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- Apr 3, 2006
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Company claims to have 'free energy' generators.
Thoughts? Is this a hoax? Or are they maybe onto something.
Thoughts? Is this a hoax? Or are they maybe onto something.
Irish company challenges scientists to test 'free energy' technology
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.
© 2006 AFP
http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=75115456
"Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by
beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published by a
journal today, you will run against a paradigm and the editors will
turn it down" - Sir Fred Hoyle
This perpetual motion machine she made is a joke: It just keeps going faster and faster. Lisa, get in here! In this house, we obey the laws of THERMODYNAMICS! -- Homer Simpson
Model T had a front-mounted, 177 in³ (2.9 L) 4 cylinder motor in a block producing 20 hp (15 kW) for a top speed of 45 mph (72 km/h). The engine had side valves and three main bearings. Recent accounts credit the default-configuration Model T with fuel economy on the order of 25 to 30 mpg (7.8-9.4 L/100 km). http://www.answers.com/topic/model-t-ford
 Perpetual Motion Claim Probed
By John Borland
12:00 PM Aug, 21, 2006
Sean McCarthy believes his small Irish high-tech company has overturned one of physics' most fundamental laws.
It happened by accident, he says. His company Steorn was looking for an efficient way to power closed-circuit TVs that spy on ATMs, and instead stumbled on a technique they think produces more energy than it consumes.
The company hasn't released specific details about the process, other than to say it involves magnetic fields configured in precisely the right way. Using the magnets results in a motor that's more than 100 percent efficient -- essentially creating energy, McCarthy says.
For scientists and engineers, this is the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, and is almost unanimously viewed as flat-out impossible. McCarthy, an affable former energy company engineer, knows just how preposterous his claims sound. So, he advertised in this week's Economist for a panel of the "most cynical possible" physicists to help validate them.
"If we're right, that will come out in due course," McCarthy says. "If we're wrong, that will come out. It's such a big claim that it has to be validated by experts."
A big claim it may be, but hardly original. The clamor of voices saying they've invented revolutionary new "free energy" technologies has grown tumultuous in recent years, driven perhaps by the internet's capacity to connect and inspire would-be tinkerers, or simply a that lay people are more fascinated with science.
The American Physical Society was worried enough about the trend a few years ago that its executive board put out a statement in June 2002, warning against such claims.
"(We are) concerned that in this period of unprecedented scientific advance, misguided or fraudulent claims of perpetual motion machines and other sources of unlimited free energy are proliferating," the group said. "Such devices directly violate the most fundamental laws of nature, laws that have guided the scientific progress that is transforming our world."
McCarthy says he's not using his claims to raise money, at least not yet. Steorn is privately funded, but is not seeking new investment until after the tests have been done, he contends.
The company has, however, filed patent applications on some of its work, and hopes to commercialize it by creating batteries for mobile phones and laptops, both markets that can respond quickly to new technologies. In the unlikely event it is borne out, it could also radically transform the automotive business and other industries.
The drive to create an engine that powers itself, or a self-replenishing source of energy, has long been a holy grail for the tinkering class, with a history stretching back nearly a thousand years. Like alchemy, its medieval pseudo-scientific counterpart, it has attracted high names and low, scientists and faith-based researchers, believers and outright scam artists.
Among the most notable investigators was Leonardo da Vinci, who included drawings of several self-driving devices inside his notebooks. However, he was publicly critical of such schemes, comparing them to the alchemical quest to transmute lead to gold.
Documenters of such schemes nevertheless find an unbroken string of subsequent proposals, tests, and failures that stretch to the present day, occasionally crossing over lines where would-be inventors are accused of running out-and-out con operations.
Perhaps the most famous recent claimant is a flamboyant only-in-America figure named Dennis Lee, who has spent much of the last decade churches and auditoriums across the United States promising "free electricity," among other inventions, and selling rights to open "dealerships" for thousands of dollars at a time. His efforts have led numerous state attorneys general offices to seek sanctions, including a recent string of fines and court orders in the state of Washington.
The flaw with such claims lies in one of the most fundamental principles in basic physics, known as the first law of thermodynamics.
In layman's terms, the first law states that energy is always conserved inside a closed system. It can be transformed into different forms inside the system, such as heat or work, but it can't be created or destroyed.
"Thermodynamics is largely an empirical field, and everything we've observed is consistent with the first law," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Ian Waitz. "When you make enough observations over a long period of time, things that start as hypotheses turn into things we call law. This would be not consistent with all other observations, which is a reason to be skeptical."
In the past, most claimants haven't met a standard of ordinary proof, much less an extraordinary one required to overturn a fundamental pillar of modern science. In most cases, sincere claimants have found that they simply didn't calculate the energy produced and consumed correctly.
Some of the most flamboyant inventors have found that their devices were coincidentally broken or burned out when testing time rolled around. Others have simply been exposed as obvious frauds, with batteries or a generator hidden out of sight.
While outlandish, McCarthy's claims have stirred up enough interest to at least hope for a thorough vetting, if not confirmation.
His Economist ad, quoting playwright George Bernard Shaw's dictum that "All great truths begin as blasphemies," is seeking a jury panel of 12 physicists to perform public tests. Whatever the unorthodoxy of that approach, he says the researchers will have no constraints on their work. They will be given full access to the company's work, will be able to take the technology home to test in their own laboratories, or recreate the process themselves.
According to the company's website, nearly 1500 scientists have "expressed interest" in testing the technology as of late Monday, and more than 17,000 people had signed up to receive word of the results.
"Ultimately the aim is so large, that the people involved, and the process that goes on, has to be purer than pure," McCarthy says.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/gi ... 626-0.html
But I bet your car has a higher top speed and better acceleration.almond13 said:Model T had a front-mounted, 177 in³ (2.9 L) 4 cylinder motor in a block producing 20 hp (15 kW) for a top speed of 45 mph (72 km/h). The engine had side valves and three main bearings. Recent accounts credit the default-configuration Model T with fuel economy on the order of 25 to 30 mpg (7.8-9.4 L/100 km). http://www.answers.com/topic/model-t-ford
We aint’ moved very far in fuel consumption terms as this is about the same as my Ford car?
rynner said:But I bet your car has a higher top speed and better acceleration.almond13 said:Model T had a front-mounted, 177 in³ (2.9 L) 4 cylinder motor in a block producing 20 hp (15 kW) for a top speed of 45 mph (72 km/h). The engine had side valves and three main bearings. Recent accounts credit the default-configuration Model T with fuel economy on the order of 25 to 30 mpg (7.8-9.4 L/100 km). http://www.answers.com/topic/model-t-ford
We aint’ moved very far in fuel consumption terms as this is about the same as my Ford car?
(And other fancy features like AC, heating, central locking, etc, etc.)
The technology has advanced, even if the gas-guzzling hasn't!
But they're not asking anyone for money (the project so far is independently financed, they claim).wembley8 said:Call me a cynic, but it looks like a scam to me. Magnetic perpetual motion machines are sooo retro, I thought we were all on zero-point now?
McCarthy says he's not using his claims to raise money, at least not yet. Steorn is privately funded, but is not seeking new investment until after the tests have been done, he contends.
That sounds pretty good to me. If the scientists disprove the claim (as skeptics expect), then well and good - at least the claim was tested.His Economist ad, quoting playwright George Bernard Shaw's dictum that "All great truths begin as blasphemies," is seeking a jury panel of 12 physicists to perform public tests. Whatever the unorthodoxy of that approach, he says the researchers will have no constraints on their work. They will be given full access to the company's work, will be able to take the technology home to test in their own laboratories, or recreate the process themselves.
According to the company's website, nearly 1500 scientists have "expressed interest" in testing the technology as of late Monday, and more than 17,000 people had signed up to receive word of the results.
rynner said:That sounds pretty good to me. If the scientists disprove the claim (as skeptics expect), then well and good - at least the claim was tested.
But to refuse to test the claim on the basis that it's impossible (according to known physical laws) just betrays the true scientific spirit of enquiry, which smacks of quasi-religious dogmatism.
GadaffiDuck said:The problem is: who is going to pay the 'experts' to take time out of their schedules? I understand the problems of funding, and how much time one can spend on other projects.
GadaffiDuck" said:Anyhoo, does anyone remember (from years and years ago) a British eccentric inventor (who got air time) claiming that he had found a fifth force of nature (demonstrated via 'perpetual motion' of a bicycle wheel)? I seem to recall he had a bike wheel on a table and somehow got it to turn without any further effort.......nb. this is a long, long time ago....Any news
Standing in the circular well of the Institution's lecture theatre, Laithwaite showed his audience a large gyroscope he had constructed -- an apparatus resembling a motorcycle wheel on the end of a three foot pole (which, is precisely what it was). The wheel could be spun up to high speed on a low-friction bearing driven by a small but powerful electrical motor.
Laithwaite first demonstrated that the apparatus was very heavy -- in fact it weighed more than 50 pounds. It took all his strength and both hands to raise the pole with its wheel much above waist level. When he started to rotate the wheel at high speed, however, the apparatus suddenly became so light that he could raise it easily over his head with just one hand and with no obvious sign of effort.
What on earth was going on? Heavy objects cannot suddenly become lighter just because they are rotating, can they? Such a mass can only be propelled aloft if it is subjected to an external force or if it expels mass, in a rocket engine for example. Had Laithwaite taken to conjuring tricks? Were there concealed strings? Confederates in trapdoors?
If Laithwaite expected gasps of admiration or surprise, he was disappointed. The audience was stunned into silence by his demonstration. When he went on to explain that Newton's laws of motion were apparently being violated by this demonstration, the involuntary hush turned to frosty silence.