Seven reasons why Steorn’s perpetual machine will never work
By John Pospisil
When the story about the Steorn perpetual machine hit the BLORGE.com newsdesk a few days ago, my bullshit detector went off the scale. Anyone who’s passed, or even slept through, high school physics will know that what Steorn is proposing is impossible. I use the word “impossible” very carefully.
Steorn claims that it has found a way of creating free, constant energy from nothing, defying the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.
Now Steorn’s CEO, Sean McCarthy, has announced that the demonstration of his company’s ”Orbo” perpetual energy machine at the Kinentica art museum in London is not only delayed, but postponed.
“Technical problems arose during the installation of the demonstration unit in the display case on Wednesday evening,” he said. ”These problems were primarily due to excessive heat from the lighting in the main display area. Attempts to replace those parts affected by the heat led to further failures and as a result we have to postpone the public demonstration until a future date.”
Of course I’m not surprised that Steorn hasn’t been able to get its “Orbo” to work, but what does surprise me is how much the media and the public have indulged Steorn.
Many journalists took the story at face value, and reported the initial announcement of the demonstration as though they were covering a new product release. Even the more skeptical reporters could only bring themselves that to say that Orbo was “unlikely” or “too good to be true”.
Yesterday I got a car park outside my favorite Chinese restaurant, that’s too good to be true. Changing the laws of physics, that’s impossible.
When my colleague Ruben Francia and I posted a highly skeptical article about Steorn I was simply amazed by some of the comments, such as:
“It’s real easy to just write this off as some sort of scam, art project?, or whatever, but I can assure you that you have no clue how wrong you are. Prepare to eat this article with a nice serving of humble pie.”
This much more considered comment still showed a degree of willingness to indulge the impossible:
“However, we as humans have defined the laws of physics. God didn’t hand us the “big book of physics”. *jokes* . Science has always been evolving. This will indeed be the biggest evolutionary leap in science the world has probably ever seen, *IF* it works! But things are starting to smell.”
What I don’t understand is why so many people have been willing to indulge this story when there are so many indicators that Steorn is not what it purports to be, here are just seven:
- Defying the laws of physics is highly, highly unlikely at the very least; I would argue impossible (incidentally, this is not the first time that someone claims to have developed a perpetual motion device; the US Patent and Trademark Office refuses to issue patents for this kind of technology in order to protect gullible investors)
- If someone did make a such a breakthrough, it wouldn’t be a company sharing office space with a publishing services company (both Steorn and Datapage Publishing Services share the same address, 18 Docklands Innovation Park, East Wall Road, Dublin 3)
- The oh-so-cool web site with its slick branding looks like it’s been put together by an advertising agency, not an Irish tech start up
- The name “Orbo” sounds like it comes from the Simpsons (taking the piss anyone?)
- The explanation given by Steorn about how Orbo works sounds like it’s from Doctor Who (ie unlikely) — “Orbo is based upon the principle of time variant magneto-mechanical interactions.”
- The demonstration of the Orbo “platform”, that never took place, was due to take place in an art museum (art project anyone?)
- Steorn has been unable to provide any concrete evidence that it has developed a free, constant energy supply, despite making these claims for almost a year, having placed a full-page ad in the Economist last August. Why hasn’t it just invited one well-respected academic to take a look at the technology and say yes, it has potential, or no, it doesn’t work?
Recent developments have done nothing to change my opinion that this whole thing is a prank, publicity stunt, or art project. Or perhaps, in a best case scenario, Steorn is well meaning but misguided.
No doubt I’ll receive criticism for not being open minded, and I’ll be told that “nothing is impossible”, but someone has to say the obvious — Steorn is not going to provide the answer to the world’s energy problems.
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July 7th, 2007
I think many people want to believe in this tech as a possibility as we are watching earth go down the toilet at an accelerating pace and we know that we need a miracle (or a huge leap in science) to save it.
I would like to say though that while some of your arguments are fine, others are pathetic, and at least one uninformed.
This blog post is like a clone of a thousand others. I f you are going to jump on the bandwagon you should at least try to add something new or perhaps be more humorous than what has come before.
July 8th, 2007
I am really interested to see how and or if this proposed machine can produce energy. From what it sounds like is either a scientific breakthrough, or fraud. If what Steorn says is true, he must back up his claim with a live demonstration. Otherwise, it is, like John is saying in this blog, is a scam. In science, seeing is believing.
July 8th, 2007
I’m surprised at the vitriol in this article. The hoax, if that is what is (and I believe that’s an accurate definition), is absolutely great.
Consider: We are in the throes of learning what our humongous waste of oil is costing. We are complaining daily about it. We are poisoning the entire country and the world with abandon. We expect “science” to come up with a solution. We don’t want to personally do it because we are enamored of infernal (not a misspelling) combustion engines.
Keep your sense of humor and enjoy watching pundits waste time and effort in denying the feasibility of Steorn. It’s hilarious to me.
Reminds me of Google’s annual April 1st hoaxes.
July 8th, 2007
> No doubt I’ll receive criticism for not being open minded, and I’ll be told that “nothing is impossible”, but someone has to say the obvious — Steorn is not going to provide the answer to the world’s energy problems.
July 8th, 2007
Sorry, I used an angle bracket and the rest of my comment was swallowed.
It ran:
I wouldn’t criticize you for “not being open minded.”
I would criticize you for being late.
Every point that you raise except #6 has been known for months. #1, the most important, has been in there since the beginning.
My guess is that from the beginning this whole affair has been a Guiness-worthy milestone in the long and rich tradition of Irish humor. As physics, it is and has always been clearly a non-starter.
July 8th, 2007
Nothing is impossible. Steorn is going to provide the answer to the world’s energy problems.
July 8th, 2007
We already have free energy. Free to us, that is. Oil and coal. You may be able to generate energy using magnets, but how much energy was used to manufacture the magnets? And even if you used naturally occurring magnets, they would be just like oil and coal, made by nature using energy millions of years ago. I understand physics, and this machine may work because of the manufactured magnets, but I fear that people may be mis-led into believing in this technology by not accounting for the energy used to create the magnets.
July 8th, 2007
Im agreeing with John here. I would love to live in a land where the laws of physics didnt apply[most of them anyway] but it is impossible, and dont you think that Steorn would be rolling in cash by now if it was real?
July 8th, 2007
If they have scientists testing this technology, wouldn’t they need a working prototype? This is just too fishy now. Fuck Steorn.
July 9th, 2007
The concept of free energy is not new. The man we all have to thank for having electricity today, Nikolai Tesla proposed this almost a century ago. His ideas were swept under the bucket by a profit hungry institution which wanted an economy based on fossil fuel dependency. Steorn may or may not be a hoax but be that as it may, free energy is a reality. It is based on the concept of quantum jitters which you can research for yourself.
500 years ago the laws of physics stated that the universe revolved around the earth,more recently the laws of physics stated that nothing can exceed the speed of light. Both these “laws” have subsequently been proven incorrect. The laws of physics are not cast in concrete and are continually evolving.
July 9th, 2007
Regarding point 2)
“If someone did make a such a breakthrough, it wouldn’t be a company sharing office space with a publishing services company (both Steorn and Datapage Publishing Services share the same address, 18 Docklands Innovation Park, East Wall Road, Dublin 3)
”
Not sure whether this was meant to say that somebody sharing office space doesn’t need to get involved with “free” energy? Any other explanation of your “observation” sounds even less credible.
July 9th, 2007
“You may be able to generate energy using magnets, but how much energy was used to manufacture the magnets?”
That’s fallacious reasoning–oil and coal are used up in creating energy so have a very short pay-back period and have to be replenished literally constantly, while the energy used producing the magnets is amortized of the life of the device since they need only be made once in the life cycle of the device and its energy production.
Not defending this likely hoax, just pointing out the flaw in your argument.
July 9th, 2007
Joe: What it means is that sharing office space usually means the companies are intimately linked, and if they are linked then this could all be a huge marketing scam.
It could be just a huge viral marketing campaign to say “Look at how much hype we can build up around claiming to do the impossible, imagine what we can do for your company”
July 10th, 2007
Two points:
1) The Steorn building is a relatively large two-story structure in the Docklands Innovation Park. Plenty of people have visited it and verified this. No one has ever seen Datapage offices inside that structure. Sharing the same address does not always mean sharing the same office. Good find—I haven’t heard of that company before—but probably not meaningful.
2) “Time variant magneto-mechanical transactions” sounds like gobbledegook on its face, but Steorn has expanded on the idea elsewhere, in particular in a presentation given at University College Dublin, which is available on YouTube.
Skepticism is certainly more than justified—especially after the botched demo of this past weekend—but there’s no point in throwing out easily refuted trivialities like these. Especially when the most fundamental problem with Steorn’s claim—their failure to provide any evidence in support of it—makes it pretty much self-refuting at the moment.
July 11th, 2007
No matter how great the engineering is the device will always eventually find zero point and stop. So many people in history have tried creating permanent magnet motors and all of them have turned out the same. When permanent magnets are in the same flux field for any length of time the flux fields weaken. Every magnet has a “maximum energy product” rated in Mega Gauss Oersteds, MGOe. This is the amount of work a magnet can do before its level of magnetism has deteriorated to the point that its energy doesn’t reach out far enough to affect anything surrounding it. Contrary to the popular notion that rare earth magnets are invincible, even the most expensive sintered NdFeB magnets max out at less than 50 MGOe. If they are used in a device that puts them constantly in opposition, they will run down, and this is the whole assumption behind so-called “magnetic motors”. the other issue is this really isn’t free energy machine even if it did work because the permanent magnets had to get there flux fields from somewhere if the magnets where charged with current from another source or even if kinetically they where charged by rubbing two piece of metal together there was still a transfer of energy. The amount of energy used in manufacturing a magnet is typically 10 times what the magnet is capable of producing. More expensive magnets are even less efficient. Add to this the losses in energy incurred by these 33%-66% concept magnet devices themselves, and the energy consumed in the overall manufacturing process is 20-25 times the energy you will get out. The other thing to think about is that a permanent magnet will not always be a magnet it will eventually loose its flux over time. Now maybe that time might be 100 years and that’s all good but eventually it will die and if you put a magnet into another magnets flux field its life is shortened dramatically. Well anyways we all dream of free energy and I also hope we find it some day but I doubt it’s going to be orbo.
August 10th, 2007
“The name “Orbo” sounds like it comes from the Simpsons”??? And you’re including that in the top 7 reasons not to trust Steorn? I’m sorry but that doesn’t exactly say much for the credibility of the other 6, let alone the reasons that didn’t make the top list.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Steorn are right (although I don’t see why a website called BLORGE has any right to comment on the quality of names), in fact I’m 99% sure that it’s not what they claim. However, physics should not be allowed to use the word “impossible”, because that suggests that physics can prove anything, which it can’t. “The square root of 2 is rational” - that’s impossible. There are people who claim it is, but even if someone paid £100k to put an advert in a magazine saying they can prove root 2 is rational, it would be ignored because it simply isn’t, that’s what PROOF means.
Physics, on the other hand, simply makes informed guesses about the world we live in, and a specific theory is only “right” while there isn’t a better one around. Sure, the chances that we’re wrong are low, because it all seems to fit, but that doesn’t mean we’re right. It’s not about having an “open mind”, it’s fact, you can’t prove science - mathematical/philosophical proof, beyond any doubt whatsoever.
August 20th, 2007
2 reasons why this write up is utter bollocks:
1) “Changing the laws of physics, that’s impossible.”
‘laws’? I agree, changing the laws of physics is impossible. Luckily for us the sun orbits around a flat earth and there are 4/5 elements, and 12 gods. If it wasn’t, then the ‘laws’ would have changed.
Of course, this is a negative of you second foible:
2) “Defying the laws of physics is highly, highly unlikely at the very least; I would argue impossible ”
Of course it is impossible. You fucking idiot. highly highly unlikely? If ‘A’ cannot be done, it isn’t ‘highly unlikely’ that it cannot be done.
Whatever the actual rules of physics are, we cannot change them. If we think we can, or can, then they themselves ARE the rules. This isn’t philosophical, it’s 3rd grade, 3 dimensional sense.
You meant to say ‘changing common scientific consensus is highly unlikely’. And that I would agree.
2000 years ago science was religion. I mean, religion was science. And then science became science, and religion was something that opposed it, and now science is a new religion, with an agenda.
Either way, you whole write up is:
OMG LOL I DON’T THINK THAT IS RIGHT DO YOU? LOL!!11
October 8th, 2007
Stop all these commentings.I have already made a free energy machine.I’m able to generate100KW without any iput.Hey, it is real.
June 25th, 2008
I would pay money to see Steorn’s office’s electricity bill.