Sean's Answer of the Day and More!

Sean got back into the Questions discussion again today. I especially enjoyed the answer of the day.

Lister: Have the jurors (or at least some of them) seen the device and if so have they concluded that it works or have they concluded that it doesn't?

Steorn: It would only take a small amount of time see if we had faked a machine - I in fact agree with this statement. lol, there are only so many places to look for energy that is being added into a system in a hoax fashion. However this is of course not what we are doing, you can believe that or not - but it is a fact.

With respect to the current phase that the jury are engaged in, it is as I have said before a form of 'peer' review, despite some of your comments from last night these people do in fact have other careers and other demands on their time. The process is in depth and indeed our presentation of the effects behind the technology, and the Q&A's that follow this address the heart of the matter. It should also be said that I have little doubt that some of the tests that have been presented by us have been replicated by some of the jurors.

Have the jurors yet seen a machine? Ok well I answered this last night, and the
answer is no. Lol, I can already hear the cries of foul and deep intakes of breath as I write this. The physical test phase is scheduled to start soon, but IMO this will involve the selection of independent lab(s) and definition of tests to be conducted.

This was never going to be a fast process, it is going to take a lot of time and those who read stuff into this are mis-reading the situation. Of course these people are going to slow and cautious. I again stress that none of the above should be misunderstood, the core issues behind our technology are being addressed. For those who believe that this could be done in a few days staring into a machine, you are just wrong.

It's interesting that Sean speculates that some of the Jury have built their own machines. If the jury has Steorn's white papers, and they are clear enough to reproduce the device, you'd think the process would move a bit faster.

blue_energy: I have presumed that the forum must serve a longer range purpose for Steorn to have made it worth your while to have spent so much of your time answering our questions, etc. I have further presumed that the reasons would have to do with establishing some credibility with the public prior to the completion of the jury. With that in mind, I have 2 questions:

1.) In as much as the plan for the format of the jury tests, and the number of jurors, were published knowledge at the outset, what is the reasoning behind keeping the change in these things a secret until now?

2.) The web site alluded to you publishing detailed technical specifications at the completion of the first quarter. You acknowledged, earlier in this discussion, that what you published is not, in fact, 'detailed' - and you apologized for the disappointment that this has caused. However, you did not explain your reasoning for not following through with what you said you would do. Would you explain your reasoning?

Steorn: There was no real plan behind us having a forum, we have zero experience with forum life and boy what an eye opener it has been. Again I stress that we like to engage, and so since it is on our site, we will come in and correct things when we have the time. We have also be learning about this whole forum thing as time passes, I think that in hind site we should have moderated the forum better, but hey hind site is 20-20 and all that.

We really are not going to discuss the ins and outs of the process while it is in progress (and to be honest I am trying not to go into this now, because for all the fun that the debates in here are, the Jury process is far too important to mess with). Lets face it no one is watching Steorn at the moment, we do not want to be news and we are not news.

With respect to the 'detailed' technical specifications, this was my fault, we were never going to publish detailed specs and will not until the end of validation. So I have to say sorry for this, if it makes you feel any better I still have the whip marks from our lawyers for even suggesting that I would do it.

Rhaomi: 1) A few months ago, you stated this:

"Due to the fact that the US patent office does not allow patents with this claim we have filed a sequence of patents wich describe various aspects of the technology. "

However, according to the US Patent Office website: A working model may be requested in the case of applications for patent for alleged perpetual motion devices.

Has the Office's policy changed since Steorn sought an American patent, or were you guys simply mistaken about the process? Or perhaps you did not have a working model that was ready for transatlantic shipping and government inspection?

Steorn: We have of course applied for US patents, and I am not going to go into details on them. We do not see any problems at this time about getting these patents granted.

Sean doesn't come out and say it, but it doesn't seem like Steorn is patenting any claim towards OU, instead it sounds like he's patenting specific configurations of Steorn's discovery. I agree with Rhaomi here, it's hard to believe Steorn wouldn't attempt to show up at the USPTO with a working device in hand if they had one. Who knows, maybe they will on Validation day.

ro2778: What happened to the American demonstration?

Steorn: Good question - the answer is that we are going to try and get media attention. Only a few of us are prepared to stand in the public eye and it is just not practical for us to try and split this 'event' across two locations. I should point out that this does not mean that we will not be doing a demo in the US, its just that doing two at the same time would be too much of a stretch on the company, I doubt if the July thing will be the only demo that we do.

Spiritual Beggar: If (hypothetically!!) Steorn did not release it's technology (or pretend you never discovered it!) What do you think the chances would be, of another company/individual/university/boffin discovering the effect by accident? Is it so incredibly obscure that it could go unnoticed for another 100 or 200 years??

Steorn: Well first thing to say is that there is nothing that is going to stop us releasing our tech, whats going on at the moment (the validation and the development of a developers forum) is really about ensuring rapid and widespread deployment. On the other point, what one man discovers another man can.

rubentherat: How do you explain to yourself how a couple of hundred years of science and engineering could have missed the effect.

Steorn: I do not think that they did. Gosh now I am writing this I know I am going to get a forum beating, but thats how I see it.

salvnaut: This is the winner for The Sean's Answer of a Day.

Sean, I remember you explaining how you thought that discovery of this technology wouldn't had been possible without todays technology of precise measuring instruments and easy access to information (Internet). Has something changed with your understanding since then? Or should we understand those two as not at all contradictory statements?

Steorn: The point that I was making is that a group of people like us could would not have made this type of discovery 20 years ago. It is simply a question of money, the type of measurement equipment, computing power and so that is necessary to rule out measurement error would simply have priced us out the the possibility of discovery 20 years ago. If we had the initial measurements 20 years ago with the type of equipment that a normal company could afford I have no doubt that we would just have written it off to measurement error.

granthodges: Any more on "I do not think that they did?"

Steorn: Well I think that it is a question of mindset, once we discovered and proved to ourselves the initial anomaly, we got very interested. After some research we found that we could explain the results with known effects, i.e. the result itself could be expected. But we went one step further, which is rather than just accepting classical explanations of these known (if little known) effects (and there are indeed many views on what causes these effects over the years) we decided to do what our engineering educations taught us to do, which is to design tests and make up our own minds on the matter. We did this by the way because we could not find a consensus position on what drove these effects within the third party white papers, the approach seemed very much a 'rule of thumb' approach and so we got at it.

I read this as saying Steorn believes that the discovered phenomena is right under scientists noses, that it won't be some new form of energy like ZPE or quantum foam that explains what is going on. Fascinating!

ro2778: Do you foresee, sometime in the future, orbo, on an industrial scale, being able to compete with standard power generating technologies e.g., solar, nuclear, fossil fuel, wind etc. in terms of useful energy output?

Steorn: Yes, we are a small company and can only take the development so far, thats why we are releasing the technology in the way that we are, the more, smart, fast companies that work on this for their own commercial interests the better for everyone.

Dovetailed: 1) What are you going to do if/when the jury comes back divided or unwilling to accept your claims without even further testing? Have you given them any time constraints or other forms of constraint to deal with potential (for want of a better word) filibustering or wilful obstructionism?

2) Psychologically, how does it feel to believe/know (you’ve said you 100% believe your claims before) that you will go down in history?

Steorn: On (1) I guess that I do not see this as a real possibility, if it happens (and I do not think that it will) we will face the issue at that time.

On (2) - its embarrassing to be honest, I want this to be over so that I can go off and work on some other stuff.

I hate to do this to Sean, but if what Steorn has is real, they could be the next Google squared. It's embarrasing to hear the CEO say "I want to move on" and "we're just a small company". Google started off in a garage, and all they started with was a clever way to rank search results. Now they have a market cap of $150 billion. ARG!

Fez_2007: With out giving away the configuration can you tell us the exact elements (period table) that interact to produce the effect. I presume a soft magnetic element of Fe and Neodymium magnets? Will the device only work within a particular temperature range? (Discounting the fact that it will stop working above curie temp) Does the device involve the principle of magnetic saturation? In particular over saturation of the soft magnetic material?

Will there be a second round of SPDC entries, I'm dying to talk with other engineers scientists on the idea. - I' have emailed you my details

Steorn: Ok, temperature (other than the curie point) is not important and its based on hard magnets - mail Cathy on the SPDC comment!

Dovetailed: "Steorn: Again I cant comment on how long the process will take, if we feel that we are heading into many years then we will discuss with the Jury ways to deal with this, but again I do not see this as being a problem."

Is there a reason why you are so confident this won't be a problem? Or is such a reason un-commentable again?

Steorn: Ok, well I think that people need to think about the details of our claim. In essence we are saying that it can be proven experimentally that magnetic forces are not in fact conservative. While such a claim must be treated cautiously, it is also not an overwhelming task to deal with the claim. But again its really not up to me how to do this, time will tell.

Sean has said the jury will take a long amount of time, and then he goes and says that it's not an overwhelming task to deal with. Do these two points jive? As you can tell from some of my comments, I'm a bit frustrated. I'm guessing we all are. I feel like I'm watching Lost or 24, and have to wait till next week, and then another week, and so on. Oh how I wish I could just rent the DVD set and watch the whole thing unfold over a weekend!