Is Steorn a Stunt?

I love all of the hype about Steorn. There's nothing like a great viral campaign. For those of you who haven't heard about it yet... here's their claim:

We have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy.

This means never having to recharge your phone, never having to refuel your car. A world with an infinite supply of clean energy for all.

Our technology has been independently validated by engineers and scientists - always off the record, always proven to work.

What is it? How does it work? No details yet. Here's what the CEO of Steorn had to say recently:

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.

According to Wikipedia "A page on Steorn's website titled "Press Coverage" had a broken link to a news story claiming the discovery in the Guardian on April 1, 2006."

What's the blogosphere saying about it?

• There are also rumours abound that this is an XBox / Halo 3 PR stunt.
• If Sean is an actor, give him the oscar. He is very convinced of what he is saying over, and over, and over again.
• Apparently the images used on the Steorn website are related to the Irish prehistoric site Newgrange.

Anyway you slice it, this is going to be fun. Kind of reminds me a little of when the Segway was hyped up or the whole Adams' Platform fiasco we had in Melbourne over the last ten years.

Comments

[Miriam Parkinson]

Not possible... unless they are converting mass into energy.
But magnetic fields can do nothing of the sort... Big Fat Stunt!!!

[powerhugh]

A few comments on the above:

First, on the idea that the way to do things is to get peer reviewed papers published in respectable scientific journal: McCarthy made it plain that there are 2 or 3 paths to follow – the first is that of peer review, which is a slow and painful process over 20 years or so – look at e.g. Blacklight power and hydrinos – they are now getting peer reviewed physics, chemistry and engineering papers published and attracting comments from scientists that are being publicised. But that has taken about 10 years (or more – mills started almost 20 years ago) and there is still lack of agreement on the meaning of their results.

Next path is make a heater or a car powered on the process – this again is a long affair, and you first need the patents! That takes ages, and then to actually get a commercially viable product takes years – again taking Blacklight as an example, they have been promising a heater for 5 years or so and it seems no nearer completion. Maybe their plasma cells are hard to control. But so will the magnetic motors of Steorn: these are all complex systems. As McCarthy said on the interview – they know in principle what is the optimum configuration to get power out: the only problem is in getting the alignment accurate enough etc. Remember these are still lab bench versions – the first crude prototypes. Later, when finely machined, they would presumably be deterministically reproducible.

So the way Steorn is going may be the fastest after all – get verification by jury of cynical experts: this in a sense is a turbo peer review. Well, wait and see – he asks us not to believe him at this point – so until the jury comes out, the jury is out!

One other thing – at least Steorn don’t wheel out a weird and controversial physical theory, as Blacklight did. The latter only succeeded in getting people’s backs up and delivering ammunition to their critics. If they had just kept their iconoclastic theory to themselves and allowed the experiments to speak for themselves, then they would be a lot further than they are now.

God be with the days of steam! It was all so simple then. The great thing about it was billowing clouds of the stuff were a great indicator that energy was in use. Steorn have actually shown their setup working to the Guardian reporter who visited their site. But all there was to see were displays saying that more energy was coming out than going in. In a complex magneto-mechanical setup you may need to slap on measurement devices to show what’s going on. That’s why they say they need experts to give it a clean bill of health. But apparently you’re fine poo-poo-ing it now, as Steorn wants people only to believe it if or when the cynical jurors have given it the thumbs up.

Check out he Steorn song at www.steornwatch.com -
great song - captures the spirit of the age. Every heroic campaign needs its ballads and this could be the first in a titanic struggle against big power cartels, prejudice or whatever. Assuming this is the right stuff, that is. And Sean & co. give ever more the impression of believing what they are doing is real. So either they are deluded, heroes, or part of some colossal stunt or joke. The latter possibilities seem less and less likely, so roll on ye troubadours!

[powerhugh]

Look around their web site and you see in the News section that they have been working with DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology ) in awarding students prizes. They are actually based on the tech centre in Dublin’s fashionable docklands (houses going for millions Euros there now). As a former Dublin resident I know DIT as an old 3rd level institute. It used to be Bolton Street tech. college (& maybe others who joined them). So the firm is legit and not just an Australian call-box or MS logo hoax. There seems to be more meat on this than on the standard claims to extract energy from the vacuum. For this is the claim here – free doesn’t mean ex-nihilo, but from an unknown source. I liked the idea that it might be harnessing fluxes in the vacuum like a windmill harness air fluxes.:

[Cameron Reilly]

Nice comments hugh. I notice you've been defending Steorn in a range of places. I hope you're right and they on to something! Their claims sound, to me, like they are breaking at least a couple of the laws of thermodynamics but hey, I'm no physicist, and you are, so I'm in your hands. ;-)

[Stevirobbo]

Well first off, the news media are taking it seriously as its been on the national news all day, sky news is now running the story.

The company has spent millions developing the system and no ones spends mass amounts of wonga unless its worth it, they would never recooperate 2million + on a publicity stunt.

If this is true it would be wise for the people involved to sell the rights and move on as the US and Asian oil refineries and gulf companies are going to be extremely pissed at the thought of capping their wells, Russia will be just as bad with the gas terminals, but all in all the oil companies can still switch over to manufacture of plastics etc and this is of course where the majority of the oil is used anyway.

I must admit the potential if true is astounding and can you imagine the good stuff that would come out of it?
No more polution from cars etc and diesel driven lorries, no more chimneys etc etc no more nuclear power stations.
Lets face it the only reason the US hasn't nuked places is they have the OIL, well wake up and smell the roses they won't need it now. which makes it a very dangerous world indeed.

I hope it is true myself because the good things outweight the bad things by a billion to 1.

[powerhugh]

Thanks Cameron - Good to see that my comments on various sites are not going unnoticed! Yes, I think they deserve a fair hearing. The old days of a categorical ' no' to free energy on grounds of it breaking the 1st law of thermodynamics are past. Modern physics has seen enough strange days that a bit of extra energy here or there makes no difference. Look at dark energy and dark matter in astrophysics, for instance. THe astronomers have shown that normal matter is jsut the icing on the cake - a dark cake, from which we took take a slice in a Steorn engine. The Casimir effect was the first crack in the armour of the classical idea that he vacuum is nothing. Casimir showed it was seething with energy, just waiting to be tapped. These guys may have hit on a way to do that.