DescentBB

Thoughts?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060818/bs ... enceenergy

(Apologies if this is old news)

Company's Website

Cold fusion all over again, I'm inclined to believe.

Scameorn wrote: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."

Translation: we knew we'd be shot down hard if we tried to publish it in a reputable science journal, because they actually know what they're talking about.

Exactly.

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\".

Unfortunately for Steorn, it is NOT true that all blasphemies began as great truths.

Why not just build a prototype, get backers and mass produce it...if it works. Who needs a bunch a silly scientists to approve the idea?

Will Robinson wrote:Why not just build a prototype, get backers and mass produce it...if it works. Who needs a bunch a silly scientists to approve the idea?

Yep. What they are after is people silly enough to invest large amounts of cash into this project.

If the idea worked, they wouldn't be needing to advertise.

Kilarin wrote:

Will Robinson wrote:Why not just build a prototype, get backers and mass produce it...if it works. Who needs a bunch a silly scientists to approve the idea?

Yep. What they are after is people silly enough to invest large amounts of cash into this project.

If the idea worked, they wouldn't be needing to advertise.

Well, they sum this up in this statement:

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.

Let's assume a moment that this does in fact work. Two things come into play. denial because is violates the physical laws stated thus touching certain "golden cows" with many scientists (thus "blasphemy"). AND if it is/were true, we have a huge political/economic machine in place in the oil industry that is getting VERY fat that is now VERY threatened. The latter being the case, it wouldn't suprise me to see a technology "just disappear". It would be down played by the media, money in high places change hands and the tech gets classified. Obscurity, once again shuts down advancement.

Even LESS likely that cold fusion, I believe this refers to the so-called \"Omega Point Energy\" which is postulated to exist.

However, OPE isn't going to be coaxed from the ether with magnets.

Duper wrote: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.

Fire up a machine that puts out more energy than it takes in and you will have no lack of scientific interest. But even if the scientific community was so crazy as to ignore the machine, who cares? Just start selling power to the grid.

If it worked, they wouldn't NEED scientific interest.

Kilarin, my point is that if something like this did come into existance, cooperate conglomerates(?) would step in and squeltch it to protect thier Own interests.

Who cares about the scientific community... they have little political pull or power.

Duper wrote:Kilarin, my point is that if something like this did come into existance, cooperate conglomerates(?) would step in and squeltch it to protect thier Own interests.

They would try, but you will note that these guys aren't claiming anyone is trying to stop them from building the machine. If some large conspiracy movement wanted to eliminate this machine, the guys would NOT have a web page up asking for money. They would be dead. Because the biggest fear for governments or companies would be seeing the designs published on the web. Once the designs had gotten loose, it would be impossible to supress or stop it.

If they have a working machine, as they claim, and they have demonstrated it, and no one has killed or "dissapeared" them, then we can safely assume that there is no big conspiracy trying to stop this free energy device.

Like I said, they can get all the money they want, in many states the power company HAS to buy electricity that you feed into the grid. These laws were put into place to encourage solar and wind power producers because they could sell their excess to pay for the equipment.

So, take this machine that they claim already works and plug it into the grid. The power company has to pay you for the electricity you produce. Use the money to build more machines, hook them all up to the grid, and so on and so forth. Eventually no one will be able to ignore them.

Link to patent documentation.

I have no opinions, as I'm a completely ignorant idiot when it comes to science.

woodchip wrote:Why not just build a prototype, get backers and mass produce it...if it works. Who needs a bunch a silly scientists to approve the idea?

I can see why they might not want to do this. If they mass produce it without first applying for a patent, anyone could reverse engineer it and start making their own. Steorn wants a monopoly, so they have to patent it. But before they can patent it, they have to overcome the scientific consensus that their technology is impossible.

Which is not to say that I believe them. My best guess is that it's an intentional hoax; my second best guess is that they've made a big mistake. I'd love to be proven wrong, of course.

I like the idea of just selling power to the grid. Assuming they've already built a working model, they could raise any amount of money they need without divulging how it works.

I'm not convinced- if they really want to make a believer out of me, I'd like to see a demo. There's a reason why they can't get the scientific community onboard. It seems like they can't explain how it works. Their \"test rig\" besides looking fancy, doesn't seem to show anything- all I can identify is a bunch of belts, gearboxes, and an encoder- that's hardly required for they they're trying to get a patent for. My guess would be the following:

1. If it works, it produces a tiny amount of energy, and thus is impractical for power-production purposes.

and/or

2. The \"blocking\" material will, over time, show some sort of saturation- basically, the material's ability to block the field will degrade over time- possibly this degradation is subtle enough that it has yet to be detected by them.

Agree w/ DCrazy.

If these guys found a way to produce \"perpetual\" energy from a variation in a simple machine, they are creating more from less, something from nothing.

In the science community, this would be BIG. Really BIG. This would put them on a level with Einstein, perhaps above. This would be a worldwide sensation on the level of Relativity. Private jets would be taking these guys to corner offices at Princeton. They would be doing the talk-show circuit.

I am an engineer, and due to the history of hoaxes, agree with the policy of the patent offices of Europe, the UK and the USA...no patents will be given to \"perpetual motion\" machines...it sounds again like \"cold fusion\".

Someone who claims that perhaps the most fundamental law of physics is null and void is going to take an immense amount of flak for it, unless they have some damn good evidence (and a lot of it) to back their claim up. And rightly so; a scientific law is a fundamental observation about the universe, and such a statement as the law of conservation of energy, backed up by hundreds of years of experimentation and study, can't just simply be dropped, no matter what one small group of experimenters claims to have found. It's true that there have been major reassessments in our view of the universe in the past, most of which were caused by individuals who could truly be called geniuses, but they are events that are very few and far between. Besides that, events such as this largely came at a time when we had much, much less observational data available. In short, I'm calling total bull on this one, unless I see the thing in action myself.

And Duper, the whole idea of \"scientific cover-ups,\" which has also been used by conspiracy theorists who believe in the existence of alien wreckage at Area 51, is pretty much laughable. If a scientist were to make a discovery even a tenth as earth-shattering as disproving the law of conservation of energy, there'd be no way to silence them other than death. Scientists are blabbermouths by nature; when they discover something remarkable, they want to tell the whole wolrd about it. It's pretty much a standard of science. If there were actually rigorous and lenghthy tests performed on this device, and if they all seemed to hold up as true, then there'd be no way in hell the knowledge would remain hidden. The whole world would know within hours. Ask any researcher you like; I'd be willing to bet that, to a man, they'd be more than happy to talk for hours on end about whatever they're working on and what they've found out.

not cover up. Squash. ...like the vegi..er. fruit.


at anyrate. The whole reason I brought that up was in responce to why they needed to make a big fuss about it in the media. So this wouldn't happen.

Ok, you guys don't know who I am but I would like to add to the discussion.

First off, this works. It it essentially a linear (straight) electric generator that uses three magents to play back and forth. It's also incredibly inefficiant and I highly doubt you would see alot of voltage and amperage out of it at all.

By making the motion switch back in a linear action they loose 50% at minimum of the power they could have extracted as the kinetic intertia required to push the device back and forth absorbs the potential energy store. It's an interesting concept and there is nothing stopping it from working whatsoever, hoever to make it powerful enough to supply cellphones and other household equipment is complely rediculous.

I hope I have cleared some things up. This device is no different than a rotory generator layed out flat and uses magnetic force to power it. It cannot create electrical, or any energy for that matter, out of nothing. It uses Kinetic force to move the electrons.

It neither blasphomous either. As I belive it was Arthur C. Clark who said it:
\"Any sufficiantly advanced technology can be passed off as magic.\"

AverageJoe wrote:Ok, you guys don't know who I am but I would like to add to the discussion.

First off, this works. It it essentially a linear (straight) electric generator that uses three magents to play back and forth. It's also incredibly inefficiant and I highly doubt you would see alot of voltage and amperage out of it at all.

By making the motion switch back in a linear action they loose 50% at minimum of the power they could have extracted as the kinetic intertia required to push the device back and forth absorbs the potential energy store. It's an interesting concept and there is nothing stopping it from working whatsoever, hoever to make it powerful enough to supply cellphones and other household equipment is complely rediculous.

I hope I have cleared some things up. This device is no different than a rotory generator layed out flat and uses magnetic force to power it. It cannot create electrical, or any energy for that matter, out of nothing. It uses Kinetic force to move the electrons.

It neither blasphomous either. As I belive it was Arthur C. Clark who said it:
"Any sufficiantly advanced technology can be passed off as magic."

You clearly have no concept of what you're talking about- come back when you understand what effiency and power generation is.

Hmm, yes, I aplogize for not reading the patent documentation. My impression is of what I saw of the illustrations. Gimme a break, I'm an artist not an engineer.

Verran wrote:Thoughts?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060818/bs ... enceenergy

(Apologies if this is old news)

thoughts?
AFP, Yahoo, EVERYONE should know better than to give publicity to Overunity machines until they are proven to work. Coz they never work, this one will be no different - it's not even unique - magnets? pff.

Cold Fusion seems real though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

i was doing some tinkering a couple of months back with an overunity device called a JoeCell, which is pretty similar in construction to cold fusion experiments (electrolosis being a component). But as the JoeCell uses just normal soft water - it's theorised that water is the secret, and the cold fusion researchers are barking up the wrong tree by concentrating on heavy water.

the JoeCell is supposed to be able to run a car with no fuel. Some ppl claim to have this working, but it's notoriously finicky and because no-one can understand HOW it's working - getting them working is a hit and miss affair.

I'm sceptical, but i've seen some weird ★■◆●. I do think there's something going on.

lol

I'm with Top Gun on this one. I call BS.

Dedman wrote:I'm with Top Gun on this one. I call BS.

Get your broomsticks everyone! It's shenanigans!!

It's BS. Period.

Their claim that the energy is \"...not being converted from another source... literally created...\" is enough proof for me.

On an ever-so-slightly related matter;
If gravity is a force, then where does the energy come from?

Objects have potential energy that becomes kinetic energy as it falls.

TIGERassault wrote:If gravity is a force, then where does the energy come from?

Things like to go from having high energy to having low energy. Hot things cool, what goes up must come down. That sort of thing. Entropy is mixed in there somewhere but it's been a while since I have had physics.

TIGERassault wrote:On an ever-so-slightly related matter;
If gravity is a force, then where does the energy come from?

Play with some String Theory for while.



Whoops!! my bad, I was thinking of Unified Field Theory

I checked out their website. I have an open mind towards people that want to challenge long-held scientific beliefs and theories. However, their public forum discussion of their \"technology\" is scanty at best. Probably they will say that this is because they don't wanna divulge secrets that they can commercialize later and turn a profit, etc.

Everything is done behind closed doors and no 3rd party, individual or institution wants to go on the record saying that their technology works even though the company claims that the people who tested it say that it works, they just don't want to go on the record. So they \"open it up\" to large numbers of scientists for testing. Who knows if they will go on the record to say that it works? My guess is that in reality the technology doesn't work, the company is just looking to fool a credible source into believing that it works, and then go on the public record as such.

Once they got some half-credible 3rd party they can point to, then its off to the VC's and the investors for $$$$. After they squander all these poor sap's capital buying expensive yachts and vacations to the bahamas, the company will go bust and its on to the next scam.

sigh.

They should have put their patenting budget into psychologic treatment and medication. What's next, turning lead into gold?

They allready did that. Rearranged the molocules and made gold out of something, I forget what the base was but they did it.

I \"registered\" with the Steorn site on Sunday night (not with my main email address, of course), mainly because of this message on the \"downloads\" page:

White papers are available to registered academic users. Please register if you would like access to this part of the site. Registration also entitles you to newsletters and updates.

The link from that text goes to the page to apply for their \"jury\", which doesn't mention anything about white papers, but I filled it out anyway. Didn't hear from them in the next few days, and then I stopped checking the email address I gave them. I just checked it today, and discovered they sent me this on Wednesday:

23 August 2006

Dear Applicant,



Re: The Steorn Challenge

Thank you for expressing an interest in joining the panel of 12 jurors
that will be selected to test Steorn’s technology.

Based on the initial registration details that you have provided we would
be grateful if you could forward, by return email only, a synopsis of your
academic career, including the following details:

Education/ Degrees (Name of University);
Current position (e.g. University/Institute);
Research areas (On whose behalf it was conducted);
Published papers;
Honours/Awards; and
Contact details (e.g. University/Institute department - email address and
telephone number).

We will contact you again once we have had an opportunity to review all
the synopses that we are expecting to receive over the next few weeks.

Thank you again for your interest.

Yours faithfully,



Sean McCarthy


Please note that we will treat your information under the strictest
confidence and that we are bound, in any event, by our obligations under
the Data Protection Acts 1988-2003 in respect of same.

Oddly, the message also included an attachment, which contained the exact same text as above.

I'm not strongly inclined to respond, and of course I'm not really qualified for that sort of thing. I might write back and say \"what about those white papers\"-- any bets on what kind of response I'd get?

lol, handpicked peer review. that's just sad hey