Irish company challenges scientists to test 'free energy' technology

[coyote]

DUBLIN (AFP) - 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.

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".

more.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060818/bs_afp/irelandscienceenergy


I really do hope this is true.


Here's the link to the company:

http://www.steorn.net/frontpage/default.aspx

[Schema Thing]

1. A friend of mine in Ireland noticed this story yesterday

he got to looking at the details, and noticed the company was located just down the block from his own office.

LOL, he called the company, but the woman answering the phone could not tell him if the company was buying electricity like everyone else, or was "off the grid". :evilgrin:

[soothsayer]

13. I thought maybe they got a Tesla device working, but COOL!

Let's hope it's true! Put the BFEE out of business QUICK

[skids]

2. Hrm, they have discussion forums on their website...

There is no substitute for a physics-dogma versus physics-heresy flamewar.

:popcorn:

[Kutjara]

3. The latest "perpetual motion" machine.

Both the article and Steorn's website are light on details about how the process works (no doubt for intellectual property reasons), so it's difficult to get a feeling for whether what they propose is feasible.

Even the 'credible third parties' who 'validated' the process 'refused to go on record.' This strikes me as a little fishy; what academic wouldn't want to be the person to break the news of 'free energy' to an eager world?

So, we just have to take Steorn's word for it for now. It will be interesting to see if anyone takes them up on their offer.

[Lusted4]

12. I have been thinking about Mag/Pulse for awhile and think they could

be onto something.

[DRoseDARs]

My Bullshit-o-Meter is pinging...

I seriously doubt this thing is "creating" energy. It's probably pulling it from somewhere this company just isn't equiped to detect or measure properly. Hell, I'd be willing to say modern science might not be up-to-par to fully explain their invention if it works somewhat like they say it does. We "know" mathematically that there are 11 dimensions to our universe, of which we experience 4 day-to-day: Length, width, height, and time. Perhaps this device is interacting with these other dimensions...

...or perhaps it's cold fusion all over again. *sigh*

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Just because you cannot divine where the energy is being

source from doesn't mean that it is "free". Ain't nuthin' free in this world sweety.... especially new discoveries that threaten the power of the status quo.

[coyote]

5. here is a link to their patent application

at the European patent office:

http://v3.espacenet.com/origdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO2006035419&F=0&QPN=WO2006035419

[skids]

9. Might not even be part...

...of their claimed innovation, but related to their prior work in improving efficiency of various standard electromotive/magnetomotive components. I wouldn't read too much into it.

[Greyhound]

6. If this is true, and I'm reserving judgment (remember the cold fusion

escapade in the late 90's?), We will see the first nuclear "terrorist" attack in Ireland.

Wouldn't it be cool if it were true? Literally a new age. :wow:

[Pierre.Suave]

7. Heres a question

why advertise their challenge in an economics magazine instead of a scientific journal?

[lildreamer316]

8. Maybe they wouldn't accept the ad.

Maybe the only place that would take it was the economic magazine. See what they said? It also probably means the scientific journals didn't think they were serious and didn't want to sell space to "kooks". Who knows if they are right or not; but at least they have the balls to put it out there. Wait and see.

[Pierre.Suave]

10. OR

they were hoping for less exposure to limit the challenges.

[skids]

11. They answer this on their site. FWIW. n/t

[madokie]

16. I believe the fact they are thinking outside of the box would maybe make

it possible to discover something new. the 'box' can be confining sometimes and not allow fringe thinking

[stepnw1f]

14. Energy is All Around Us

Sounds... "groovey"... but it's true. It just needs to be harnessed.

[Skinner]

15. This has got to be BS.

If I'm reading this correctly, they claim that they cannot identify the source of this energy, and that it therefore "appears to violate the ‘Principle of the Conservation of Energy’." So, as far as they can tell, they violate a fundamental principle of Physics. Riiiiight.

Here's why they went public in The Economist, rather than in a Scientific Journal: They want publicity, but they don't want their claims scrutinized.

OR WAIT, COULD SOMETHING ELSE BE GOING ON HERE?

History

For many years Steorn has developed technology to help combat counterfeiting and fraud in the plastic card and optical disc industries.

Steorn is a word translating as 'to guide, direct and manage'.

The company has been instrumental in the development of core technologies that address counterfeit crime in areas such as plastic card fraud and optical disc fraud. The company has also provided forensic and expert witness services to British, Irish and international law enforcement agencies.

http://www.steorn.net/en/about.aspx?p=4

My Theory: This is a publicity stunt to make a point about fraud. Oh, and to get publicity, of course.

[jmowreader]

18. The device in the patent would actually work

It would make one EXPENSIVE fucking engine, but it would work.

Go back up thread to the link to the European patent office application for their device, which is a "low energy magnetic activator." This is a fairly simple device. It consists of two magnets and a magnetic shield that covers one of them at a time. Hit the activator's linear motor with a little juice and it moves the cover from one magnet to the other.

Cute trick, but so what? Well, I thought the same thing at first.

Now take a dumbbell-shaped piece of carbon steel and hang it on an axle, use very potent magnets, spread the magnets out enough that the balls on the dumbbell align with magnets, and configure the shield so it's wide enough to span both magnets. Or, more likely, create rotary shields because you can't move a linear shield that fast...and you can turn them with a very small electric motor. When you use the shielding system to switch the field from one end of the dumbbell to the other, the dumbbell will rock back and forth real fast.

Attach this dumbbell to a connecting rod, the connecting rod to a crankshaft, and you've got a single-cylinder reciprocating engine.

Put a whole shitload of these on that crankshaft, and you have something that will do useful work.

The easiest way to exploit this is to attach it to a power-generating alternator--they're fixed speed, which solves a whole lot of questions. You could turn your engine at 1800rpm like they do on diesel generator sets, insert 1:2 gearing, and create 60-hertz power while only flipping the dumbbells back and forth 30 times per second. You could run it at 900rpm and flip the dumbbells 15 times per second, but losing three-fourths of your horsepower to gain a slower "flip speed" doesn't sound real good to me.

In this example we're not violating the Laws of Thermodynamics because magnets are a source of energy--we're just changing potential energy to kinetic.

The only real question is: can anyone afford enough huge samarium cobalt magnets to make this work economically?

[skids]

19. I really don't think the actuator has anything to do with it.

It's essentially just a well-designed bistable solenoid without the solenoid part. Nothing revolutionary, but a useful part for applications where a holding force is needed. Keep in mind this company does more than just this free energy thing: they'll have all sorts of other stuff in their name.

As to whether the "dumbbell engine" would work, no. In order to change potential energy to kinetic energy, the potential energy would have to be lost in the process. (In this case, what you're missing is the effect of the attracted dumbbell end on the magnetic field, and thus on the balancing force exerted by the unshielded magnet as compared with that exerted with the dumbbell absent.)

Most magnetism-based free energy endeavors cite virtual particles (or however they care to view that concept in whatever alternative physics they are up to) as the source of the extracted energy. These days most of the people trying to extract this rumored energy do so with electricity run along the axis of the magnet -- there are less "mechanical clock" type of inventions than there were decades ago.

Since they claim to have stumbled on their invention while trying to improve microgenerator designs, I wouldn't be surprised if what they come up with is in a form that resembles a regular motor, or perhaps they went solid state and it will look like a transformer, but I doubt they are peddling a purely mechanical system.

As far as magnet costs, modern magnetic materials are actually very affordable and extremely powerful.

(Actually the whole thing about treating magnetic circuits as "shields" is a bad nomenclature that really should only be restricted to work with EMF radiation -- elsewhere it causes a lot of confusion about how magnets work, but unfortunately it is a widely used one nonetheless.)

At any rate, scam or mistake, or even breakthrough, I'll withhold my judgement, I personally think that the way they are going about this is just fine -- science shouldn't be done in secret enclaves and obscure books, and whichever side gets smacked down over this, the public will benefit from watching the show. Hell these days people air all the sordid details of their sex lives in popular magazines. Why not science, even follies in science? When will society admit that every person has a scientist inside, yearning to express his "scientual" side? We are scientual beings after all! :silly: :+

[ContraBass Black]

17. Again?

With all the perpetual motion machines that have been coming out lately, I ought to have a handheld wormhole expander by now.