, I've heard of this. Fortunately, I've paid Murphy off so he quits causing all of these frigging problems.
http://www.steorn.net/images/sean5_small.jpg
e rgy_gauntlet/
_ Free_Energy?coral-no-serve
http://www.steorn.net/images/sean4_small.jpg
As an Irish person, I'd surely love for something scientifically significant to be invented here, if only so I don't have to endure racist comments for the rest of my life.
Sadly I think this is an elaborate marketing stunt or a bunch of marketing people who don't know their causality laws from warp-engine field theory.
Read the Irish state media coverage here.
http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/0818/steorn.html
More pictures
http://pesn.com/2006/08/21/9500298_Steorn_free_en
Patent application
http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Steorn
It's just the Coriolis Effect - take it south of the equator and it sucks up .0000001 percent more engery that it produces.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Well, from the /. article, it would seem that they certainly aren't taking these guys seriously. Perhaps they're hoping to have them quickly laughed out of existance (and possible slashdotted out of existance) before they can actually hook some sucker into believing them?
I want to invest all my little fortune on it!
Where do I sign?
factor 966971: 966971
James Randi has already dismissed many scientifically unexplainable feats. I saw him first in a horizon documentary where horizon tried to prove that homeopathy works, which would have showed that water has a memory of past diluted molecules. They used double blinded tests with statistics to prevent any mistakes and it failed.
If anyone can prove something not possible scientifically they get the $1 million jackpot.
http://www.randi.org/research/index.html
I believe this is a marketing campain for lost season 3. Lost features a set of mysteries centered around strange EM-fields, etc. Some strange experiment that have gone wrong on the island, strange "EM" explosion in the end of season 2, etc.
Also, the lost-guys have used these type of campains before.
If the device really worked, there would be no need for scientific verification. They'd just hook 50 of them up to the grid and make millions generating and selling electricity to the power companies.
If it works, why does it need to be proven? Just go out and make billions with the device.
This is about as likely to be true as CherryOS or Karr actually having killed JB Ramsey. All three (Steorn, Maui X-Stream, and Karr) are nothing but publicity whores.
The scientific mind looks at evidence to prove or disprove anything. Any conclusion based on one's opinion, or superficial glance, should be taken with some suspicion of course, and cannot be honestly called science.
I see claims, such as this company's, dismissed, without a shred of evidence, by so many "scientifically-minded" people, that it's a bit disconcerting how those critics can possibly see themselves as scientifics.
Such people are a hindrance to the advancement of science, and make up, unfortunately, the bulk of the scientific community. Or maybe just the more vocal part, I don't know.
>>Listen up you primitive screwheads at /., there is no "Free Energy", no Free lunch, no tooth fairy and there ain't ever going to be flying cars. (We will eventually solve the tech for a flying car but the liability is insoluble.)
Why do we all insist on making a valid point, and then like "moths to the flame" continue typing.
We will eventually solve the tech for a flying bus, but the liability is insoluble. Sure you might get 98 years out of the flying-bus technology before people wake up and accept the intractibility of the problem. Who is liable if a flying bus were to crash into a building and kill thousands of people? What if their motors gave out and they crashed into a swamp? Who will accept the liability for allowing dangerous, mentally unstable passengers? Should we create some half-assed government regulatory agency to certify all the flying-bus drivers? Maybe they could even require embarassing and futile searches of all the passengers and their belongings? We could just trust our governments to produce accurate black-lists of people forbidden from taking the flying-bus? If you believe you can mitigate the insoluble liability problem of flying-buses don't waste our time posting it because Slashdot doesn't need your tooth-fairy loving free-lunch propaganda.
Maybe more like "Trolls to the flame"
N-machine (aka - Zero Point Energy or Vacume Energy), and things like the Homopolar Generator
The idea's been kicked around for a long time, and is not really new. Unfortunatly it looks as though if an idea is not patentable in the USA it doesn't exist. Start reading folks... this isn't anything new, it just that a company may have gotten enough attention to actualy get a non-oil consuming energy source off the ground (cause we all know what competition like this would do to Big Oil).
http://www.mufor.org/nmachine.html/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homopolar_generator/
Wherever i go, There i am.
Some people have been postulating the changes to civilization that such a device would pose.
In the sci-fi book "3001" references are made to a period of human history shorty after the roll out of nuclear fusion power stations (no the fission power used today). The near limitless supply of seawater to power the reactors and the cheap reactor designs with little of no waste to dispose of resulted in very, very cheap electricity. As a result everyone consumed as much electricity as they liked and Earth started warming as a direct result of electrical heating.
Something to think about - we can still cause global warming even without the use of fuels that produce emissions.
Then, whenever you needed to suck things into the vacuum of space, just uncap the tube. Free vacuuming, with no annoying noises!
Also - that Beatles song - Maxwell's Silver Hammer - was that about special tools needed to build the elevator?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I know what the Casimir effect is, and I was mostly joking. I say mostly, because I'm quite certain a similar process as Maxwell's demon would, indeed, prevent one from extracting energy via the 2nd law of Thermodynamics (and it's relationship to entropy). Granted, the 2nd law can be broken on small scales, but is always obeyed on average.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
1) The earth's magnetic poles are slightly offset (slightly over 11 degrees) with the earth's rotational axis (geographic poles).
.. and probably not even enough to overcome internal resistance of any cheap/homebuilt rig.
2) The earth's magnetic field is known to move around a few kilometers or so a year.
That is, the earth's surface spins at an angle to the magnetic pole, meaning if you made a big *** inductor sitting on the earth you'd see a slight voltage as you're cutting magnetic field lines. Now this voltage is likely to be super small (i confess i didnt do math)
It isn't free energy because if you made a large enough coil and ran it for a while the magnetic poles and the earth's spin poles will unite (ie, magnetic north = rotational north, cause you were actually stealing energy off the earth surface spinning) maybe even slowed down measurably and then no more energy will be available for extraction.
People will also be pissed off at you for slightly longer days and different weather/seasons.
If the device can harvest a usable return on the motion a vehicle makes throught magnetic or gravitational fields, it would be a great way to recover energy for electric vehicles like hybrid cars.
Or if it's snake-oil - it's a usable source of energy for flex-fuel vehicles!
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"And yours to use right after a short word from our sponsors each time you use it."
Nobody wants it. They're not willing to make the capital investment necessary to harvest it. That's because oil is incredibly cheap.
Deleted
So far 19200 people sign up for info on the results.... hrm... and growing. Prepare for spam.
I'm not going to follow in your footsteps by making any assumptions about your nationality, twerp, but here, for your edification...
Thats a list of credits that includes Boyles Law, high speed photography, modern electrocardiogram, X-ray crystallography, Boolean algebra, the basis of all modern computer arithmetic, the induction coil and discovering the principle of the dynamo, leading a team that discovered a treatment for leprosy, 'Fitzgerald-Lorenz Contraction', 'Stokes Theorem' and Stokes-Navier Equations', the hypodermic needle, Kelvin, aaaaand naming the 'electron' and measured its charge.
Here is your ass. You're welcome.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Free energy is not exactly commercially viable.
There's plenty more of this kind of stuff to be found, but here are a couple of quick links related to Steorn. The Steorn video can be seen on Google, where it's filed under hoax, snake oil and scam. Wikipedia already has an article on them. Oddly, the site makes mention of the "Bolton Trust, DIT, Steorn Student Enterprise Competition 2006, which I actually found record of on the Dublin Institute of Technology website. Here is Steorn ad. I don't think the DIT competition adds any credibility, though. I'm done even wondering if there's a chance this is real.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will never want for work. - Unknown
FTFA:
:)
"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."
The company is from Ireland right?! Maybe it's the same people that caused the Pentium floating point bug from a few years back. And they're at it again, only this time, they forgot to carry the 1 perhaps?!
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
What are these guys think-...oh wait, *Irish*. I should've guessed. We Irish are renowned for our crazy drunken exaggeration. If /. was to accept all *my* drunken plans to change the world, there'd be no room left for the dupes that we all love so much.
- slow down the rotation of the earth
- slow the rotation of magma in the earths core
- drag the earth closer to the sun
- etc.
(assuming those sorts of changes are lower-energy states). Now how it would do any of those without forcibly sliding you along the ground/driving you into the earth if you were holding it is a mystery to me, but...) The problem is if it does do something like that, it's hard to measure at the 1kW level, but if enough people do it, the day starts getting longer, the earth gets hotter, etc.Another possibility is that they've accidentally made a Really Good Antenna, and they're just receiving broadcast radio and converting it to DC...
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Anyone else notice how the Steorn web site (appears to be the main site for the company), has no products or services to offer the world? The closest portion of their web page to resemble anything like that is their "Our Technology" section which only talks about their "revoutionary technology", i.e. the free energy stuff, that doesn't seem to have it's own name (after three years?), or any photos directly accessible. There are photos though:
This being an article with a few
A discussion I started on their forum to find pics
and finally
PES Wiki
Sure, you have a lower energy level than the "baseline" of the universe, but a vacuum
has to be created, and that takes energy. It's like digging a deep hole and getting energy
by filling it. There's no net gain.
A witty
How much ya wanna bet it causes erosion on a molecular level or somesuch... "It works great! But the system disolves in 8 hours..."
They say they NEED scientific validation in order to get this into peoples every day lives. WHY? If you create a laptop battery that never goes dead, people will buy it. Let them question how it works later. I mean really. Sell me something that can run my car forever for free and people will buy it. You are just copping out because the scientific community is never going to accept this until you simply prove it by releasing a product. It is too far from accepted scientific fact.
We are jumping out to conclusions even without observing what is actually shown on their site.
That is:
It's clear some kind of marketing from Sony, Microsoft, or who knows who, or a very well developed scam.
My Two cents:
It is interesting to notice the fact that the few official informations about Halo 3 are actually about some kind of Magnetic Energy source taken directly from the Earth.Look at the trailer and Info.
It could be strange considering that they are targeting the european userbase first, but do not forget that the Leipzig Games Conference started today.
And by the way, even if "Steorn Co." exists even far well before the Xbox, I don't think it's too unresonable for Microsoft to buy an actual, albeit almost dead .com company just for a pubblicitary stunt.
...The second thing to prove will be that the amount of energy coming from the system is not a function of the amount of energy that went into creating the magnets in the first place. Finally, the last thing to prove will be that the energy is not coming from some unseen environmental source that can be depleted, such as ambient heat in a room or nearby transmission lines...
And right there is where the equation isn't going to work out. At best this is a neat battery methinks.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...and, curiously, every time just before they tested, there was a mysterious drop in the Guinness supply...
You're sitting on a perpetual motion machine and you decide "ah...it's too much effort to validate my claims! I'll just scrap the project!" Erm, no. You'd set up your business/home office/manufacturing plant to use that as it's primary means of power and peer-review-be-damned, sell it on a website until it catches on that holy crap it works.
Now granted, the site might be sensationalist; I see no reason to market this item in this way, however. If it works, and is reviewed by one person with a shred of accountability that says so, it's going to sell immediately and well (regardless of the price).
I'm assuming they haven't actually got it "working" in the sense that it could generate electricity but, if they did, then they could do a couple very informative and easy experiments. Basically, use the thing to power a light bulb and then either put everything in an insulated enclosure or put everything except the light bulb in the insulated enclosure. Then measure the temperature in the insulated enclosure.
If the temperature in the enclosure increases when everything is in the enclosure, then conservation of energy (the first law of thermodynamics) has been violated and pretty much all of physics will have to be rewritten.
If the temperature in the enclosure decreases when the light bulb is outside, then only the second law of thermodynamics has been violated and most of physics is OK but pretty much all of thermodynamics will have to be rewritten.
o Former e-marketing company produces energy technology breakthrough
...
This is about as likely as:
o Intel admits defeat against AMD and exits processor market; introduces new line of men's fashionwear for fall modeled after clean room suits
o Reports of global warming proved false; caused by errors in temperature calibration procedures at NIST
o Israel and Hezbollah announce new strategic partnership and joint Christmas Party 2006
o Al-Quaeda issues formal apology for destruction of Twin Towers and plans reparations
o Paris Hilton joins convent and becomes a nun
o Tom Cruise addicted to antidepressants
I hope this doesn't work. if it does, there are probably going to be some dead Irishmen in a few months.
With trillions of dollars in oil revenue at risk, the oil cartels simply do not let such things live long, nor the people who understand how to reproduce them.
And before anyone starts shouting *tin foil hat* or *conspiracist*, I ask you, "Do you believe nobody kills over oil?"
hmmph...
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
It still doesn't work, but it's fun. Although the idea of a submarine for space ship is fairly valid if you ignore the horrible weight penalty. Maybe a few hundred Tesla spinning above it now... heh what the heck, let's give the SF writers something renewed to write about.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Physically, it is impossible to "create" energy, however, I am always interested in the conversion of energy.
In the back of my mind, I suspect that magnetic force has a lot more energy than we give it credit for. It has been pondered since the alchemists, and it is like that puzzle, you know the solution is there, but you just can't see it.
Man, the last time I read press-releases that sounded like this one, it was coming from The Sco Group. Is this guy like a cousin of Darl McBride?
"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."
Yeah, just like Darl McBride's group of Deep Divers from MIT's math department than no one has ever heard from. We'll just take your word for it though, Sean McCarthy. My confidence is greatly bolstered knowing that you have scientists who are happy to admit it works, but none of whom have the slightest interest in what is apparently the GREATEST SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH of all time. Unlimited Free energy, the holy grail of scientific achievement.
"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.
Umm, that sounds like a basic electic generator, that I can buy for a couple hundred bucks at home depot. And it *takes energy* to make things "travel round the magnetic fields". I think, who was it, Faraday or Maxwell, or one of those guys discovered that like in the 1800s? I'm obviously no expert on electro magnetism, so maybe I'm missing something fundamental, but this sounds about as revolutionary as SCO's recently announced mobile development kit.
According to the aforementioned article, the CFO of Steorn is Michael Moriarty.
Considering the dubiousness of the technology, I think it's high time we rejuvinate Sherlock Holmes to fight the Moriarty menace.
Imagine the synergy between this world-wide fucking revolution and the AIDS vaccine world-wide fucking revolution.
We live in promising times.
A magnetic field doesn't get "used up" by applying force to charged particles. I mean, it is possible for a magnetized object to become demagnetized by either the small magnetized bits ceasing to be aligned (in permanent magnets) or by the cessation of current (in electromagnets). But a particle moving through a magnetic field experiences a force at right angles to the motion and the field, and that force doesn't use up any energy from the magnetic field. (Work is done by a force acting over a distance, and when the force is at right angles to the movement it causes. This is the same reason no energy is taken from the earth's gravitational field (if that even means anything) by an object in orbit.)
My problem is not that you're claiming that a magnetic field can go away, and yield energy when it does - that's true. But that has nothing to do with the inability to extract infinite energy from moving something around in a magnetic field.
Another note - charged subatomic particles (and some uncharged) have a magnetic field that is utterly constant. This wouldn't be possible if "magnetic energy" was used up somehow by a magnetic field applying force to a charged particle.
When you "pull energy from a magnetic field", it generally comes from energy of motion of the objects involved, not from some kind of energy in the magnetic field. E.g. the energy of motion of electrons is confered to move some axle in a motor, or energy of motion of permanent magnets is confered to move electrons in a generator.
... but the hamster's dead.
ROFLMAO
And Bush is the smartest president we've ever had! And the war in IRAQ was about terrorism... Oh, oh, And Santa Clause is real...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
In this house, we obey the second law of thermodynamics!
Seriously, if we had a system that "created energy", you could have it power itself. Let's say you powered a flywheel with this "free energy". Every second, it would generate a calorie of heat, then double that the next second (because friction increases exponentially as power on the wheel increases lineraly.) The flywheel burns down the entire Earth in a matter of minutes (a billion calories in just 30 seconds, roughly 2^30th).
"Free energy", if it actually did exist, would destroy the universe - end of story. No matter how small the amount, a free energy system would end up powering an ever-increasing exponential system.
Or, if you prefer - you just attach your free energy motor to a rocket. And look, it goes faster and faster. But its mass approaches infity as it approaches the speed of light. And when your free energy rocket gets to be the mass of the universe, so much for the universe.
Be glad these wackos are wrong.
-Ben
It's called the sun, folks.
My patented free energy device is the "Founding Fathers-Vanishing Freedoms" Commutator. Everyone knows that our Founding Fathers spin in their graves when our freedoms are taken away, so we just add a wire coil and a magnet. Every so often we have to reinstate our freedoms or the whole thing will cease to work. I'm currently investgating other ways to piss off the founding fathers so we won't have any down time.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Chicks for free
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I wonder what would happen if you hooked the output to the input? Would the device explode? Or maybe it would be transformed into something like the infinite improbability drive? Maybe that was how the big bang started. Maybe this already happened billions of years ago? I wonder what an infinitely powerful explosion looks like...
So I checked the date real quick and it wasn't April 1. Why the fuck was this story posted? Must we have a perpetual energy story every 3 months to keep the slashdotter's happy?
They don't realize it yet, but their "free" energy is actually draining the Earth's gravity.
If they keep this up, we'll all end up floating away into space!
We hold them to the same standards that we hold ourselves. Provide clear proof and any scientist will believe you.
What actually happens is we recieve a rambling letter with interesting ideas and nothing but rhetoric to back them up, no attempt to address the obvious criticisms, and usually either a request for money or admiration. It's very disappointing, actually, anyone can contribute to science (all the scientific data and software I used in my PhD were freely available to anyone, textbooks are widely available in libraries, and a PC is quite affordable - I didn't use any specialised equipment at all) yet there are far fewer genuine amateur scientists (hi guys, you rock!) than people who fail to understand the fundamentals about evidence and logic but think they're unknown geniuses.
Just a perpetual thought.
The Earth is continually bathed in various very powerful energy fields. Harvesting this freely available energy does not violate physics' law against free as in from nothing energy.
The company is refusing any offers for investment or licensing rights. They intend to pay all expenses involved in the jury review of the technology. This is to dissuade any claims that the company is fraudulently creating a spectacle to raise money from: http://pesn.com/2006/08/21/9500298_Steorn_free_ene rgy_gauntlet
that might stir those fraud speculations a bit
Nevermind the fact that the idea of burning H2 generated from water to generate energy is ridiculous. Burning H2 in air isn't totally pollution free. Some of the nitrogen in the air will oxidize to produce nitrogen oxides, which in turn form acids when they dissolve in water. Fuel cells, on the other hand, generate electricity by oxidizing hydrogen at low temperature, and don't pollute.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
It's clear they just got this technology from our newly-arrived alien overlords. Remember, like how we got the pyramids.
Or any of that other hydrogen mysticism claptrap.
But it's rather unlikely.
Anytime I hear catalyst and fusion in the same sentence I think "yet-to-be-accounted-for exothermic chemical reaction". Seriously.
Not to mention that cold fusion defies much of what we know about the strong and electroweak nuclear forces. The inconclusiveness of the results and the particulars of the initial conditions does not bode well for it. If it works, there is no testable theory to explain it.
Sonoluminesence has a much better chance to acheive fusion, and yet that is actually HOT fusion (although convienently confined in its fuel).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
What everyone obviously missed is that the energy is free as in speech. You can talk about it all you want. :-)
:-)
Free as in beer though... you expect an Irishman to be offering you free beer?
Slashdot needs to have a "junk science" or "snakeoil" category for this type of stuff.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
After further reading and consideration, I'm now convinced that this is an ad campaign. The original press release came out April 1st. They are a web advertising company looking for some free PR. In my book, using perpetual motion as an ad campaign is nearly as bad as using it to scam people.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Tesla claimed that something like this was possible, and I defy any slashdotters to claim they are smarter than Tesla was or have come up with as much new paradigm shifting tech... The earth is a HUGE magnetic generator, tremendously large. There IS power there being produced, we just need a way to tap it effectively. Someone is going to do it (it might have been done numerous times already for that matter), and when it does, societies will change. I for one would love to tell the billionaire power cartels to stuff it. That gibbering chortling fat pig of an Exxon CEO, anything to wipe the smirk off his porkface and to make that company be worth NOTHING would be a wonderful thing indeed. And can you imagine if we can actually find something that would make all that black stuff underground in the mideast be worth not much? Hallelujah! Let them all go back to being goat herders, the best thing for those people is to deny them that easy money to buy armaments with. The quicker we develop a variety of alternative energy sources the better.
Dig this! Just since the neocon coup happened, the US has given tax breaks and rapid depletion allowances of over 100 billion dollars to the oil industry! Talk about your subsidies! Funny that is buried in the news all the time.
Anyway, I wish these guys luck, looking forward to more investigations. If not them, someone else, but it is going to happen eventually.
It must be at the end of the rainbow...
This is quite possible, since the magnetic field is not conservative (=the energy energy is only determined by the position). Example of a conservative field: gravitation, because if a mass goes up and down a hill it has a net energy gain of zero.
Not so for movement in a magnetic field. You can compare this to a whirlpool: if you drop something in it will spin round and round faster and faster, so clearly its energy is not detemined by the position alone.n In fact this is more or less how electromotors/dynamos work (or could work).
"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,"
This, however is bollocks: classical mechanics and electromagnetism form a pretty closed system. I'm not saying the conservation of energy principle cannot ever be broken (though this would be surprising) but in any way it can never be broken withing the classical system, i.e. using only mechanics and electromagnetism.
It's a good thing not even one pico-joule of energy has been created from nothing in the history of the universe, otherwise we might be here to appreciate this invention.
This is my favorite way of proving that time is infinite or at least a closed loop.
Mass-energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This means it never will be created or destroyed and never has been created or destroyed. Thus, is mass-energy has never been created, then either there is none (demonstrably false), or it has always existed back infinitely.
There cannot have been a "creation" of the universe. There could be a point back in history beyond which we are unable to observe, and everything which we can observe could have originated from that point, but there was still something before that, and there may still be plenty beyond the observable universe.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
So where do you get the energy to travel around the fields?
...the future!
Plutonium.
And how fast do you need to travel to make a decent amount of energy
88MPH.
And how much energy would it take to travel that fast?
1.21 Jigawatts.
It's got to come from somewhere.
---k--
</stupid>
Well, the problem with The Internet today is anyone can put a very compelling and persuasive website together to claim anything they want to claim. Many people don't recall that Steorn is a former e-business company that saw its market vanish during the dot.com bust. It stands to reason that Steorn has re-tooled as a Web marketing company, and is using the "free energy" promotion as a platform to show future clients how it can leverage print advertising and a slick Web site to promote their products and ideas. If so, it's a pretty brilliant strategy.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
It's one thing to not throw your support behind such an idea, yet to knock it down before it even has had a chance to be proven is wrong.
What ever happened to keeping an open mind to all things?
What is now possible was once impossible and scoffed at so with that in mind the impossible is possible.
it's easy to throw rotten tomatoes yet even harder to support something by yourself.
Anyone else more interested in the tank of mermaids then the free energy?
Just a thought...ok then I'll be returning to my lonely life.
I'm now convinced this is a stupid viral marketing campaign. If they were real scam artists, this would be worth a good laugh. What they are is even worse: marketers. The original press release came out April 1st, fer chrissake. Frying in oil is too good for them, can we arrange to have them locked in a room with 1,000 starving weasels?
Let's get the word out, ignore these morons, deprive them of the very thing they want. Now my only question is, slashdot editors, were you in on this? Did they pay you? If so, fuck you gently with a chainsaw, this old timer is finally done with you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Yeah, heaven forbid that the challenge be published in a SCIENCE journal, even a POPULAR one like, oh, I don't know, Scientific American or Discover.
"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."
Oh, because the Economist has a broad, far reaching readership, not limited to only those interested in MONEY... unlike the science magazines who have a readership that actually may be interested, and, heaven forbid, know something about energy.
My god what a load of shite.
Many other charlatans and crackpots have made this claim. I have yet to see anyone publish a coherent layman's description of how to accomplish it.
I think the best way to disclose such an invention would be to post a web site with a list of parts to buy, where to buy them from, how much they cost, etc., and step-by-step illustrated instructions for putting it together. The end result simply needs to be a box that one could screw a light bulb into and keep the light turned on perpetually without an external power source.
If somebody did this, he would not even be a need to explain how it functions, because it would be impossible to refute. Scientists would eventually figure out how it worked.
Unfortunately no claimed free energy source that I know of passes this simple test.
If its true, the current energy corporations will do anything and everything possible to make sure it never sees the light of day
That's a load of bullshit.
About 50% of the business of an oil company is automotive fuel. The next 35 goes to diesel and kerosene for trucks, ships and planes. The last 15 is used for plastics and other derivative products.
The latter two markets are not threatened in the least by an alternative energy source since there's currently no way to have a large battery powered aircraft or oceanliner. Furthermore it will take at least 25 years to transition away from gasoline automobiles even if the product just appeared on the market today, magically. Not everyone can afford to (or would prefer to) purchase a new, electric car.
Furthermore, energy companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on energy costs themselves! If they came across a free-energy technology, it would be financial idiocy to NOT use it at least internally to get a leg up on their competitors!
At best, the coal industry would be threatened by free energy. EVERY OTHER INDUSTRY AND GOVERNMENT WOULD BE ALL OVER IT
So yeah, complete and utter BS
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
In early 2006 Steorn decided to seek validation from the scientific community in a more public forum, and as a result have published the challenge in The Economist. The company is seeking a jury of twelve qualified experimental physicists to define the tests required, the test centres to be used, monitor the analysis and then publish the results.
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."
The Economist. Yeah right those were your reasons for publishing there. More like because this would work better for your pump and dump scheme, I reckon.
Bullshit! ..537 post!!! hot damn!
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Actually "scientific verification" means that you have to proove that your product works anytime, anywhere (saying that you have seen it working yesterday in you home doesn't count as a proof) If you can make it work in a lab environment, you have a scientific verification.
Have you been able to get you mermaids to breed? I have been having particular trouble finding mermen.
That's all you have to say in his defense?
Mod this down on principle, thanks.
I'd like to see the field equations where they show you being able to end up with more potential energy than you started with. You know, a time-parameterized finite element analysis in three-dimensional space with suitable boundary conditions. They say they accomplished this on paper "in software".
WELL THEY COULD JUST VERY WELL RELEASE THOSE RESULTS
But no. No. They want to do a "demo" with a "jury".
That's what magicians do in Vegas.
Utter bullshit. MOD THIS DOWN.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Ok, so I don't know a whole lot about magnetic fields and such, but I understand a bit about inductance.
What if they have a way to move a magnet using strong magnetic fields and passing it through a weak magnetic field to generate current? It might not make much, but put them together in some sort of array and you might have a lot of power.
Plus, you don't really need much to run a cell phone anyhow, compared to most other items.
I have no idea if moving an object like I described is even possible though, so maybe I'm just way off in left field here.
Cool! Where do I send my money?
Free energy is the scientific community's equivalent to the "winning the lottery" dream.
No. It's the equivalent to the "getting superpowers by being bitten by a radioactive spider" dream. Which is also cool, and great fun to hear about, and if it's going to be told well even qualifies as news for nerds... but doesn't deserve anything but ridicule when brought out in public.
If they were serious, everyone they were telling about it would be forced to sign some serious blood-oath NDAs. They wouldn't leak this much until they had a small-scale pilot facility ready to run their lab for a while... or perhaps after they had set it up and been selling power to the utilities in the US for a few years. This looks like just another variant on lost treasure maps, forgotten gold mines, wildcat oil wells, and Florida "real" estate.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Dark != doesn't fit into standard model.
... its statistically unlikely in isolation but you take a sufficiently large catalyst and a bunch of fuel and then you start observing it.
Dark == doesn't radiate photons. That's all.
Dark matter fits into the standard model. We just don't which particles it's likely to be. We do know it's made of WIMPs. But that could be a lot of stuff.
Dark energy doesn't fit into the standard model. But the standard model isn't complete anyway so there are lots of way to cast it in there along with gravitons, the Higgs boson, and the rest.
Dark Matter consists of WIMPs. Meanwhile Dark Energy only manifests itself in gravitational interactions.
They don't like to interact with other fields, and they are ESPECIALLY not likely to interact with electromagnetic fields. Hence, any device that involves magnets or electric fields that claims to harness ZPE or Dark Matter/Energy is just REACHING.
Meanwhile, there are tons of theories currently to try to explain Cold Fusion. It's becoming rapidly accepted as a valid phenomenon (but only after years of experimental testing and making sure its not some other phenomenon but masked). It's probably just Hot Fusion, but accomplished by situational lowering of the energy barrier
There is no conspiracy. But there is a lot of rapidly changing stuff in particle physics right now; it's in a state of flux. So when you start talking about Cold and Hot fusion, it's hard to talk about that when we still can't commit to whether protons decay or not.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If you can't recognize 100% scam, look at the site, they have patented "machine", but they were unable to suficiently prove it. Of course they are touching the 100% efficiency, they are at 99.6%, well, may be 99.8% (presume they are good at it) LOL
I bet I know where they got their scientists.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
You should have studied harder at school. But I take it you left at age 11, so maybe you just should have STAYED at school. :P
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
One of their patents rely on a "magnetic shield" for its work:0 06035419&F=0&QPN=WO2006035419
http://v3.espacenet.com/origdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO2
As I understand this patent, they have rail with magnets on it, and a magnetic shield (drawn as a bracket) that moves along the rail in a manner that requires very little effort. Apparently, the magnets serve to balance each other in some way. It looks like could work but are magnetic shields possible? Wouldn't a magnetic shield have to absorb the magnetic field, i.e. somehow being exerted resistance upon by that field?
No, that's not correct. Scientists have recently discovered bacteria which shit Hydrogen. From memory they eat rubbish too - so they are busy trying to genetically modify these little fuckers to shit more hydrogen, and faster.
Hell, with the right system, you'd pass your garbage through this system before taking it to a land fill, and the output would be fuel for fuel-cells - for Very Little Money (tm).
The other nice thing about the bacteria is that they could be used in small scale devices: at home, to reduce reliance on a national grid, and even to send power out of the house when usage is low. This would assist the decentralisation of power generation which is abolsutely necessary to get out from underneath the giant power and oil companies which rule western democracies.
*sigh*
Dreams are free I suppose.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Not very cool at all, at least in a literal sense... Energy turns into heat; even if the magic generator itself doesn't produce heat, what we'll do with the energy will. Unlimited energy would mean we wouldn't care too much about wasting energy as heat -- we'd just power more cooling devices. Cooling devices don't really cool things so much as move the heat somewhere else, and that's done at a loss (more heat generated). Things would start to get pretty warm.
Anyhow, in your opening sentence, did you mean to imply that it's the potential repercussions that fuel skepticism? If so, I absolutely disagree. Skepticism doesn't mean "It would mean too many bad things if it were true so I don't want to believe in it." I'm skeptical because it doesn't make any sense in my understanding of basic physics. I enjoy considering the repercussions of such a fundamental change in human technology, but I'd remain skeptical even if it were mathematically proven that the device (should it actually exist) would produce Heaven on Earth.
It doesn't look like it could power a factory. --And even if it could, building a factory takes money. That prototype test thingy probably cost a fair bit in parts and time.
Your idea is cool, but without gobs of cash, not applicable.
-FL
I don't know. They already have a machine, and it seems to me that there is a legitimate desire for genuine testing. . .
I recommend we just sit back and wait. Then everybody can argue over the results.
-FL
the output. Go to eskimo.net or wherevet that is. It's kind of easy to make this magnetic rotating disk. You can't put a load on it because the friction would cause the motor to stop. So.. it's not really usable.
If they are not full of crap then they should publish the schematics/blueprints to this so others can duplicate it now.
I am going to try to explain this in very simple terms. This requires me to use very small words and simplified stuff so please don't expect the really hard core stuff here. Rest assured this stuff works!
There is a solution achieved from the Maxwell equations that says F=(B^2) * A /mu. Since for any position of a motor mu A/mu never changes relative to its state at the same position, the equation reduces to F=B^2. So far so good. Now to grade school math. You were always taught that 1 + 1 = 2. In magnets this isn't true. F = 1^2 = 1, F=(1+1)^2 = 2^2 = 4. In short 1+1=4. If one of the ones in the magnet example is a permanent magnet and one is an induced magnet, the sum is still 2^2 or 4. The price you paid to get the Force = 4 was 1! Of course in the real world nothing works 100% efficient so you probably will get a bit more like 3.5 instead of 4 but so what! YOU just put in 1 unit of energy and got out 3.5 unitis of energy. COP = 3.5! Not bad!
Now we move on to Steorn's device and rest assured it works. The math here is exactly the same but we are doing division. Steorn's device takes a field of 1 and a force of 1 and then splits it in half or more. At 1/2 split the B field to affect motion or to produce force now is 0.5 or 1/2. This means for a shield which takes up 1/2 of the B field, I can get the force for use split into two parts, one of which I pay for and the other I do not. The one I pay for is F=B^2 or F = (0.5)^2 = 0.25. Now I paid 1/4 of the energy of the unshielded permanent magnet and I reduced the torque force from it which works against me to 1/4th as well. This is for the detail people a canceling of Back EMF of a Dipole by shorting! Summing here we get 0.5 force against me when shielded and when unshielded we get 1 force for me working. (This is positional if you haven't figured out.) That's for a motor.
Now lets play with a transformer. This device can drive the magnetic field of a transformer for the energy cost of 1/4th of the magnet. At the same time it can produce flux by reversing the magnets that varies +/- 1 or a total of 2. This means we get generation of energy out of a standard coil winding equal to 2x the magnet and we paid 1/4th of the energy for the magnet. Of course this isn't going to come out at 8 times but so what if it comes out at 5 or 6. This all looks party pretty to anyone wanting energy.
So for parties out there who haul out their tired old axiums I have one final demonstration. If you suspend an object using an Electro-Magnet you can measure a direct relationship to the current needed to suspend it. Its all standard equations here. If however; you suspend the same object with a permanent magnet, it can be done indefinitely without current application from outside. The current is internal. There is no difference between an induced magnet and a permanent one. Actually they all are permanent magnets just the Induction alligns a disorganized set of magnets and a permanent magnet has them alligned already. So you can see a magnet can produce energy. In fact it does it all the time. Only now we have the mechanisms to capture this energy.
Just remember that the fact that we have not had this in the past means only that we were ignorant of the means back then. It doesn't mean it was impossible. Cleopatra could have had TV. All of the physical laws worked just as well back then as now. They just didn't know how back then.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
"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.
From the article.
Once you say, "[Energy is] literally created", you're full of shit.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Ever. For any reason. Not without altering the structure of the Universe. There's really nothing more to it.
I'm all for innovative energy harnessing. I'd love to see unique research into zero-point energy, allowing us to generate antimatter. I'd love to see people create practical applications for high-energy particle physics. I love pie in the sky ideas; I think they are the revolutionary things that vault humanity in to new eras of development.
But creating energy from nowhere? Bull-fucking-shit. And no "emperical" testing is going to convince me, either.
You want to redefine the laws of physics? Fine. Show me the alternate model. Otherwise, crawl back into that hole you came from. I'll never, ever believe the claims of a random inventor over the body of physics, unless it can be backed up with some decent theoretical explanations, and it can be shown that there are errors in the body of physics.
Steorn demonstrates neither.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Could be Astroturfing, but then again...you never know...
I'm surprised it wasn't on here yet...
Sure it's insensitive* (you know it has to be if it's on Family Guy) but I think it really explains what's going on here!
quote:
SPEAKER: Archeological evidence indicates that Ireland was a much different place before the discovery of alcohol.
Speaker Most experts believe it was something like this.
[Flying cars whizzing]
Irishman Today we, Ireland's top scientists, have found a way to convert our entire population to pure energy!
Irishman 2 It's a glorious day.
Irishman 3 Michael McCloud's just invented a new kind of beverage in his basement.
Irishman 3 Whiskey.
[Rowdy drunken yelling]
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/128718/family_guy/
* yeah... I'm irish and scottish too, so it only hurts when I laugh...
The server's running IIS ( http://www.steorn.net/en/something-random-to-get-a -404 )... And I think we all know only MS would do something like that!
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
You have all misunderstood the word free, they don't mean energy is created from nothing, in some physics defying propietary patented method that RMS would disapprove. Instead they have created a pair of boxers that captures and harnesses the energy of beer farts, especially useful in Ireland.
Suppose energy of a particular form were amazingly easy to concentrate. That implies, naturally, that this energy would be amazingly hard to disperse. So how are you going to get your automobile engine to work? Sure, you've got this concentrated clump of energy in your strange new type of battery. And it was real easy to gather, huzzah. But that energy doesn't want to go anywhere. Unlike the normal type of energy, it's not eager to flow through your wheels, doing work, and disperse into the wide universe as heat.
It's the very fact that energy is hard to concentrate that makes it so useful. The fact that energy is hard to concentrate -- that it's eager to disperse, straining at the leash, so to speak -- is like the fact that a rubber band is hard to stretch: it's exactly what makes the stretched rubber band exert a powerful and useful force. If we had a rubber band that's very easy to stretch, it wouldn't exert much of a force. If we had a form of energy that was easy to gather, we couldn't harness its flow to do much work.
For the cognoscenti: yes, I'm aware I've merely paraphrased the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
As cool as an aquarium full of mermaids, of course.
Consider this system and tell me why it wouldn't work
take two magnets one hung from a thread the other fixed with like poles facing. without the magnetic fields the
natural tendency will be for the magnet on the thread to settle over the top of the fixed magnet.
However because of the repulsion of the two magnets the dangling magnet will be deflected and will start to orbit the fixed magnet as gravity trys to pull the magnet towards its lowest position. no point on the moving magnets orbit will be any more stable than any other.
place a coil of wire around the outside of the moving magnet and you probably would find electricity is generated within the coil.
is there a point at which the moving magnet can come to rest or would it remain unstable and rotating generating electricity?
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Second law of thermodynamics. Fine. We heard you the first eighty trillion times.
"It'll never work" Fine. We heard you the first eighty trillion times.
Got anything original?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
goes with the Claim.
Precisely because it is impossible to prove a negative.
Am I the only person who sees that rearranging the letters in Steorn to = Sterno?
Look ... they're Irish (I'm part Irish m'self so I know what I'm talking about) and I think we're just victims of an honest mistake. Most likely they simply had a bit too much Guinness and misread the output ammeter. No harm, no foul.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The most famous flying car of them all. ;-)
It's an Irish trick. First you take a treadmill, couple a generator to it, capture yourself a Leprechaun, and get yourself a pot of gold. Put the leprechaun on the treadmill, and hang the pot of gold at the end just out of reach. The leprechaun running for the pot of gold will turn the treadmill which in turn spins the generator. Easy, case solved.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
This post is a prime example of why Slashdot needs to add the "-1 Stupid" moderation option.
Sorry to be so harsh, but you need to burn any degrees and/or diplomas you have and go back to high school.
Obviously, then, every time they turn this thing on, they're burning up some of our precious Dark Matter! (This mysterious energy has to come from SOMEwhere, right?)
This is a catastrophe! Do you KNOW what'll happen when all the Dark Matter is gone? Light-bulb manufacturers will go out of business, leading in a chain reaction to mass unemployment, social upheaval, and anarchy! They must be stopped before it's too late!/p
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
This was leaked out earlier today on all the digg site as the viral campaign for Halo 3. Its similar to the ilovebees site from the Halo 2 launch.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Don't know about you, but I'm thinking one of:
- Prove it. Publish your results and get it peer reviewed. None of this nonsense "people won't even take my claims seriously" nonsense. There is probably a reason.
- Profit from it. Free energy? Make a big bank of these things. Sell the power. There are plenty of buyers.
And if neither of these things are happening, I'm thinking one of:
- Crackpot.
- Investor scam.
She wouldn't be rich if she wasn't. Stop being jealous of other people's success.
thats all i have to say about that...
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
"A low energy magnet actuator allows magnetic fields to be turned on and off using a small amount of energy. The magnetic actuator according to the invention generally includes a base suitable for the support of a plurality of magnets. An actuatable shield is positioned in relation to the plurality of magnets so that it effectively blocks the magnetic field when it is positioned over at least one of the magnets. The magnetic fields of the plurality of magnets interact in a manner that allows low energy actuation of the shield."
It's just a thing for shielding a magnet with another piece of metal. The patent application does not claim an energy gain.
I was really hoping they'd claimed an energy gain, which might trigger the USPTO's answer to perpetual motion machines. The USPTO has the right to ask for a working model, but they very seldom exercise it. Except for perpetual motion machines and antigravity machines.
The application has been assigned to an examiner, and is in routine processing.
A few years ago I had the benefit of working on a now-defunct college sattelite program. The venture was dying and all five of us left on the project new it, so we started screwing around with the time we had left on the payroll.
I shit thee not: The Professor, in charge of a sattelite project at a respected University, had us working on a magnet-powered generator. His theory- and this was a man who led the design of a fairly sophisticated machine that was well grounded in existing science- was that we could use up the magnetism to keep it spinning and generating electricity.
The idea was that the energy wasn't free; the magnetic field would decay and weaken as it ran.
I'm an ME, not an EE, nor had i studied magnets for any length of time, so I really didn't know enough to say it was complete and utter bullshit. I'm certain it is, but nonetheless we ordered some magnets & bearings and screwed around with them from time to time.
Of course we didn't get anywhere before I graduated, and the program finished dying not too long after that.
Just goes to show you that making it past high school, or a bachelors degree, or a masters, or a PHD (in some physical science, I forget which) does not insulate you from being a crackpot.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Assuming they actually can produce free energy, there'd still be a charge for the bother of providing it and the rights to use it, etc. Kinda defeats the purpose of 'free'.
*gets stormed by MPAA troops and mickey mouse police.* I'm in a courtroom, and before me I see Judge Mickey Mouse and Prosecuter Donald Duck. Donald approaches me and asks of me, "Where is your EFF now?"
Sig: I stole this sig.
I never said that the magnetic field got "used up", I said that the energy generated when you create electricity from a magnetic field (be it a transformer or a rare-earth magnet setup) doesn't come from nowhere.
In the case of a transformer, the energy generated in the second coil comes from the source of the magnetism in the first coil, the electric current running through the first coil.
If it didn't, all you'd have to do is setup a third coil next to the first one and you'd magically double your energy output. That doesn't work, as the the 2nd and third coils now just get 1/2 the energy they got before, which not coincidently corresponds nicely with the energy input of the first coil.
In the case of a rare earth magnet electricity creating device (which many of these supposedly law of conservation breaking devices utilize), it's been shown that as you generate electricty from the magnetic field of the rare earth magnet, a little extra energy is produced by the changing of the physical structure of the magnet. The magnet slowly demagnatizes as part of the process.
Yes, if you make a generator from rare earth magnets and spin it around, most of the electricity generated (or energy produced by the system) comes from the motion involved, but there are devices which in that situation (with a near frictionless setup) produce slightly more energy than is put into the system to create the movement. The extra energy comes from the energy freed by the process of slowly demagnetizing/unaligning the rare earth magnets involved.
Most rare earth magnets aren't found naturally, but produced using the right materials and an electromagnet. It can be amazing how much power it can take to create one. They're actually batteries, in a very slow-to-discharge-and-hard-to-use-practically sense of the word.
To quote from http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10418
As a bonus related fun fact, electrons don't move through wires at the speed of light when current travels through the wires (I know, if you are a physicist instead of an engineer, the holes move instead of the electrons). The actual speed is more in the range of millimetres/second, depending highly on the material and voltage used. It's the wavefront that moves super fast, like a garden hose when you turn the water on. The pressure wave pushes water out the end much, much faster than the water actually moves from the faucet to the end.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
In 2003 Steorn undertook a project to develop more efficient micro generators. Early into this project the company developed certain generator configurations that appeared to be over 100% efficient.
Has anyone seen Primer ? When reading the above I immediately thought of this film. A couple of guys are playing with magnetic fields in their garage and accidentally discover a positive gain energy source. Later it is discovered that the generator is actually a temporal shifting device (read: time machine), but a "realistic" one (you can only travel back to when the device was turned on). This story correlates heavily with the film's plot.
"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."
One of the characters in the film, Abe, describes the machine operation using a small diagram. The dialog is disjointed and overlapping , but the situation is the same as above:
"All right? We start the machine with the Weeble at the A end.
-It travels forward--
-You got to write this down.
-There's nothing to write down.
-I'll write it down.
It travels forward normally towards the B end.
When it gets there,the feed runs down parabolically...until it shouId stop, but it curves back around towards the A end.
When it gets back to the A end....Curve that around. The WeebIe...has experienced a total of two minutes, and again it curves--
-Back around. It curves parabolically.
-Right.
It comes back around and it does this about 567 times.
When it finaIIy exits on the B end...it's traveled an odd number of forward and backward trips.
What is so special about 567?
Why is it about 567? Why isn't it exact?
-This is not empiricaI.
-Here, give me that.
I don't know why it's not exact. There's some sort of probabiIity there.
Every time it hits the B end there's a chance...a small chance it won't curve back around towards the A end.
And for some reason, it takes about 567 trips before it finally does.
It does have to exit, or else we wouldn't be abIe to see it afterwards.
Okay, let's take a look at this.
Twenty-two hours, 26 minutes.
-26 minutes.
-Even.
Enter at the B end. Exit at the B end.
-I just want you to see it the way I saw it.
-I am trying, okay?
Everything we're putting in that box comes ungrounded. And I don't mean grounded to the earth, I mean not tethered. We're blocking whatever keeps it moving forward, so they fIip-fIop. Inside the box, it's like a street, and both ends are cul-de-sacs. This isn't frame dragging or wormhole matching. It's basic mechanics and heat.
-This is not mechanics and heat.
-We can publish.
-Yeah, we can publish.
No, I mean we can really pubIish.
Aaron, the Weeble's stupid. It can't move.
Even if we were to put the Weeble in at point B...it's still going to bounce back and forth until it's kicked out at the B end. But if it were smart...it couId enter at the B end and exit at the A end before it flips back.
-You're talking about making a bigger one.
Freaking. Awesome. Film. Fingers crossed this energy source is real.
... snowgirl (978879)
Yeah, sorry about that. So, since you're on slashdot does that mean you don't have a boyfriend?
Sig: I stole this sig.
Seriously. Mod this up.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Ireland is famous for their stupid call centers and bug time BS **
The first guys who took a stab and claiming to have free-energy, and were taken seriously did it on purpose just for the publicity. And despite being soundly disproven, "Third party results differed", they were still set up quite nicely by Toyota with research money. So the publicity track does pay off for these guys (just look at the South Korean cloning fiasco, where the lead scientist now has his own lab).
The Irish parachute, that automatically opens on impact.
The Irish coffe mugg, with the handle on the inside.
The solar-powered flashlight that works in direct sunlight.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
First, this can't be free energy since at least one magnet is required, or the something that moves around the magnet.
From the article: "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."
Bullshit. Build a small version of this thing in a place that has net metering for electricity and sell your "free energy" back to the grid at a profit. Repeat until you are the electric utility and multi billionaires, then you can produce your product for the masses and provide it at no cost.
If people are willing to individually spend thousands of dollars a year on energy and you can get even half the rate the utility pays, you should be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. In fact, the free energy machine might also allow for reverse time travel, allowing you to become insanely wealthy before you invent the machine!
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Riight...
23,000 suckers and counting... hehe
What goes around comes around, kid.
We are not sending the scouts out to suppress this yet. But should it become necessary, you can be sure that we would not let this out... I guess we are all so pathetically anxious to hear something like this, that we are willing to fall for the obvious. A prototype free source of energy, if possible, is the kind of device that would need no sales job, no need to beg to convince anybody. By the way, for all of those out there that still think of conspiracy theories: you just don't have a clue on how the world really works. The energy industry will take advantage of any new source of energy like a firestorm. The race would not be to suppress it, but to take advantage of it soonest!
Looks like it's working.
Products don't develop themselves, and it's hard to get funding when nobody believes your claims.
It seems pretty obviously to be pure zeropoint bullshit, but your mitaken reasoning isn't helping.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Prepare a product that does not have batteries & sell it. My starting point would be a mobile-phone.
Think what these guys are up against. I heard that in some 10 years ago..arab oil tycoons brought a company & closed it, because it was designing oil-efficiecnt engines.
Constructing the device (interestingly, it always seems to be described in roughly the same ways these days) appears to be pretty cheap. More or less anyone could build one.
Money would just be *less important*. It would really revolutionize society. The cost of EVERYTHING derives from the supply of energy - food, housing, transportation, medical care. Free energy would more or less mean a classless society. It would pretty much be the next step of human evolution.
+++ATH0
In related news, Scientists have found that the noise of an angle grinder makes cold fusion possible.
Patent fears from 'Chain Reaction'
The Bible: Historically verifiable fact from an observers point of view
This reeks of viral marketing techniques. Who in their right mind would use PR releases to declare that they have made the greatest scientific discovery of the modern age! Every person in their company down to the tea lady would be able to retire a multi-billionaire just on the patents alone. The drawn out wait and the rhetoric is clearly designed to create hype.
They're claiming to posses a technology that would change the Middle East, end American globalist policy as we know it, stop environmental destruction, advance space exploration and terrestrial transportation, move the whole world into a new golden age - and they're telling us that nobody will believe them - perhaps it's because they shown nothing to believe.
There is no need to select eminent scientists etc - they merely need to patent the technology and then publish it to prtotect their economic interests. I would suggest that they are instead fishing for celebrities and this is the next stage in their hype campaign.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
...when you ban smoking in all the Irish pubs. Give them a pint of Guiness, light up their smokes and they will return to normal.
Poor geeks who don't know about this man and his inventions...and the thing with the lightbulb is real! http://www.gimnazija-karlovac.hr/skola/tesla/tesla .jpg
just check out that picture!!!
I believe that says it all.
1. Release a press release saying you have done the impossible. Use phrases like "we didn't believe it ourselves at first!" because they make the thing sound true.
2. Wrap a large insulated copper coil around the media ...
or else!
You seriously need to recalibrate your skepticism meter. Anything that claims to generate energy for no cost is bullsh*t. Either than or get get some further science training.
I'm afraid it's you who needs to take another Science 101 refresher. (I'm a scientist.)
There are no "Laws of Nature" -- our scientific "truths" are merely our best current mathematical approximations to how the world actually works, and the latter is unknowable because we have no means to probe the structure of reality directly. (Our best efforts are all indirect, ie. we can only probe and measure through instruments and effects which themselves we only understand through our own tentative models.)
New scientific principles will arise to explain new observations, and they will totally demolish current scientific foundations. That's the way Science works.
So by all means keep your skepticism, because to err is human after all, and to deceive seems to be human as well, sadly. But be sure that your skepticism isn't actually rejection of the new. The one thing that is a certainty in Science is perpetual change.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Actually there is residual magnetism in the alternator, which is how it gets started in the morning. The issue with the dead battery is that the starter will not turn over (!). In fact, my boat engine has two alternators, one of which self-excites and the other doesn't. The non-self exciting one keeps its residual magnetism for about a day. Modern car engines do not need to have self-exciting alternators because they cannot start without a battery, but many years ago my Citroen had a starter handle (had to use it a couple of times, too) and a self exciting alternator.
Pining for the fjords
No great idea, discovery or invention ever was came from hard-core sceptics.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
What a p*** !!! :( :(
;; QUESTION SECTION: ;steorn.net. IN MX ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
I just wrote a long explanation in their forum and when clicking 'submit' I was kicked out.
A funny company. Has someone tried google-earth about the address ?? Anyone around in that area; from Dublin ?
I tried a whois, and they don't have a registered www.steorn.net. Only steorn.net. Probably a wildcard thingy. Makes it even more suspicious.
They also have no e-mail address(es) under their domain
dig steorn.net MX
; > DiG 9.2.4 > steorn.net MX
steorn.net. 7200 IN SOA NS59.WORLDNIC.COM. namehost.WORLDNIC.COM. 2006081400 10800 3600 604800 7200
But the address seems to prevail:
$ whois steorn.net
Domain Name: STEORN.NET
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com/
Name Server: NS59.WORLDNIC.COM
Name Server: NS60.WORLDNIC.COM
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
EPP Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 03-Aug-2006
Creation Date: 16-Jul-2004
Expiration Date: 16-Jul-2007
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 03:49:37 EDT
Registrant:
McCarthy, Sean
Steorn Limited
Docklands Innovation Park
East Wall Road
Dublin3, Co.Dublin D3
IE
Domain Name: STEORN.NET
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
McCarthy, Sean seanmcc@eircom.net
Steorn Limited
Docklands Innovation Park
East Wall Road
Dublin3, Co.Dublin D3
IE
+353-1-664-1744 fax: +353-1-664-1809
Record expires on 16-Jul-2007.
Record created on 16-Jul-2004.
Database last updated on 22-Aug-2006 03:49:55 EDT.
Ok let me be the first to add to the hype.
Lets suppose they did find a way to get this "free energy" now if it is moving around in circles. the only thing i know of in the realm of science is a Zero point singularity or a Tesla little black box.
So now we suck the magnetics into a spin and it produces enough energy to make nuclear reactors look like alkaline batteries that leak toxic waste.
So we hook up our houses, cars, and power plants to these things then the things sucking power starts to grow or weaken in an unmeasurable amount of time. It only takes 3 years for someone to ignore something they are to measure if it is the same every day for this amount of time. So if it is a Zero point singularity and it starts to grow it would be like opening little black wholes all over the earth. How much sucking power would it have before it destroys the earth or effects the environment in a negative way.
But on the other hand i believe man sticking to only what he knows limits mans ability to move forward. So lets give them a chance to prove this and enough money to build a small generator set that could run a house. Measure the results over a 5 year period of time then see if they truly have such an invention or are they smoke and mirrors.
I don't see how the temperature increasing inside a sealed box indicates that thermodynamics has been violated and energy has been created. You would need to keep tabs on a lot more things in there to make sure that the temperature increased while nothing else decreased... then something would have been violated.
Imagine having a strong enough box around a big system that converts matter to energy. Or even just two chemicals reacting exothermically.
If they could do that, don't you think they would have done that?
Perhaps, just perhaps, (assuming this is real) they need more cash to allow them to exploit it. My reckoning is that they've found something absolutely tiny, and they need cash to see if it will scale up. Of course, being tiny it could be experimental error or something equally daft...
Plutonium? What happened to the Mr. Fusion upgrade?
Or are you still using a DeLorean without a hover upgrade as well?
Last year in the UK, about 20 people took part in a nine week "space mission". The TV company took over an airfield in the UK, swapped all the electricity sockets and signage for Russian equivalents, put the 20 "astronauts" through weeks of training, shoved them in an old (and very earth-bound) soyuz training module, and let the cameras roll.
s tm
After a few weeks, these pricks were convinced they had been into space, all on national TV.
Here's the link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4537748.
I think this is the same thing:
"We took 12 nob-heads to a secret location and had them doing experiments...."
You can just see it cant you. The 12 "selected scientists" will be every crank, pseudotech and nutcase they can find with wild theories and no clue about physics. They give them a lab full of equipment and stand bach while the opionionated pr1ck5 make fools of themselves.
The people who have signed up to see the results can expect an email in a few weeks saying:
"Selection is complete. See how they get on on Channel 4 at 10pm Saturday..." and the viral marketing fun begins.
Either that or they are genuinely freakin crazy.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
they do *seem* to be a public company and well, if they want their stock to get a push this is one way to do it. I mean, if they really had a 'free energy' machine wouldn't they just go to their best friends', and ask:
"Oi! how much are you paying for your electrics bill a week?"
to which their friends' would reply:"Is a pisser mate since me ma moved in is been fukkin'ell ya ken now?... Fifty-Fekken-Quid-a-fekken-week-mate! it's shite!"
"I ken enow. How would you like to pay shite? and to Hell with the electrics bill!"
"Yay!"
"Yay!"
And then they wouldn't *need* scientists or big ads in the economist, because they would have proof.
-mag
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
I agree with the people who said this is viral marketing for the Xbox 360 or an Xbox 360 related product. The 360's visual theme is circles, (like the name, although I do realise that '360' was just used so they didn't sound inferior to Playstation 3) and for some reason, on the top of most pages on the Steorn site, there is a very similar picture to the concentric circle Xbox 360 logo. Also, the Steorn logo itself is very similar.
But heres the thing: The ilovebees ARG was on a site about....well, bees. And look on the register page, for no apparent reason it's....honeycomb! Hmm... And take a look on the downloads page, and tell me that's not the 360 logo right there.
Also, the whole 'selecting 12 scientists thing', sounds more like a competition the way they word it. Trip to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory anyone?
Also, just about everything on the site can be taken as a reference to circles, just read it. Hell, if you want to take it far enough you can talk about how they talk in circles and how they're machine works by moving an object in circles. There are also about 100 other things but I have to go do something else and can't be bothered writing any more right now, so bye!
One more thing: The entire site seems to be hardly technical at all, and very much made for the average person to be able to read, which seems pointless for an energy company.
P.S. I should note that many of these things I did not spot myself, but have just repeated other's ideas.
One question,
if creating energy out of nothing is impossible, then where did this universe come from?
The whole Universe contains quite a lot of energy, where did it come from?
There are people who have an answer, they believe in a "God" who created it, so the choise is to either beleive in God or in teh possibility of free energy.
However, the idea that someone accidently re-creates the conditions which created the universe is absurd, but still, by stating that free energy is impossible, one is implicitly stating that there must be an all-powerfull creator of the universe who is above the laws of physics.
An Irish company... Slap me down and call me Patrick- but doesn't this say it all? No doubt the research will be funded by Leprocaun gold.
There is already a company interested in buying that technology for their laptops.
For the fans and the curious ones, it has already been covered here.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Laymen generally can't publish in journals. Attempting to do so is somewhat more humiliating / annoying than trying to speak to the /. crowd of something reasonable yet unlikely. But if you're a layman, you don't have the lingo to write the paper properly and you don't have the cred to have anyone look at it -- you're wasting their time, and insulting their instituted superiority.
I keep reading comments from people who say that this thing is impossibile because it doesn't abide by the 1st law of thermodynamics, namely that energy needs to be conserved, but there are two main objection to that.
The first, and most obvious, one, is that this device may indeed not break the law of energy conservation, it might be that the energy is taken from some other places or entities which we are not aware of (yet). What if this thing is taking energy from the "space-time", so to speak, probably affecting the local fine structure constant?
The second objection is that the law of energy conservation only applies to isolated systems. And what if this device is taking its energy from another system? There are theories by which our universe is not just composed by 3 dimensions, what if this device is harnessing the energy contained in some other dimensions?
Thinking of it, both objections might simply be the two sides of the same medal.
This also poses the question of whether this device is really "green", in the sense that it doesn't pollute: if it really modifies the fine structure constant, then we might face some more dangerous forms of pollution, indeed.
no seriously, best thing i've ever read on /.
Good god, the most original post on this topic, actually containing some investigation, is only modded +3. Meanwhile, there are dozens of +5 posts telling us that we have to have an open mind.
Excuse me now, I've found a jogging route that leaves me with more energy at the end than when I started.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
It isn't free or real, you have been hoaxed. Look here: http://www.steorn.net/en/ for the open directory. Look at the http://www.steorn.net/en/coverage.html page for the nice April 1st date. You can also note the barely there website, no history on it, and the translation sections aren't implemented fully. The website is just sitting there soaking up email addresses....
What process do you propose that would extract free energy (as in the thermodynamic sense) from the vacuum without reducing entropy? If you're proposing to use the Casimir effect, how would that be done - even in theory? Now, I can't say for certain that the 2nd law would be violated, since you haven't specifically said how vacuum energy would be used. I just know that the 2nd law invariably trips up anyone trying to create a perpetual energy machine. (Well, either that or pointing out that flying monkeys can't be created ex nihilo.)
Having said that, I'll agree the 2nd law gets overused - especially when trying to disprove evolution, since the Earth is not a closed system.
Finally, if I'm going to go to the German fount of folkisms, I prefer "In der Not, frißt der Teufel Fliegen." (Meaning: In an emergency, the devil will eat flies. Equivalent English folkism: Beggars can't be choosers. I can't say I understand *how* these are equivalent, but that's what the so-called experts say.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If somebody does figure out a system that provides a surplus of energy by harvesting energy from an alternate universe, is that ok? Do we need to care about trans-dimensional ethics? Reminds me of the letter Steven Wright got from the woman in Germany saying "Cut it out." : )
These charlatans have hit about most of them.
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm
I am no big 'Lost' fan, but was forced to watch the last recap/season finale by my fiance'. It occurs to me that the 'device' on the island is a giant electromagnet of some sort and seeing the Steorn site I am reminded of the viral ad sites they have built to referance the show. Same shadey archive (non)listings, odd registrar info and many pointers to an ad/publishing company rather than a tech company. What do you think?
- skinnytie -
Free as in beer?
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
The eddie currents set up in the moving shield will resist the effort to move it. Even if you recovered all the energy from a changing magnetic field you would probably only break even. This assuming the usual "forget about mass and friction for this problem". For Eddie currents (aka Focault current) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Current
Bah...
;)
:)
I submitted this story on Sunday August 20, at 04:31PM and it got rejected.
So samzenpus posts the same story a full day later and gets accepted.
Boo hiss to the editors (I'm not bitter...
Oh well at least Scuttlemonkey didn't get a blog post about the story submitted
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
OK I know - but assumption. But (again - assume they figured out a way...) I wonder if it's something that adds such a miniscule gain that it's not practical? Evolutionary sure - but if it costs $100,000,000 + bizarre hi-tech and lots of natural resources to get a net gain of .000000001 energy coefficient - where's the application in anything beyond theory?
Torontoman.
THis reminds me of a book I read where someone invented this motor that powered itself by sucking static electricity out of the atmosphere. Hilarious!
Ironically it will more than likely cost us more that regular dirty energy... So really it's just good news for environmentalists and energy providers.
God Be Gone
I think we all saw what happened in the movie Chain Reaction. Was Keanu crazy enough to start up another project to provide us with cheap energy?
My guess is it is simply leeching power from the emissions of mobile phone, radio and TV beams. This is forbidden to do in most countries.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
In this houde we obay the laws of thermo-dynamics!
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Not magnetic field but magnetic feel.
This free energy is called love. Takes at least a lapdance to charge an AA battery, though. But I'm not going anywhere. I just love the fact that we live in a world where stripjoints have free wifi.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
I think this link will explain what sort of company we are discussing: -
o ry14326.asp
:)
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/05/21/st
Make your battery last long
From Wikipedia.org: link: Steorn
"According to information available from the Irish Companies Registration Office, Steorn has not filed accounts since October 28, 2004. Under current Companies Registration Office practice strike-off procedures could begin against Steorn by the end of October 2006. A strike-off would have serious consequences, such as the loss of Steorn's limited liability status. Furthermore, any assets of the company, including any patents or other intellectual property, would become the property of the Irish State."
Link to Ireland's Companies Registration Office "strike off" policy.
This could mean curtains for these guys...
A smart investor can even make money on a flame-out. Just look at the SCO situation; I don't know if this is the case now, but for years it was difficult to find available stock because everyone was shorting it, just waiting for the inevitable crash.
The "Greater Fool" theory of investing is at work here. If Steorn doesn't have what they claim to have, then the current investors are simply looking for a "greater fool" to take the company off of their hands, who may in turn be looking to do the same thing. At some point, the hype dies and it all collapses, but right now the company has some momentum.
They say that they have this challenge to all kinds of scientics, and physicists to test this machine to prove that it works the way they say it does. But where to they put their ad? In a Science Journal? In a Science Magazine? No, they put it in The Economist. Oh ya, lots of scientists read the Economist. Could have anything to do with the fact that people looking to invest in something would read that magazine.
Mass-energy can neither be created nor destroyed in the universe as it exists NOW.
For the first nanosecond after the big bang, the rules of physic were different, but very unstable.
There is some thought that the universe still isn't in it's most stable state.
Time was created AFTER the big bang.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
very telling link!
Let's see, according to the story, you go around the magnetic field, and when you get to where you started, you have energy.
And this is different than a generator how?
mark, taking a train (diesel generator, electric motor) home....
For the first nanosecond after the big bang, the rules of physic were different, but very unstable.
The laws of physics cannot change. Otherwise they wouldn't be laws.
The variables can change, but the equations stay the same. If it was possible for mass-energy to be created or destroyed under some circumstances in the past, then it's possible for it to be created or destroyed under similar circumstances in the future. But that's not what the laws of physics as we presently understand them say. There's no special exceptions that say mass-energy is conserved under *almost all* circumstances, except when such-and-such variables get to extreme values. It's just conserved. Always.
Of course, none of that is to say that what we currently think are "the laws of physics" are the real, eternal laws of physics. We thought Newton was dead on for a long time before realizing his calculations don't always work in certain extreme circumstances.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
with the exception of our planets and asteroids, all of the information we have about stuff outside our solar system is based on spectra that is radiated from or filtered through the object in question.
Dark matter is just that. Dark. No light is coming out of it, and unlike interstellar gas/dust, it doesn't seem to affect the light passing through it either (except for graviational lensing, which is how we know something is there).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I suspect that this is 'way too like the machine from "primer"' (see wiki & c.), perhaps a big joke, perhaps a way of highlighting just how much you can get away with these days.... Dublin is a bit weird right now, a lot of cocaine & vanity... not much physics knowledge... that said, I'm reading the patent app'n & know that most Professors are 'makeweights' who, paraphrasing Alan Turing, have most to lose if someone points out something that makes them look like complete idiots that've been performing the same old hackney'd act for years..... I did Engineering & found that any idea 'over a yard away from the syllabus stream' was seen as a 'highly challenging' thing... things like 'free energy technologies' will eventually come out, whether it's happening now, here, is another matter entirely... trw
What a cynical world? If any lone inventor proposes a revolutionary idea, he is attacked mercilessly to submission. Usually these inventors are lone geeks with lesser social skills and shy to take on ignorant critics.
E CH-Summary.htm
I have a friend who has invented a solution for online GUI components, which may be used to build complex online application, than possible before even on desktop platforms such as Windows or Apple computer systems, at fraction of cost. When he was presented privately to potential partners/investors, he was insulted.
He also proposed a revolutionary component based software paradigm, which can alleviate so called software crisis.
These technologies are not complex and any qualified software engineer can validate in hours. He posted all the information on e web site, http://www.cbsdf.com./ Still few people calling him fool and fraud, with out showing a shred of evidence that his technologies have any flaw. http://www.cbsdf.com/technologies/DHTML-Widgets/T
He has posted necessary basic source code in the web site. Any junior developer can use this to create complex online GUI applications, which is practically impossible to top researchers at Google or Microsoft.
The world is so cynical that no qualified person willing to spend couple of hours to verify themselves. A single individual cannot build and provide full-fledged products and services to get this into market. Until fellow researchers verify this and acknowledge their experience, such technologies do not attract customers and investors to bring it market.
If such technologies do not reach market or delayed for several years, whom do you think biggest losers? The inventor who created out of his curiosity or the world? Who is going to suffer the consequences? Such inventions can add trillions of dollars to world economy and energy independence to poor countries.
They should have posted all the process to construct a device openly as my friend hosted in http://www.cbsdf.com./ Showing to 20 experts do not help them. They will demand them to jump many hoops. At the end after they are convinced, my friend says that most of the so-called experts will be gutless to stick their neck for the disruptive invention for the fear of wrath from others. If inventor asks them to say it publicly, they ask them to jump more hoops. After enduring several weeks, one has to give up.
I don't know about the free energy, but I know cynics killed other good inventions. Please don't call them fraud, just because you are too lazy and incompetent to validate the invention.
What a cynical world? If any lone inventor proposes a revolutionary idea, he is attacked mercilessly to submission. Usually these inventors are lone geeks with lesser social skills and shy to take on ignorant critics.
E CH-Summary.htm
I have a friend who has invented a solution for online GUI components, which may be used to build complex online application, than possible before even on desktop platforms such as Windows or Apple computer systems, at fraction of cost. When he was presented privately to potential partners/investors, he was insulted.
He also proposed a revolutionary component based software paradigm, which can alleviate so called software crisis.
These technologies are not complex and any qualified software engineer can validate in hours. He posted all the information on e web site, http://www.cbsdf.com./ Still few people calling him fool and fraud, with out showing a shred of evidence that his technologies have any flaw. http://www.cbsdf.com/technologies/DHTML-Widgets/T
He has posted necessary basic source code in the web site. Any junior developer can use this to create complex online GUI applications, which is practically impossible to top researchers at Google or Microsoft.
The world is so cynical that no qualified person willing to spend couple of hours to verify themselves. A single individual cannot build and provide full-fledged products and services to get this into market. Until fellow researchers verify this and acknowledge their experience, such technologies do not attract customers and investors to bring it market.
If such technologies do not reach market or delayed for several years, whom do you think biggest losers? The inventor who created out of his curiosity or the world? Who is going to suffer the consequences? Such inventions can add trillions of dollars to world economy and energy independence to poor countries.
They should have posted all the process to construct a device openly as my friend hosted in http://www.cbsdf.com./ Showing to 20 experts do not help them. They will demand them to jump many hoops. At the end after they are convinced, my friend says that most of the so-called experts will be gutless to stick their neck for the disruptive invention for the fear of wrath from others. If inventor asks them to say it publicly, they ask them to jump more hoops. After enduring costs and humiliation, one has to give up.
I don't know about the free energy, but I know cynics killed other good inventions. Please don't call them fraud, just because you are too lazy and incompetent to validate the invention.
GO GO GO
FREE POWER!!!
FUCK THE LAWS OF PHYSICS!!!
FUCK EVERY LAW EVERY MADE!!!
Cynics don't make planes, trains, rockets, time machines, etc.
Cynics don't make the future.
Cynics are useless.
Maybe yes, and maybe no, depending on your point of view
Healthy skepicism is good, blind acceptance of and obedience to, rules, not.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Many years ago in a pub of ill repute, the frail old father of a friend of mine called me up to the bar and asked the barman for a pen and paper. He assured me I'd find this interesting, and proceeded to draw. "This is an idea I come up with when I was in prison", he said. "Oh, right", I said, not entirely sure of how I should respond to that one. "If you imagine these are magnets..." he finished scribbling almost immediately and moved the scrap of paper to beside my pint for my appraisal, "...and that there's magnets around the outside aswell..." I looked at a few lines and considered his words for a moment while my brain tried to tackle the meaning of it all. Then it clicked. "That's perpetual motion!!", I spat. "That's the word I was looking for" he said. I proceeded to quiz him on why he hadn't done anything about this; the untold riches it was worth. Both he and the gents about him smiled benevolently and refused to comment further. The older I get, the more apparent the answers become