It’s not often that I have an inclination to blog about anything remotely high brow. To be honest, I can’t see it becoming a regular event either. But bear with me on this one. You might find it interesting too.
Let’s rewind about two weeks or so and recap the main story slightly…
In mid August 2006, an Irish company called Steorn took out a full page advertisement in ‘The Economist‘ magazine. Not cheap I’m sure.
The advert basically stated that Steorn have come up with a ‘free, clean and constant energy’ technology and are looking for twelve of the world’s best scientists to test and verify their claims. Take a look.
But hang on. Let’s just think about that claim for a second.
They’re saying that they can create unlimited energy from perpetual motion. A technology that can be scaled to run your car, your mobile phone and everything inbetween. An invention that isn’t going to drain resources from the planet. Potentially, an idea that will change the world as we know it.
I’m not sure what the collective noun for scientists is, but let’s just say that a whole swarm/gaggle/flock/herd/fleet of boffins have signed up eager to prove the claim either way.
It’s probably a good time to mention that whenever I did physics at school, I was at the back, half asleep, dribbling onto my desk with sheer boredom. But, even with my limited knowledge of thermodynamics, I still think this would probably break the rules of physics as we (by ‘we’, I mean cleverer people than me) understand them.
So what is it? A flawed claim, a marketing stunt or a technological revolution? Steorn just being plain wrong is highly likely. There are also rumours abound that this is an XBox / Halo 3 PR stunt (if it is, it’s a great viral). But then Steorn do sound mighty confident.
I guess time will tell. But with my jaded cynical outlook, my money is on one of the first two options.
Anyway, I’ll let you make up your own mind. In the mean time, you’ll be pleased to know that Blogalism will resume next time with a more normal selection of inane drivel. And probably some tits.
Hmmmm, very interesting, how do you find these things. I am very tempted to steal this for my blog again….must resist my pilffering urges.
Like you I am no science expert, though I did manage to stay awake in physics mainly because I fancied the teacher, but I have to agree that this whole thing breaks at least one of the laws of thermodynamics. That said looking very briefly at the cartoon version of what they have come up with it looks very much like the idea I had for a perpetual motion device.
I always had a problem with all the designs people came up with that just used gravity to move the thing round, they never made sense to me. My idea involved electro magnets firing one after the other to drive the device round. If it takes say 10 volts to fire the magnets each rotation and the rotation itself produces 20 volts then you have a working engine. Once you have produced a certain amount of energy you switch off the external power supply and let the device power it’s self. You would only get 10 volts out of it now but thats still 10 volts of free power.
I will have to look into it further but from watching the video, admittedly without sound, I am guessing they have worked out how to do something like this at an almost atomic level, moving electrons round and round. It all sounds groovy to me. I can’t wait to find out if it is real or not.
That said one of my friends at work pointed out something which I hadn’t thought of. If this turns out to be real and they really have invented a source of free renewable energy what are the chances of the governments of the world letting us peons get our hands on it. I mean think of all the money governments make because we need to constantly replace our energy supplies. Money from petrol, electricity etc. Take all that away and they would loose billions. They would probably ban it under the heading of “National Security”, that way they don’t even need to explain the reason for doing it. The bastards.
Equally cool if its an add for XBox though!!!
Either that or its a plan by some evil genius master criminal to kidnap the 12 best scientist in the world for his own diabolical ends!!! I feel the plot of the next James Bond movie coming on.
Oh and can I just say that I love the word “Blogalism”, I think I might start using it in everyday conversations.
“Hi there Dave, how’s the old Blogalism hanging?”
Brilliant!!!
[…] There are also rumours abound that this is an XBox / Halo 3 PR stunt. […]
If you want to steal it, go right ahead! You’re much better at putting a scientific angle on these types of things anyway, so I’m sure it’d be worthwhile and make a good read.
As far as I can see, this idea is based on magnets… but don’t they de-magnetise over time anyway? Surely that ain’t perpetual motion?
I think normal magnets loose their juice but not electro magnets as they are only magnetic when they have a charge going through them, as long as the charge is there then so the magnetic power, mwahaaaaaa!!!
As to if it really counts as perpetual motion I don’t know, I mean how big does something need to be for you to count it as moving? If a single electron moves its own width does that count as “movement”??? I mean I can’t see it move but it did….arrrgh brain pain!!!
Hey if it does work will we all end up with electric cars????
Er sorry, me again. Just found this that you might find interesting. Its a transcript of an interview with Sean McCarthy, the CEO guy in the Steorm video. It seems to indicate that what he is saying is real…or that he is just a really good liar. I’m going to pop over to IMDB now and see if I can find either of the guys on there as actors.
http://www.steornwatch.com/steorn-live-chat-transcript-24-aug-06-16
Your going to take my access away if I carry on like this.
So I was thinking that if this is a hoax then there has to be a reason, right? So unless these guys are just in it for the hoots and giggles then the only reason I can think of has to be money. Think about it, for the cost of a single page add in one newspaper you generate shed loads of free publicity off of the shear craziness of your idea. Now if somehow you can make money off of this then by now they must be racking it in.
But why would they go down this route in the first place. Well we looked it up on wikipedia and it seems to indicate that Steorn may have had some financial difficulties a few years back, now all of a sudden they are willing to make all these problems right, just as they initilize a massive viral ad campaign. read it yourself – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn
One website we found asked why none of the scientists who have looked at this “wonder device” have come forward to tell people about it. Unfortunately I don’t see this as proof of it being a hoax. I mean if someone told you that they had captured the loch ness monster and invited you to go see it. You walk in and sure enough theres nessy, you do all these tests and yup this is a real live living breathing creature. What do you do next, do you run out and tell the whole world and all of your peers that you now believe in the loch ness monster. Of course not, they won’t believe you and will think you a fool because they haven’t seen it themselves. Until this thing is proved to be real or not no one is going to be willing to stand up and say that they believe for the very same reason.
I think you should keep an eye on this, I really want it to be true as it would change the world as we know it. It could even make it a safer place as with renewable energy sources you don’t need oil, no need for oil then America pulls out of the middle east, no America in the middle east then what have the terrorists got to be pissed about…ah peace on earth…until someone works out how to turn it into a weapon and destroys us all!!!!
[…] It’s been nearly a year since I last mentioned Steorn, the Irish company making the rather massive claim about inventing a Free Energy device. […]
[…] while back, a company called Steorn claimed to have invented a free energy device. If their claims were true, it would’ve changed […]
[…] been nearly three years since I first blogged about a company called Steorn. As a quick re-cap, they were claiming to have invented a fantastic new technology, which […]