Posted on 08/18/2006 7:37:36 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
An Irish company threw down the gauntlet on Friday to the worldwide scientific community to test a technology it has developed that it claims produces free energy.
The company, Steorn (http://www.steorn.net), says its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy -- a concept that challenges one of the basic rules of physics.
It claims the technology can be used to supply energy for virtually all devices, from mobile phones to cars.
Steorn issued its challenge through an advertisement in the Economist magazine this week quoting Ireland's Nobel prize-winning author George Bernard Shaw who said that "all great truths begin as blasphemies".
Sean McCarthy, Steorn's chief executive officer, said they had issued the challenge for 12 physicists to rigorously test the technology so it can be developed.
"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy," McCarthy said.
"The energy isn't being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It's literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy," he told Ireland's RTE radio.
McCarthy said Steorn had not set out to develop the technology, but "it actually fell out of another project we were working on".
One of the basic principles of physics is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change form.
McCarthy said a big obstacle to overcome was the disbelief that what they had developed was even possible.
"For the first six months that we looked at it we literally didn't believe it ourselves. Over the last three years it had been rigorously tested in our own laboratories, in independent laboratories and so on," he said.
"But we have been unable to get significant scientific interest in it. We have had scientists come in, test it and, off the record, they are quite happy to admit that it works.
"But for us to be able to commercialise this and put this into peoples' lives we need credible, academic validation in the public domain and hence the challenge," McCarthy said.
I tried that logic on my wife, as she was reading over my shoulder, while I was writing a technical report once. She told me that me writing skills were giving her a headache and we all know what that means. I learned to embrace my inner comma.
"I understand this stuff very well. Read my later post. I worked as an orbit analyst with NASA and still "do" orbit design work as required. I was trying to be funny, but obviously I fell flat on my face.
Sigh."
You're a rocket scientist, not a comedian!
;-)
Then again, consider your material--making jokes about orbital momentum, acceleration, & etc are not consider prime laugh-inducing subjects.
Fire your writer!
LOL
They wouldn't need investors if this worked. Once you build one it can be used to generate energy which is in turn sold for cash. Generate enough cash and you build the second to generate more energy for more cash. Kinda like the alfalfa growing in Catch 22.
"Orbital humor is wildly elliptical" placemarker
You left out essence of Sprok Weasel.
Especially at the apogee...
;)
Some questions come to mind:
...holding my breath...
Not!
With high tech start-up companies the scheme works like this. Develop a concept for a new product then a business plan then an IPO plan. Seek venture capital to perform the R&D for 2-4 years before product is ready. The investors do not care if the product ever workd because they have been guaranteed an IPO BEFORE the product goes to market. They sell their shares often for double or more their purchase price. They make a killing. The company execs make a killing with the IPO.
And still no sales yet (except maybe a few prototypes, but nor necessary)
All of this "killing" is totally dependnet on the amount of pre-IPO hype and publicity that can be generated.
They hire a professional pre-IPO PR firm to handle this.
This type of thing was running rampany during the Clinton years and created the huge bubble that burst. Tons of companies getting huge sums of capital while they have no products or market share.
The operative word being "was". VC's are not as free as they used to be and many IPO's are dying on the vine.
This is a perpetual motion machine. It will not be considered by the Patent Office, PTO. If they wish to send a working model to Art Bell, even a toy, Art will be happy to talk about it seriously, but even Art is sceptical about perpetual motion machines.
If it brings in energy from outside, its not a perpetual motion machine. Its probably nothing but a stunt, but let's see what they have and then decide.
It has all the earmarks of perpetual motion. There is nothing that does not say perpetual motion. As Art would say, and said last weekend, 'send me a working model, even a toy, and if it does all that I will provide all the PR you will ever need.' Art has severely heavy funding sources, BTW, if anything like this proves out.
It sounds too good to be true. Of course they used to say that once we had nuclear power we wouldn't have to pay for electricity any more. That was a bit hopeful, of course. No one works for free,and there was still the matter of the transmission grid and its maintainance.
Still, I am curious, and that is reason enough to take a closer look and try to understand whatever invention it is that they say they have discovered.
"I was trying to be funny, but obviously I fell flat on my face."
""Orbital humor is wildly elliptical" placemarker"
RadioA, I think you've found your new comedy writer!
"They always want other people to look at it, and then try to get "investors" to put money into it. Then they are always "just this close" to making it work, and if only they had some more investors . . ."
Then, when the spiel doesn't work, or work well enough to satisfy them, they fall back to the "large forces are conspiring against us" ploy.
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George Bernard Shaw was a liar.
Aside from theoretical issues, the crux of the matter is whether such a device produces usable energy. The few that do seem to work based on momentum or various obscure effects shudder to a halt when a load is applied. But let's have a look.
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