Free Energy Tracker

Steorn Demo Take Two

2009-12-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

As folks have pointed out in the comments section of this blog, Steorn is gearing up for a second demo of their Orbo technology. As many remember, the first demo back in July 2007 didn't go particularly well.

So far the information we have, reported by an anonymous insider over on reddit, is that the demo should take place next week, and that Steorn is in the process of setting everything up at the Waterways of Dublin. The anonymous source has posted photos inside and outside of the building:

Also pointed out in the reddit post is that Steorn is projecting the following video on the side of one of the buildings:

The video contains the following quotes, including the final Jury decision:

"It's a fraud" - Dr. Michio Kaku, ABC News, August 2006
"Powered by Blarney" - Forbes, July 2007
"...prolonged self deception" - Eric Ash, BBC, 2007
"Perpetual nonsense" - The Economist, July 2007
"10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets" - Wired, November 2007
"...magic fairy powered rotary and magnetic systems" - Engadget, February 2009
"...have not shown evidence of energy production.." - Scientific `Jury`, June 2009

The video teaser concludes with the blasphemies quote, which we've heard a few times from Steorn.

If you are feeling Steorn withdraw and want to read about what has been going on this year, especially related to Steorn's 300 announcement, I recommend checking out Nolan Chart's blog. Nolan is a true optimist, but as you can see from his most recent posts he's beginning to realize the situation the 300 are in.

Steorn Jury Declares...

2009-06-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

18 of the 22 Jury members have set up a Ning website with a single declaration:

The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn's attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.

I have confirmed with two of the Jury members that this is the real deal. I always believed there was a Jury, it is unfortunate that it took so long for them to make a public announcement.

Thanks to Angus Og over at Free Energy Trackers for discovering and posting the verdict.

UPDATE: Steorn has posted information about the Jury as well here. The Steorn forum discussion can be found here.

Curtain Drawn...

2009-02-04T17:19:00.000-08:00

Steorn today revealed their new website with a video, along with already mentioned plans to open up Steorn's SKDB for a group of 300 Engineers. Also today, SteornLab launched with two products. Also today, Steorn has launched Steorn Enterprise, which includes licensing Orbo tech to the automotive and mobile industries, as well as offering up a new product entitled ZeroF Passive Magnetic Bearings.

In addition to the main headline, Steorn posted a few comments in the forums:

Big Oil Rep: So how much burn money you got left then Mr Steorn? Mr Ping says 2 months...unless you've recently raised more money?

Steorn: lol - no new funding, and Mr. Ping can't read a balance sheet it would seem ...

And last but not least, the story today made it's way to Engadget: Steorn returns, promises to open Orbo specs, give you a pony.

Conspicuously absent was any mention of a jury, or any hint at a demo.

Steorn's Curtain, along with some Finances and Patents

2009-02-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Steorn updated their website today with a rendering of a curtain, along with "4 February 2009". We'll learn more tomorrow, but this is probably the kick off of Steorn's 300 Engineers campaign mentioned by Sean in December.

Also, we learned that Steorn's financial statements were made avialable. I haven't had a chance to look at them yet, but according to 15-India-Street:

They lost 3,5 million in 2007, and still had some 4 million cash on 31 December.

Assuming the burnrate continued in 2008, they had only 0.5 million on 31 December 2008, with less than 3 months left. The end may be near, at last.

Finally, Steorn has submitted another patent application, SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MEASURING ENERGY IN MAGNETIC INTERACTIONS. Here is a list of three patents that Steorn has submitted through the patent system so far.

Thanks to all the posters here for filling us in on the activity!

Energy Quizzes...

2009-01-20T21:02:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I had an idea to automatically generate quizzes from Wikipedia. I spent a few weekends writing an algorithm that can parse an entry, and then generate mostly relevant questions. Check out some of the completely generated energy quizzes that were made:

The Zero Point Energy Quiz
The Solar Energy Quiz
The Perpetual Motion Quiz
The Renewable Energy Quiz

And of course check out the fully auto-generated Steorn Quiz!

If you find a question that seems bogus, or have suggestions for additional questions for any of these generated tests, the user interface allows you to submit feedback. I hope to continue to add to the site, making it more like Wikipedia so that users can easily mark up quizzes and add there own.

Prime Time Steorn

2009-01-16T17:51:00.000-08:00

Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, appears on RTE News: Prime Time in the following video along with a test setup:

Sean offers his opinions on improving the Irish economy. He also briefly mentions Steorn's technology.

Sean Talks

2008-12-18T21:27:00.000-08:00

Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, appeared as expected at DIT to update us all on Steorn's activities. You can listen to the talk here:

Thanks Battman for posting the audio, and to Speccy who converted it into embeddable flash form. Some of the highlights include:

The first ~8 minutes Sean spends discussing Steorn's background in fraud technology.
Sean goes on to give a background of the quest for free energy, which is still ongoing of course.
He then spends time "embarrasing himself" explaining Orbo technology. He brings up the failed demo multiple times, highlighting how difficult it is to engineer this discovery.

Why did he do this?

It's been difficult for Steorn to develop their discovery. Steorn will start to provide their Orbo technology to a broader audience starting in February, offering licenses for their technology. According to McCarthy, these licenses to develop the technology will be free, but require the developers to pay a royalty if a device is built around the technology. The point of these licenses according to Sean are to help with validation.

What's amazing are the things left unsaid. Almost no mention of the Jury, which was the central premise of Steorn's original public launch. I would presume if the Jury was working out well for Sean, it would be mentioned on many occasions during the talks. When asked about the Jury, Sean gets very defensive and admits that their is no near term validation day. Sean makes no mention of a validation toy, which was supposedly going to be in production. And there was no mention of the Aftican pump project.

Now we'll all have to wait until February to see if Steorn delivers on making their Orbo "technology" more available to the world.

Steorn Talks

2008-11-29T17:17:00.001-08:00

It looks like Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, will be giving a talk in Dublin this December on Orbo's principles of operation. It's been a while since we've heard from Steorn, so hopefully someone will be able to post a recording of the video:

According to Steorn's website, there will be additional talks given in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

Thanks Gary for the tip!

News?

2008-08-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Steorn appeared in Dublin's Sunday Tribune a few days ago:
http://www.tribune.ie/article/2008/aug/10/free-energy-firm-generated-8m-in-funding/

The gist of the article is that we shouldn't expect to see or hear anything out of Steorn until their full commercial launch, which should come before next summer.

Significant Steorn Forum Changes...

2008-07-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

As many of you are aware, recently Steorn's forum changed from public viewing to member only viewing. This of course has caused a lot of discussion and debate, but there are plenty of places still out there in the open to discuss Steorn, including FreeEnergyTrackers, Fizzx, and of course this blog.

Something you may not know, is that Crank has now resigned as forum administrator. Crank's been administrating Steorn's forum for well over a year, and because of her relationship with Steorn, has been able to provide us with a lot of insight into the organization. I'd like to personally thank Crank for her service, and wish her well as a regular forum member! I also want to wish Magnatrix the best of luck putting up with everyone in the forum.

SPDC Visit London...

2008-06-04T20:29:00.000-07:00

Today, Magnatrix, one of Steorn's forum administrators, answered a simple question:

double-z:
Has anything been heard from them since the "demo"? (surely, just turning the lights off would have solved the problem, or illuminating it with LED lights instead...)

Magnatrix:
Yes.
The SPDC got together in London, earlier this year.
That's all that I can say about that

And the fun continues.

Steorn still has lawyers...

2008-04-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

This is the closest thing to news I could find for everyone:

http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/2008/04/steorn_still_alive.html

Last year, both Dispatches and this blog went through legal threats with Steorn, this is the first time that I'm aware of that Steorn actually dispatched (pun intended) actual lawyers.

Sean, if you are reading this, we'd love to get an interview with you on how things are going inside Steorn. Maybe we could set up an IRC channel or ask some questions over in the forums. Up for a chat? A lot of us miss having something to report.

They're not quite dead yet...

2008-02-24T18:52:00.000-08:00

Today in the forums, Sean McCarthy reacted to JREF's declaration of Steorn's death, based on a quote over at What's New by Bob Park:

Steorn: Wow, I wish that some one would tell me this stuff, I need not have turned up to the office all that time. Good to see that JREF is reliable as ever!

Also today, an anonymous poster shares with us a newly available patent application filed by Steorn:

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MEASURING INTERACTION OF LOADS

This patent was filed right around the time of Steorn's Economist Ad. It will be more interesting if we start seeing Steorn's core Orbo patents start appearing on these sites. Another anonymous poster did some research on the named inventors, two of which haven't appeared before in documents relating to Steorn. They are Ciaran Mythen and Guillaume Reux. Here is a translated version of Guillame's resume.

PEREPITEIA

2008-02-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

"What I can say with full confidence is that our system violates the law of conservation of energy" - Thane Heins

The free energy world has erupted again in Canada this week. I have received many emails and comments about Thane Heins, an inventor in Ottawa claiming to have violated the law of conservation of energy. Many forums and discussions have occurred since the original articles appeared in The Toronto Star. If you are interested in following the story a little deeper, here are some links you should read:

The original two articles, written by Tyler Hamilton of The Star:
Turning physics on its ear
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042
'Holy crap, this is really scary'
http://www.thestar.com/Article/300041

Potential Difference Web Page with Large Videos:
http://www.g9toengineering.com/backemf/demonstration.htm

Speccy's YouTube posting of the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogLeKTlLy5E

Tyler and Thane comment on the article over on Tyler's blog:
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2008/2/4/3505063.html

Steorn Forum Discussion:
http://www.steorn.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=60276

Overunity.com Discussion:
http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,4047.60.html

PhysOrg.com Article and Discussion:
http://www.physorg.com/news121610315.html

This blog's primary goal has been to keep track of Steorn more so then all free energy claims, I think I'd have to quit my job to keep up with all of them. Thane hasn't yet claimed free energy, although I'm sure he wouldn't be getting this much attention if he weren't implying it. But unlike Steorn's claims, Thane's are testable and publicly available. He's even hosting a demo for Ottawa's skeptics on Monday! Seeing examples like Thane, in which well known universities and professors are willing to test these types of claims publicly, suggest that Steorn's excuses for their approach are bunk.

The closure that I'm looking for with Steorn may never happen, but events like these help bring home the fact that closure is most likely already here.

Nearly There...

2008-01-08T18:38:00.000-08:00

Today we learn that Shaun Menzies, one of the founders of Steorn, reached the South Pole after 58 days of hiking. To learn more, check out Shaun's blog or visit the team's website, Beyond Endurance.

Creating a new sticky thread entitled "Nearly There..." sure caught a few people's attention today. Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, was kind enough to answer a couple of questions:

overconfident: Sean, Did Shaun take an OC MPMM with him to keep warm? What does it take to get you to participate here?

Steorn: Hi OC - sorry man - life has been hectic, all in a very positive way :-), I was going to say that Shaun was in fact testing bearings in different climates, but to be honest that would just be making a joke of what is a huge achievement on his part, something that he has wanted to do since I have known him - and fair play to him.

I will have more time over the next while so I will try to pop in and chat.

Sean

WhiteLite: Sean, I think overconfident is refering to this video that has caused quite a stir. ;-)

Steorn: Hi WhiteLite,

Yep I saw it, seems pretty cool. Go ahead and test the hell out of it, from the chat that I have seen it looks like the guys know what they are doing on that front.

Sean

As WhiteLite points out, and many of you have already noticed, Alsetalokin has been the center of attention the past few days in the forum with his video, posted primarily to shut up Omnibus. Unfortunately for Alsetalokin, he has attracted every other nut out there. With this episode so far we've learned more about the dynamics of the free energy community and the larger geek community more so than the interesting physics that might be occurring within Alsetalokin's WhipMag.

New Year's Wish: Closure in 2008

2007-12-31T22:26:00.000-08:00

I'd like to wish everyone a happy New Year. Thank you all for your contributions in 2007 to Free Energy Tracker, together we've been able to keep up with Steorn's events and claims. My hope for 2008 is that some form of closure is reached. I realize that this might be wishful thinking on my part! To everyone, including Steorn, enjoy your holiday, and have a successful and productive 2008!

Wired: Vaporware 2007

2007-12-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

In addition to making Wired's 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets, Steorn now comes in at number 10 on Wired's annual 10 Vaporware Products of 2007. One interesting note is that unlike the great snake-oil gadget list, Wired's vaporware product list is determined by votes cast by Wired readers. Steorn is becoming part of the geek culture, unfortunately not in the manner that they had anticipated.

‘Free energy’ firm raises €1.1 million

2007-12-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

It looks like 15-india-street isn't the only one checking out Steorn's latest financials. Gavin Daly, a writer with The Post.IE, writes his second Steorn article:

Steorn, a Dublin firm that claims to be developing a system that creates free energy, has raised €1.1million in funds amid rising losses.

Gavin Daly was the first to write about Steorn and its free energy ambitions, a few months before their official Economist announcement. In the article Firm strives to extend mobile battery lifespans, Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, compares Steorn's tech to kinetic watches.

Free Energy Trackers

2007-11-30T08:34:00.000-08:00

I came across a new website called Ning, which allows anyone to set up a custom social network, like Facebook or MySpace. I've set up Free Energy Trackers for all of us who are interested in what is going on with Steorn. Our first members are Dr. Mike, Sean McCarthy, and myself. Join and connect, and maybe we can figure this out together!

Another Round of Investment...

2007-11-24T19:17:00.000-08:00

On November 22nd, Steorn submitted another allocation of shares document to the Irish Government. Steorn raised another 1.08 million Euros. Three existing investors, Eamon McKinna, James Murphy, and JJ Sullivan bought a total of 661 shares of Steorn for 1640 Euros each. These three are the top investors in Steorn, investing more than a combined 9 million Euros. Thanks go to 15-India-Street for pointing us all to the latest allocation of shares document. Note that nleseul also mentions that Steorn's annual return has been filed, but has not yet been scanned for all to see.

Wired: 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets

2007-11-18T07:17:00.000-08:00

Along with 9 other gadgets, Wired has selected Steorn's Orbo as one of the 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets. From the article:

... File this one under deluded: enthusiastically setting up a public display, the inventors were humiliated when it failed to operate. But wait! Steorn gave its deal to 22 scientists who'll "validate" the device. Don't hold your breath, chaps. ...

... Think it might be real? For the love of Liebniz, get a freakin' clue: if it looks like a toy and the net gain is almost imperceptibly small, you're selling a measurement error. ...

They seem to have sided with Dr. Mike on their opinion of Steorn.

President of Ireland Photographed with Steorn

2007-11-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

As seen in this picture from Steorn's most recent press release, Irish President Mary McAleese visited Steorn in early October as part of the Bolton Trust 20th anniversary celebrations. Steorn Executivees Roger Hatfield, Sean McCarthy, and Richard Walshe stand beside President McAleese in the photo.

(Photographed by David O'Shea)

Also note that Sean McCarthy spoke as part of the Docklands Innovation Park Success Stories Session at the Anniversary conference. If anyone happens to have a transcript from the event or more details, please send them our way!

FreeEnergyTruth Interview with Sean McCarthy

2007-10-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

Craig at FreeEnergyTruth has posted his interview with Sean McCarthy, the CEO of Steorn. As expected, the interview was light. There were no questions about Thieu Knapen, founder of Kinetron, the only mention of a possible demo was that it would be held in Dublin, and of course no hint at a Jury update.

Sorry folks!

Test Your Steorn Knowledge

2007-10-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has launched a new online testing site SomeTests.com, so I created a Steorn Knowledge Test for everyone to see how closely they've been tracking Steorn. Good luck and enjoy!

SteornLab

2007-10-03T21:32:00.000-07:00

As readers here have posted recently, Steorn filed for the trademark "STEORNLAB" back on September 7th, 2007. From the goods and services section of the trademark:

"Providing test methods, namely, hardware and software to measure characteristics of mechanical systems, namely the torque and energy associated with mechanical systems and magnetic properties of materials"

It is unclear if this is related at all to the steornlab google page. I doubt Steorn would file a trademark strictly to thwart some hobbiest, but who knows. If anyone is familiar with trademark law, why would Steorn need to file this if they already have the trademark on Steorn?

Steorn is still alive and up to something, but now that they have gone radio silent, there hasn't been much to report. Any nugget of news or information, even as small as a trademark filing, is all we have to go on for now.

More Solar In The News

2007-09-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

I really appreciate all the insightful comments on the previous post about a new method for producing solar cells that AVA Solar is claiming. Here are some of the highlights from the comments:

anonymous: Cadmium telluride is toxic.
The toxicity is not just because of the cadmium. Cadmium telluride triggers extensive reactive oxygen damage to the cell membrane, mitochondria, and cell nucleus.

maryyugo: Solar power is lovely and very necessary but the proper loading and control of the output is essential, costs money and wastes some energy. The equipment takes a lot of room and has a limited life time and a high replacement cost, both in money and in energy use. Finally, the sun doesn't shine a lot of the time in most places and solar energy deposition in most places is at a low rate per amount of area.

Solar power is nice-- but it's no panacea nor is it ever likely to supply the majority of the world's energy needs.

vardan1899: A lot of the cost is not in the cells but the frame, manufacturing, shipping, overhead, etc. too... In many cases there are tax breaks (US) that "really" pay for them. One must wonder if the cells themselves were "free" hAow much the panel would still end up costing.
...
Making solar cells cheaper is always cool, but I don't think it is going to be a giant impact anymore no matter what they do...

These points suggest that photovoltaics won't be the main solution to our energy problems, and I agree. To keep the conversation going, here are a couple of other recent news items related to solar energy that caught my attention, and should catch yours too:

Splitting Water with Sunlight - " Researchers from the German Max Planck Institute have now developed a catalyst that may do just that..."

Solar Nation: Can the Sun Power the US? - David Mills, Chairmen and Chief Scientific Officer of Asura, a venture backed startup in Silicon Valley, presented on his approach to solving America's energy needs with Solar Energy. I came across this article while reading SciGuy.

While we wait...

2007-09-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

After two and a half months of silence in the forums, Steorn finally returns with this comment on the Orbo Irish Folk Songs thread:

Brilliant!

To pass the time while we all wait to see what happens next with Steorn, I thought I'd share with you this piece of news I came across on Slashdot today. Supposedly a new method for producing solar cells developed at Colorado State University is about to go into production, reducing solar panel production costs down to $1 per watt from the current minimum $3 per watt. The company AVA Solar Inc will start production by the end of next year, no Jury validation required. Now that's getting pretty close to free energy!

In Flux

2007-09-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

Today in the forums, Grimer points us to Kinetica's next exhibition, In Flux, featuring 8 international artists. Interestingly, Steorn is sponsoring the event:

So far, this is the closest thing to news this September.

Blake Talks

2007-08-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

In the forums today, FreshLaundry points everyone to Free Energy Truth, which has an exclusive interview with Blake, a Northrop Grumman employee located in Stuart Florida. Blake is a member of the SPDC, and is claiming that he was able to run an Orbo-like device in his own workshop for more than 8 hours:

It was late and I knew I had to work the next day so taking a final look at the running rig. I went to bed...it was still running when I woke up and when I left for work.

Unfortunately Blake has not been able to repeat the 8 hour run:

I intend to keep trying to replicate the run to quell the naysayers. Until then it is just my word against the odds.

K-Toy Video Discovered

2007-08-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

On Steorn's forum today, RunningBare points us all to the full version of the k-toy video:

As folks point out in the forum, audio and parts of the video have been available since the beginning of this year, but this is the first time non-insiders get to see the full video. In the video, we see Thieu Knapen, founder of Kinetron, expressing how unbelievable Steorn's invention is and how certain he is that it is real.

Nothing New

2007-08-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

In the Steorn forums yesterday, a new thread started entitled "Nothing New" which highlighted this entry from hdeasy over on Randi's forums:

So – some have visited the public forum. I am a member of the SPDC (private – NDA needed) and it is much more orderly there, as we have more scientists etc. Many skeptics did a u-turn in there as we have been shown a video of a famous inventor enthusing over the ‘miracle that is behind the technology’.

Then we learned the name of a physicist from an old uni who confirmed the effect but can’t go public as Steorn doesn’t want that yet. The story around that is very believable for me.

Finally, the mechanism has been explained – very simple, and I wrote a Fortran sim to convince myself of it. It actually works – as long as a stator magnet is not depleted, and it doesn’t look like it would be – test plots showing this to be the case have been presented by Steorn and some forum members have come close to reproducing the setup – one of them says he had an 8 hour run before something loosened up. Now none of this is substitute for the 22 Jury members and their report – but it’s pretty damn good.

Coming soon for the cognoscenti 7 of us were selected to test the tech themselves.. That activity will start in a few weeks time.

So – it’s all go: no sign of closing up shop after the London debacle.

If you do a quick google search on hdeasy, you'll discover that he's been following Steorn since last August, and applied to be on the Jury. He's currently a member of the SPDC and has been active in Steorn's forum in the past.

Unfortunately, the thread on Steorn's forum has been removed. This is most likely due to the NDA related details Grimer was sharing with the rest of us. It'll be interesting to see if any of that information is verified.

Harsh light shines on free energy

2007-08-15T06:11:00.001-07:00

hairykrishna directs us to the latest edition of Physics World, which includes an article on Steorn's failed demo. Here are some interesting quotes:

The device consisted of a CD-sized plastic wheel adorned with 16 neodymium magnets that can rotate about two stationary magnets. After being given an initial push, the wheel was supposed to spin freely at about 250 revolutions per minute - not only overcoming air resistance and mechanical friction, but also lifting a small 10g mass.

Sean McCarthy is also quoted as saying:

"If we were in the business of doing tricks," he says, "then the demonstration would have worked."

alsetalokin's connection

2007-08-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

maryyugo, a regular commenter here, came across an interesting post over on Steorn's forum by alsetalokin:

Well, for what it's worth, I know of one senior scientist at a well-known (non-academic) institution who applied and was selected for the original "12" jury, signed the NDA and all. Of course this was many months ago now, and I have heard no reports through "back-channels" of any developments since then.
I, therefore, believe that there at least _was_ a jury, once, containing at least one member with eminent qualifications.
Whether there is still a jury, now, that I doubt. It probably exists "on paper" but I'd bet that, once they all stopped ROTFLTAO, they went back to work at their "real" jobs.

In another thread, riterX asks alsetalokin if he'd be able to follow up with his contact:

Well, I respect the NDA, and I was sort of waiting for the promised report, after which presumably all could be revealed, but now I see the error in my thinking.
So, I think I will do just that.

I hope alsetalokin can share with us details about his potential contact. More evidence of an active or inactive Jury would go a long way to understanding what Steorn's intentions are.

Forums are Public Again, Two Unnamed Jurors

2007-08-13T18:54:00.000-07:00

The forums are again available to all anonymous lurkers. These seem to be Sunday only blackouts. Also in the forums today crank lets us know that she has the names of two jury members:

The way I'd look at it is...I was shown the names of two jury members. At any time over the past six months if Sean pissed me off sufficiently (and Sean is good at pissing me and everyone else off ) I could have phoned those scientists and asked them if they really were on the Steorn jury. If they weren't, they could and would have publicly disassociated themselves from the Irish crackpots who were using their name in vain. So if it was a house of cards, it would all have come tumbling down over quite a simple thing.

Therefore...the names he gave me had to be genuine. Therefore...there is a jury. Therefore...anything Sean has stated publicly about the jury has to be real, or jury members would be kicking up a fuss.

I don't exactly follow her logic, but it is her choice not to follow up on the information that was provided to her. She continues to talk about the Jury:

How could they be 'planted' members? They're people with pretty illustrious careers, in very famous institutions. Why would they get involved in a scam? What would be in it for them?

I'm assuming she is referring to the two jury members that she has direct knowledge of, but I could be wrong.

There is most likely a Jury, what we don't know is where they are in the process of ruling. Steorn has predicted that the Jury will reach a verdict late this year or early next year. In the mean time, we may or may not get additional information from Steorn.

Forum Lockdown

2007-08-12T18:37:00.001-07:00

For all those "lurkers" out there who browse Steorn's forum, you are out of luck, at least temporarily. Magnatrix has again blocked read access to all those not logged in. Back in June, when I published this entry, we went through a similar event. We'll have to wait and see Steorn's official reaction to the change. Remember, both forum administrators do not work for Steorn, but are volunteers. I suggest readers start using the google group Steorb.

In other news, If you haven't been reading messages here and over on the Google Group related to Steorn, Steorn has asked them to change their name, which is now Steorb. My hunch is Steorn won't actually follow through on their legal threats. Consider steornpower.com as an example.

Demo Feed Update

2007-08-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

Today we finally got the official word on the AStream feeds that seemed to indicate that Steorn might be demoing again soon:

crank: Sad news about the cameras ;-( I asked Sean why they were still working, turns out Steorn booked only the ten days that the demo was supposed to last. So A-Stream have just forgotten to turn off the stream.

While many folks around here tend to give crank a hard time, I appreciate her getting the little bits of news that she can in her position as forum rep. Her statements in the forum normally clarify vs. confuse.

Nodding Donkey Video

2007-08-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

The Nodding Donkey has made its way to YouTube. There seems to be some debate about the nature of the video. We've heard exaggerated claims from cynics that Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, waited 20 days before explaining that the video does not demonstrate perpetual motion, and we've heard back from others saying that Sean presented the video as a joke, and he only waited a few minutes before explaining that the nodding donkey is not perpetual motion. While we all wait for something of substance, enjoy the video:

Nodding Donkey at the Office

2007-07-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

Today we learn about a supposed SPDC video involving a Nodding Donkey from almost and zpe:

almost: I would like McCarthy to explain why, in view of the horrible letdown of people who travelled thousands of miles to see an Orbo demonstration, he hasn't posted a video of the machine. He can at least post it privately to his loyal supporters in the SPUD - supporters who vociferously castigated a member who queried whether the Nodding Donkey prototype had Orbo inside, and were made to look foolish by their trust when after a considerable delay Shaun revealed that it didn't. Another 550bhp example, albeit not so egregious since the delay in Shaun's confession was less than the 6 weeks of the big engine.

Later, zpe provided us with this photo, which seems to have disappeared from Steorn's forum. He also has the video, which hopefully will become public soon.

Also today, crank visited Steorn:

Given the claims on Steorntracker, which were repeated in this forum, I went into Steorn this morning. I knew it wasn't true, but equally knew there was no point in saying so unless I could say that I'd physically gone in there and checked.
You'll be happy (or unhappy?) to hear that all was normal. Sean hasn't visited the forum recently, so was unaware that he was supposed to be..arrested..bought out by MIB..done a runner..sacked etc. etc. etc..
All employees were present and correct. Including the Frenchman

It seems like our anonymous trouble maker has hit a nerve with some folks over in Steorn's forum. Lately I've been modding these types of posts. If you're going to post "facts" here, please have something to back them up with.

Randi and More Video

2007-07-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

As maryyugo has pointed out here, Free Energy Tracker made it into James Randi's latest news letter. Also note, ENERGY IS NOT YET FREE! has posted a couple follow up videos of Sean talking at Kinetica. Unfortunately I could not make out what he was saying, if someone finds anything interesting in these videos, feel free to post them here!

Upstairs at Kinetica, A Spinning Orbo

2007-07-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

An anonymous source has posted youtube videos of demo visitors working on the failed orbo demo device. In the videos we get a better view of what the demo looked like. The third video includes a spinning orbo, although it seems the magnets actually slow the thing down.

Also in the videos, you see a lot of camera flashes, so there should be more photos out there of the entire event. If anyone out there has additional video or photos, feel free to email me at wgorman AT gmail DOT com. Check out the ENERGY IS NOT YET FREE blog for the inside scoop.

Lights, Camera...

2007-07-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

One of the original video feeds from Steorn's demo earlier this month has come back online, showing us big ben again. This has caused a lot of speculation here and on Steorn's forum that the second attempt at a demo may be happening soon. We'll just have to wait and see.

While we wait, Steorn has provided a nice list of articles, including the not so positive ones, on their website. I guess we'll stick with the old saying, there is no such thing as bad press.

Crank's Opinion and Some Horbyists

2007-07-19T19:49:00.000-07:00

Today on Steorn's forum, crank questions whether drmike's statement about Scott Little obtaining orbo details and not being able to replicate the device are valid:

crank: drmike is not right in his (reported) remarks about Scott
Little. Scott Little was given no more information than anyone else.
If he tried to replicate, it was from the hints and clues dropped on
this forum.

And how does crank know this?

crank: Because when I saw that remark of drmike's quoted in one of the
threads here I texted Sean and asked him. He texted back that Scott
Little had got the same information that everyone else did.

I wish crank could do a little more for us skeptics, we could all use a little bit of evidence. She clearly has more access to Steorn then the rest of us. We'll have to wait to hear what drmike has to say in response.

Also this week, many hobbyists have been attempting to build their own Orbos. Here is a video from ZeroFossilFuel that you might enjoy:

Engadget Interiew: The Interesting Parts

2007-07-17T19:34:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the quotes that I pulled out of the Engadget Interview of Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, if you didn't have three hours to read the whole thing:

Engadget: Do you have a statistic or number of what you estimate the energy efficiency level of your machine is? Is it 110% or 150%?

Sean McCarthy: It varies from configuration to configuration. I think the largest efficiency that we would have physically measured would be about 485%. These numbers can be misleading. For example we might be getting 485% per joule, which means were getting 4.85 J out, but there could be a configuration that's could be delivering 130% efficiency yet delivering 10 joules. So, the technology itself is pretty well researched in terms of punch line efficiency it's 485%, but that wouldn't be the optimum output of the system. Obviously we're more focused on direct power output of a device than the punchline numbers. 485 to 1 is 4.85, but we could easily say, 10 to 12 joules off of a system is going to have a lower punch line efficiency. And power output is obviously the key factor, energy output is obviously the key factor.

Sean's response to the demo setup:

"But with respects to what happened, we brought three systems to us from Dublin, three component systems, we don't move them in their operational way, we stripped them down. They are very, very simple and there is not huge configuration to them, but they are very sensitive configurations because there are lots of magnetic loads and so on. We got one of the systems working on the Tuesday night which was the Tuesday before we were going live on Wednesday evening."

Sean implies that the units had been built and possibly tested in Dublin before the demo. Up until now, we only heard about the three days the engineers had in London to get the demo working.

Sean's feelings on Dr. Mike's report:

"I can't possibly criticize Doctor Mike for what he said. It's exactly what I would have said, I probably would have been harsher if I had been in his shoes."

Sean restates his "no investment" policy:

"We haven't raised a dime since last August and we've said quite simply we will commercialize this is no way, we are not going to sell film rights or book rights whatever the latest scam theory on it is. We're sitting here like everybody else waiting for the results of the jury and we will do other things to try and support the premise that we've made -- understanding completely how ridiculous it sounds."

This means more than money to Sean:

"We have a technology, we're putting more than our money behind this. We're putting everything behind this, our reputation and everything behind it, because we believe. That doesn't mean that other people believe, but we do believe, and we do believe in the medium term that this technology will make it to market and that is what we are interested in. The rest is noise."

Sean's opinion on skeptics:

"We have to embrace the skepticism. But equally to understand, these are not intended to be slam dunk results, because they won't be. There will always be issues and rightfully so a simple demo, no matter how long it lasts, isn't proof of the claim. Proof of the claim is scientific analysis. But we are going to have to do other things as well. I won't go into details, but the biggest mistake that we've made and obviously we have to learn from our mistakes was to pre-announce the London demo. We've paid the price for that, we won't do it again. But we will be doing probably an awful lot more than we had intended. Basically when it happens we'll be letting people know. It will not be that far away."

Disappointed skeptics, people like Doctor Mike who we dragged half way around the world -- and all I can do is apologize to them and say look it didn't work, but we are going to do it again. It's not the end of the Steorn story.

Interview With Dr. Mike

2007-07-17T19:12:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the conversation I had tonight with Dr. Mike Rosing, our official Steorn skeptic. I've highlighted some of the more interesting bits:

SteornTracker: 485%, there isn't really a way to measure that incorrectly is there?
drmike: Nope. That's a pure fabrication.

SteornTracker: How many papers have they shown you? The one we have mostly heard about indirectly is via your experiment.
drmike: Two, both covering the same topic. One is obviously written for investors, the other for engineers.

SteornTracker: 3 days assembling an already designed and tested demo unit doesn't seem too short of a time, they also claimed to have three of these units
drmike: That's the claim. I don't think so. Why have a lathe in the upstairs shop?

SteornTracker: If you were on the Jury, how long would it take for you to be fed up enough to go public about the situation? Or would you just stay quiet like we've seen so far?
drmike: Good question. I'd probably have given up after 3 months.

SteornTracker: So what do you predict will happen to Steorn over the next few months? Sean has said another demo will take place, do you think he'll try again?
drmike: Yes, I think so. But he'll have it set up in secret and it won't work, so he won't actually tell anyone. In the mean time he'll be hoping the jury gets back to him, but he won't realize he hasn't shown them anything.

SteornTracker: Did Sean talk to you and the SPDC members at all about the transition from the start-stop device to the continuous device? He hinted in April that they were making "progress"
drmike: Nope. He mostly tried to "explain the effect". It was interesting because it was one way communication. Not many people asked questions, and Sean did most of the talking.

SteornTracker: You spent some time in London with EarthTech. They seem like an interesting crowd. What were their impressions of Steorn?
drmike: Mixed. Hal was trying to believe, Scott was trying to help, and Marissa was trying to leave :-)

drmike: So there really is a jury, but so what? They don't do anything, nor are they allowed to see anything.
SteornTracker: What evidence do you have that suggests that?
drmike: Sean said on friday during the public admission of failure of the demo that the jury had not seen a working device yet.

drmike: Scott from EarthTech who is not on the jury, said they got plans and could not reproduce any "over unity" effect.
drmike: So I expect no jury member has duplicated it either.

SteornTracker: You're less in the dark then most of us, and your hypothesis seems to make more sense then the documentary ideas, etc
drmike: I think the observations made while upstairs tell me that it was a one man show. A few engineers with a little skill could have done a much better fake!

SteornTracker: I'm guessing you now would give Steorn less then my .001% chance of having anything, is that correct?
drmike: I started with 10^-25 and I'm at 10^-100 now :-)

Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike :-)

In the interview, Dr. mike said he'd be available in the near future for a group chat. Feel free to ask questions here and I'll set up a chat session in the next few days.

Engadget Interview with Sean McCarthy

2007-07-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all those who posted here and emailed me about Sean McCarthy's Interview with Engadget. I'll have time later to pull out the juicy parts.

The Mysterious Marissa

2007-07-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

Today we finally learn who the mysterious user Marissa is. She appeared in Steorn's forum three days ago saying:

"Well, the jury is real, but that's the only refutable comment Mike. Everything
else could be just as you've explained it. Sigh."

crank backed her up with this statement:

"There's an obvious reason how she knows."

And finally we get an even more mysterious answer from Marissa:

"It's not as obvious as you think Crank. But we work in the free energy world.
We hear things. There is a jury - and no, we aren't on it."

So who is Marissa and where does she work? All these comments make sense once you discover that Marissa Little is an experimentalist at EarthTech International (ETI). Dr. Mike gave us a clue when he said "I'm the same age as her father, and I got along well with him too!!". Scott Little is also an Experimentalist at ETI.

It sounds like EarthTech International was in the running to be part of the Jury. We know that they were eventually not selected, but Marissa must have played a role in dealing with Steorn's jury process. So the question still remains, what state is the Jury in today? Are they being strung along, or have they been given unlimited access to Steorn's claims? Have any of the members of the Jury replicated Steorn's experiments? We're all in the dark for now.

30 Investors

2007-07-14T03:38:00.000-07:00

Back in August of 2006, in the Guardian Unlimited Article "These men thing they are about to change the world", the author makes this statement:

Last week, frustrated that they couldn't persuade scientists to take their work seriously, McCarthy, Walshe and the other 28 shareholders of Steorn, a privately owned technology research company, took out a full-page advertisement in the Economist. In it, they called upon scientists to form a 12-member jury to decide whether their free-energy system is real, hoaxed, imagined or incorrectly well-intentioned.

Someone here recently quoted that number, which made me realize that I should go take a second look at Steorn's Financials [google docs link] [excel link] (thanks anonymous). If there were more than 30 investors listed, I'd know that Steorn took additional funding, like the March 2007 document suggests.

What I found was that there are exactly 30 Steorn investors, two of which hadn't invested until the latest publication. I think this is reasonable evidence that Steorn has not taken any additional funding after their declaration. What do you think?

Update: As you can see in the comments, Thicket points out that according to the spreadsheet, there are actually 34 stock holders. I missed the three class B share holders and also the BES Scheme investment. Unfortunately, the numbers don't add up in either direction now. I guess I'm not that surprised things don't add up ;-(.

Perpetual Nonsense

2007-07-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

Along with so many others, The Economist felt it necessary to chime in on Steorn's failed demo. The article is light on any Steorn specific information. I wish these reporters would do more than quote each other, instead maybe they should try to get to the bottom of what is going on?

In many ways we are stuck here waiting again to see what Steorn's next move will be. Some have posted here saying that it's not worth our time to comment on the subject, and maybe they are right. I'm still intrigued. I want to get to the bottom of this, I want evidence one way or another showing us that this is a hoax, fraud, delusion, or real. Instead we have a company claiming the impossible, who is well funded and seeking publicity, and when they get it the whole thing seems to fall apart.

I just don't get it yet.

Dr. Mike's Report

2007-07-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

I just got done reading Dr. Mikes full report. You can read it here:
http://www.eskimo.com/~eresrch/Steorn/final_report.text

The report reiterates what we've all read about Dr. Mike's trip. I think the main point worth noting is that Dr. Mike does not believe that Steorn is a scam or a hoax, that they really believe what they have. Unfortunately, he cannot go into details about the tech because of his NDA.

The Last Word Followup and Lots of Questions

2007-07-11T18:04:00.000-07:00

Matt Cooper of The Last Word did a follow-up interview today with Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn. Sean explains again why the demo failed, but insists that this is a small bump in the road and that we'll be seeing a demo soon. The interview starts around 20 minutes into the recording at lasts for about 5 minutes.

Also today, Sean visited the forum for a while and answered a lot of questions. I've categorized them here:

On the African Pump Situation

JoinTheFun: what's the status of the African pump project?
Steorn: The pump I believe is being installed at the moment.

Suomipoika: [asking about the african pump] How is it possible? The device is so fragile that you can't drive one from Dublin to London. Wasn't that the reason you didn't replace the devices with stopstarts from Dublin?
Steorn: As I said we bought three (CM) devices from Dublin in parts, got one working on site (it can take a while to balance the radial loads on the system) and then while under pressure used the parts from the other two systems to try and fix the prime system. It did not work. Thats the facts of the situation, believe it or believe it not.

mrflora: The pump again, Sean... are you saying that now, today, this week, a pump is being installed in Africa that is driven by Orbo overunity technology?
Steorn: The pump is being installed by a local engineering contractor (I do not know the exact schedule), once this is in place we will install the Orbo power supply for it.

FLD: Sean - is the African water pump driven by fuel-less Orbo technology? Yes or no will be fine thanks.
Steorn: It will be fuel-less when the project is completed, at the moment we are only in the process of installing the basic pumping system.

On Dr. Mike

Suomipoika: Do you have a device, which generates OU? Very common opinion here is, that you don't. If you do, why wasn't Dr. Mike able to see that?
Steorn: As said the devices that we bought to London failed, that simple, so Mike did not see anything. There is no more to the story.

Suomipoika: Why didn't you take Dr. Mike to Dublin?
Steorn: We had other things that we needed to deal with, again you can spin the matter anyway you want, but these are the facts, we will do the demo soon enough and then lets see where we stand.

observer: Why didn't you invite Dr. Mike to follow the assembly of the device? He would have been in the position to see it working then, even if it was not possible for him to analyze it further.
Steorn: Well I guess that the straight answer is that no engineer wants anyone looking over at them while they work, we where under pressure and having someone looking at our engineers work would not help.

blueletter: What do you say to Dr. Mike's assertion that much of this whole thing lives only inside your head?
Steorn: I guess that in a way I understand his comments, its not true but in the circumstances I doubt that you will believe me.

Suomipoika: Sean! Dr. Mike didn't have possibility to see the device. Who's the next skeptic you're gonna invite and when will this happen?
Steorn: I do not think that we will have a problem finding a credible skeptic next time.

Suomipoika: Sean, you implicate that Dr. Mikes credibility was problem.
1) Are you saying that Dr. Mike wasn't credible?
2) When will this "next time" be? I could come tomorrow, ok to you?
Steorn: Where did I imply Dr. Mike was not credible, seemed like a very smart guy when I met him for the limited period of time that we had.

Suomipoika: I asked you: "Dr. Mike didn't have possibility to see the device. Who's the next skeptic you're gonna invite and when will this happen?"
And you answered: "I do not think that we will have a problem finding a credible skeptic next time."
Of course this implies that Dr. Mike wasn't credible.
But next question is: When can NEXT skeptic-visit happen at earliest?
Steorn: To your mind it may imply that, there is no intent to imply that. The next skeptics visit will be reported on after it happens.

On the Jury

JoinTheFun: Any word of the jury as to when they think they'll be ready ?
Steorn: I'm not going to comment on the Jury process.

Speccy: In a couple of Irish newspaper articles last week, it was stated that the jury result was due next year. Is this now the case, or can we still expect a result in 2007?
Steorn: I said that I did not have a timeline for the results, which is the facts of the matter, I have not had a chance to read any of the media stuff yet, so I am not sure what was printed.

SteornTracker: Back in April you mentioned that there would be a second quarter Jury update. Are you still planning on providing an update? When do you think that update will be available?
Steorn: Hi ST, have not even thought about the subject at the moment.

On the Failed Demo

pcstru4: How come you say you have been so busy for the last few months preparing a demo, then pull the excuse that you only gave the engineers three days?
Steorn: Its as simple as stated, we tried to install them in a few hours under pressure, we made some mistakes and the demo did not happen. So few will believe the story, its up to them, its what happened.

couldbe: Sean, why did you attempt to demo a device that did no appreciable work? From what I've read here, a lightweight disk can be made to spin for a long time with very little input. Wouldn't it be more convincing to demo an orbo with its innards hidden, but one that did real work?
Steorn: Well the intention was to show the 'raw' device and then the system doing work, at this point they are just failed intentions so I do not expect anyone to believe it.

JoinTheFun: There are a couple of days left in the Kinetica. Any chance of showing the world a working device these coming days ?
Steorn: Nope.

majicmagneticmoment: MALARKY! I am an engineer and have been for over 30 years. I have always have had someone looking over my shoulder and have learned to expect it. Where did you get your engineers? France?
Steorn: I have spent a lot of my engineering life with people staring at me, so I know the feeling. But at the end of the day no one was looking at us while we worked (lots of people taking pics of us and recording our phone calls as we came and went).

Recording their phone calls? I don't understand that comment.

buzzlightyear: I could understand if there was to be some nervosity between the investors right now. Do they actively follow the company developments, or do they act as distant financial investors? How are they taking the demo failure?
Steorn: Clearly no one involved in the company is happy about the failed demo, but despite this we also need to keep perspective - its a failed demo full stop. It has shaken to the core any confidence that people not involved with the company have, and this is understandable. But we know what we have to things are not as dire as people would like to make them. We will do the demo, and then move on.

JoinTheFun: How is the overall mood in your team ?
Steorn: Clearly it was not a good week. But we are 'back in the saddle' and a lot more motivated than we were a few weeks ago, so in a strange kind of way the failure of the demo may in fact speed up our route to market, we will see.

tony: Why are you even attempting to demo before the Jury verdict is out? p.s. I dont understand why you would even try to convince anyone before this. Surely you should be pragmatic, what if the verdict goes against you?
Steorn: It seemed like a good week to put ourselves back on the agenda, we got on the agenda but for the wrong reasons.

blueletter: Did you sir, or did you not, get piss drunk on the very night of both your infamous demo debacle and your wife's foot breaking incident?
Steorn: Nope. And no my wife did not break her foot kicking me around the place, she broke it the day before we went to London.

rosco: Are the public relations company behind your strategy? If so isn't it time to get rid of them as it seems like you've now used up nine lives in public opinion terms
Steorn: Sure it may seem that way to you at the moment, bottom line is that it is a failed demo, embarrasing for sure, but no more than that. We will do a demo, then lets see what happens.

korkskrew: I still don't understand the purpose of a demo. It seems like a lot of expense for no real business reason. Is it just for our entertainment? Seems like a lot of money and effort for that.
Steorn: With a claim so wild we decided that we need to do multiple things to errode the view that we do not have what we claim to have. This event failed, very clearly failed, but we believe that it was worth the effort and will do the demo. Our prime investment was in marketing materials and these will be used for the rescheduled event when we decide to do it.

FLD: This event failed, very clearly failed, but we believe that it was worth the effort errrm...it was an utter failure and made you a laughing stock but it was worth the effort?
Steorn: As in we believe that it is worth the effort doing public demos, this one did not work out but we will for sure do public demos again in the future.

SPDC Questions

JoinTheFun: Can you tell us how recent events have affected the SPDCites ? Did you meet Babcat ?
Steorn: I had a chance to meet a few of them for an extended period on Friday and Saturday, I have not had a chance to head into the SPDC, but we do consider the SPDC key to the Steorn project and so have a lot of confidence to regain with them. We are pulling together a plan to do that.

Kaiser Jive Albino: How long would it take an engineer at Steorn to build a working unit from scratch, with off the shelf parts? Will individuals be able to replicate it with "minimal" tooling? Thanks for your answers, and great to see you back btw!
Steorn: Good to be back (I think) - the ease of replication for a hobbist has been a concern, however I do believe that one of the SPDC folks got a system running for 8 hours or so with what looks like pretty minimal parts, but I have not had a chance to look into this in any detail yet.

I find it interesting that Sean is willing to speculate on a pretty significant SPDC event when he hasn't looked into the details of it yet.

Upcoming Steorn Activity

hugojpinto: Do you realize and believe that doing a convincing demo + technology showcase + providing straight replication access is a critical piece of in gaining confidence in the near future?
Steorn: Yes - and perhaps even a bit more than that.

meta: On openness, in the post cancellation video you mentioned something about being less cryptic and covert, and pushing Steorn into a more open direction. Can you expand on that?
Steorn: We have plans in place to deal with the confidence issues, but I will not be pre-announcing these, they will happen and let people debate them at that time.

prprior: Sean, for the sake of those that don't think this is a lie, hoax, or dilusion, why can't you post a video of at least a partial orbo? Enough to conceal any secrets with the design, but showing enough to ease a dry tongue.
Steorn: As stated we will be doing stuff, I will not be going into what it is or when it will happen but we acknowledge that we do need to some additional things after the failure of the demo.

I think Steorn's new strategy of not announcing things before they happen is a pretty good idea!

General Questions

pcstru4: I'll try once more : How many functional OU devices do you have back in dublin - not test rigs but actual devices which demonstrate OU. Please give a number for Stop/Start & CM.
Steorn: At the moment no.

I'm not sure if Sean is saying that he won't answer the question, or no, there are currently no OU devices in Dublin.

Suomipoika: Sean! Are your all OU-devices so fragile that they'll break
a) if transported by car or
b) if lights are too bright?
Steorn: Nope

meta: Sean, I take it you missed my above question to you about calorimetry?
Steorn: I will not go into the specific tests that are going to be conducted, or the testing process in any detail.

meta: Why have you not done calorimetry yet?
Steorn: As I stated before I am not going to go into details of planned tests, however we have tested for thermal 'energy account' balancing and it does not even come close to balancing the energy equation.

/: Sean, we have heard that many actual Orbo-based systems have been made by external companies (like the "validation toys", for the Africa pump, etc.). Can you tell us some rough figure how many third-party engineering companies have been involved so far?
Steorn: 4-5

buzzlightyear: Steorn has been open about the marketing and financial partners, but there is no information about technology partners. Can you name one of the technology partners? Like the company that you work with in the Netherlands?
Steorn: Our partners work for us under mutual NDA, so nope I will not be discussing it in the public domain.

jorb: Have the investors seen a working OU device?
Steorn: Again I am not going to get into who has seen what, all people involved in Steorn or working for us are under mutual NDA. So I am just not going to answer questions on the Jury, our tech partners, staff or investors.

aber0der: Sean, do you plan to update the site re the licensing model? "Further details will be made available during the first half of 2007."
Steorn: I will have to follow-up and see where we are at with this.

Dr. Mike is Back

2007-07-11T05:22:00.000-07:00

After attending the London Demo on Steorn's behalf as the forum skeptic, Dr. Mike Rosing has posted his opinion of the situation here on Steorn's forums. I've included the entire text below:

I will write up a full report and post it on my own web site in a few days. I wrote something on the plane which is good but not complete. I suspect one could write a
book about all the experiences we've had here.

My opinion - and it really is only my opinion - is that Sean lives in a world of delusion. His greatest strength is the ability of convince people of things, and it is also his greatest weakness. I am certain that Sean has seen a "start - stop" device operating. That it never existed outside his mind doesn't matter.

There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered, but let's look at a few simple ones.

Why would Steorn send a skeptical forum rep to see their core technology if Steorn did not really believe it? As others have pointed out, if this were a hoax or scam, something would have worked. From my direct observations of the people, there is true belief here.

Why would Sean claim that 5 bearings were broken and he sent someone to Eindhoven to get more? Because he saw it happen. Like the story about the famous mathematician who talked to people nobody else could see (the movie was "A Beautiful Mind") I think Sean has really seen things work. The rest of us never will.

Sean said at one point that the jury validation was the most important thing to Steorn. At this point I think the jury is also in his mind. He probably talks to them often. He did say they have not seen any devices. How could he have a demo, have the jury be the most important thing to the company, and not have had any jury member see anything? Because nothing exists.

As I said, there are a great many details and questions to answer, and probably we'll never get answers to the more interesting ones. It was an honor and a privledge to have met everyone here and at Kinetica and I will do my best to get all the parts back to everyone who loaned me stuff and made it possible for me to help out.

We'll be hearing more from Dr. Mike soon with a full report, which he started working on while flying back to the states. Right after Dr. Mike posted this, a new unknown forum member named "Marissa" appeared and said this:

Marissa: Well, the jury is real, but that's the only refutable comment Mike. Everything else could be just as you've explained it. Sigh.

pcstru4: How do you know?

crank: There's an obvious reason how she knows.

Marissa: It's not as obvious as you think Crank. But we work in the free energy world. We hear things. There is a jury - and no, we aren't on it.

Who is Marissa? An employee of Steorn? Hopefully we'll learn a lot more from Dr. Mike's report.

Last Word, More Orbo Drawings, Lucky 2?

2007-07-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

Today in the Forums, Duracell points out that Matt Cooper of The Last Word interviewed Sean last Wednesday, before the demo collapse. Here is a link to the audio interview. Matt had a previous interview with Sean this past May.

The interview starts at around 49:30 minutes into the mp3, and is about 5 minutes long. There isn't much content in the interview, again we hear Sean making bold claims. One interesting note is that Sean states that they'll be making changes to the device during the demo. I'm not quite sure where he was going with that.

At the end of the interview, Sean states that others may have found this type of technology, but that their battle with public opinion and scientific opinion was too difficult to win. I have to disagree, opinion has nothing to do with it. It's all about science and evidence, which we've seen none so far.

Also in the forums, Axle published CAD drawings of his best guess as to what Sean was holding for reporters during his photo shoot:Finally, Magnatrix refutes Grimer's claim that only 1 of the original lucky 7 are still messing around with Orbo:

This is about the third time I've seen a post about the 7 being down to 1... where is this information comming from?
I pretty sure that this is total bull-puckys.
I heard from two of them the other day & they didn't mention anything about quitting.

BBC, Hamsters, and Over Unity

2007-07-10T04:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the article "The perpetual myth of free energy" appeared in on the BBC website. Professor Sir Eric Ash attended the demo and was able to interview the CEO of Steorn, Sean McCarthy. His analysis was blunt:

I believe that Mr McCarthy is truly convinced of the validity of his invention. It is, in my view, a case of prolonged self deception.

I find it interesting that he didn't pick up on the body language that others pointed out during the Friday Q&A. Eric Ash left the interview believing that Sean is deceiving himself vs. simply deceiving others.

Also today, Spiritual Beggar adds to his wonderful collection of Steorn Comics:

Finally, yesterday a fellow reader sent me this link to an overunity.com discussion related to how the Orbo demo may work. RoamZero posted this visimag image on page three of the discussion:

An Active Day in the Forum

2007-07-08T18:27:00.000-07:00

There was a substantial amount of activity in the forums today. We'll start off with a visit from Sean:

Folks,

Sorry that I have not been able to come in here and take the beatings, I will try to get some time over the next few weeks.

Thanks,

Sean

Sean stays around for a little bit and answers a few questions:

Fiksu_Vekotin: Does this failed demo change your plans on releasing the tech in anyway?

Steorn: Our strategy will remain the same, however it is fair to say that we will to do some different things at a tactical level, but I am not going to comment on what they might be at this stage.

genesis:what can u say about info leak from DrMike--is this true----did this impacted to his visit?

Steorn: I have not seen any 'leaked' info, I have not had a chance to be on the net till now. Hows my health - grand, at the end of the day I droped the ball, I did it in a public way but its done, I have to dust myself off and get on with it.

A cryptic leaked info debate between crank and drmike can be seen over in this thread. crank claims to have deleted a post from drmike with proprietary information in it. she then goes on to say that she and drmike worked out their differences in a private conversation.

jimboot:Any news on the new SPDC intake yet?

Steorn: Hi Jim, I met with a few of the new SPDC folks yesterday for quite a while. I will be following up on getting thier accounts set up when I get back to the office.

probus:how do you want to regain credibility, Sean? dont you think that it is almost impossible to do so?

Steorn: Well I guess that many would say that the nature of the claim never allowed me to be viewed as credible, for sure we will have to do something to regain the confidence of those who hope we are right, we will do that.

Sean makes a good point here. The failed demo doesn't do Steorn very much damage, considering that most everyone didn't believe them in the first place. What it does is do is attract more folks who may have a proprinsity of believe for this type of thing.

genesis: SEAN----free energy is what u believe or is what u say to get science on this.....PLEASE answer if u can......

Steorn: We have measured every energy source that it is possible to measure and hence we are confident in our claim that it is free energy. There is always the possibility that the tech taps ZPE/Dark Energy, but it is just not possible to measure these. Even if we are tapping ZPE/Dark Energy the net result to all of us is the same, the energy is free.

sb2020: You said you would have something to show - either Stop/start or CM. Why not show the original config when the CM failed?

Steorn: The reason that the demo failed was at the end of the day the pressure put on our engineers to get the system running in the demo case in a few hours. This compressed time frame forced us to do things (replacing parts on the fly) that would not have happend if the pressure was not there. It was my call to do this in the short time available to us on site, it was a bad call and not one that I am going to repeat by pre-announcing a time frame. When the demo is done next time we will install the tech in a calm and rational manner, then announce it.

probus: i m convinced Sean, you are absolutely aware of the fact that it its not about hope but about hard scientific facts and indeed a working device. do you think you and your company is able to respond within the next 2 coming months in a way that will satisfy all the disappointed people?

Steorn: We will respond, we have to, but I am not going to discuss time frames at this point.

Supposedly the Jury will be delivering at the end of this year, so the time frame for any response from Steorn will most likely come before then.

b2020: So why not show the old config - would have saved some face?

Steorn: The straight answer to the is that the 'stop-start' configs are not as robust as the CM systems. You may view it as saving face, but for me the key issue is not to compound the error I made.

Sean mentioned in the Friday update that the old configuration has been known not to survive a car trip. These devices seem to be very fragile! I'm guessing it will be a while before my cell phone battery is replaced.

Dr. Mike gave a short update on his trip:

drmike: No shift for me. I'm still really skeptical.

twinbee: So can we interpret that to mean you haven't seen the device in action yet? Didn't Steorn show you anything?

drmike: I got to see what all the other spudders saw. It was the same thing that Steorn sent me in a tech report. Sean is actually thinking about releasing it all to open source - but wants some NDA to cover ip so needs to think about it.

And finally:

You'll get a full report when I get back home on a real Linux machine. I can use anything, but I like comfort

It's was a bit unclear, but it sounds like he'll be back Wednesday for the full report.

One last item of interest. crank today revealed a little bit about what SPDC'ers know regarding the manufacturer of Steorn's toy:

Fiksu_Vekotin:By the way Crank, a long time ago there was talk about a "well known" partner that Steorn had. I know you know who it is, but does the SPDC know it?

crank: Yes, the SPDC knows who it is. The SPDC has been given basically all the same info that I was given at the start, plus some additional stuff..

It's hard to believe that the details of this well known partner haven't leaked out of the SPDC along with all the other leaks.

As drmike put it "too many threads to scan!!"

My Best Answers

2007-07-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

Jason Bradbury posted these questions earlier this morning. I've done my best at initial answers, but feel free to comment and give more detail where appropriate:

1. How long did the engineers have to build the Orbo demo?
According to Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, he gave a team of engineers three days to build the demo out of clear Plexiglas. In his talk on Friday, Sean said that Steorn arrived in London on Sunday with three systems. It's unclear if the three days mentioned were before Sunday, or if they had three days to assemble existing systems between Sunday and Wednesday of last week.

2. Who are the engineers - are they Steorn employees.
They are either Steorn employees or contractors. Sean has stated that he has four PhD's under contract working for Steorn until the end of this year. It is unclear if the engineers Sean refers to are employees or contractors.

3. What is the position of this forum re Steorn - who set up this blog, when and why?
You can read my initial post back in March of this year to get a feel for why I setup this blog. Basically I was a forum lurker, and I figured I should turn my addiction into something of value for others. I attempt to document events that might be relevant to understanding what Steorn is all about.

4. What is Steorn's stated aim in the next, say, 7 days.
According to Sean, Steorn engineers are still working on the demo, but he doesn't want to put a deadline on when or if a demo will occur. Unfortunately we don't know what other things Steorn are up to at the moment. In the past, Sean has said there will be a Q2 Jury update, but based on the Q1 update who knows when or if that might actually take place.

5. What does this blog think about a company that manages information like a Labour press secretary :-)
If it were me, I'd do it differently. Assuming they have what they claim to have, being as tight lipped as possible seems like a reasonable approach. It's the other side of Steorn, their Web Forum, SPDC Club, Economist Ads, YouTube Videos, and most recently highly public demo failure that I don't really understand.

6. If you were to give a percentage on the overall feeling on this site as to the reality or fiction of Orbo - what would that be (i.e - about 70% of commenters believe Orbo won't work)
I'm a skeptic. Most commenters here are also skeptics or cynics. I'll give Steorn my original odds of 0.001% of having something. I'm guessing a lot of my readers give them lower odds then that.

7. What is the most damning piece of information that has surfaced in the last few days
In the last few days, clearly the management of the demo hints at best incompetent management, at worst some sort of fraud or scam. The excuses provided by Steorn don't seem to be realistic. In the past few months, there have been some loose ends. One of the biggest issues that Steorn hasn't addressed is the March 2007 investment of 8 million euros, after declaring that Steorn would take no more investment money after August 2006. Since August, the most damning piece of information is really the claim itself. Why make such a claim without providing any evidence?

8. What piece of information in the last few days makes you think we could be about to witness a working Free Energy Device?
Unfortunately all the information over the last few days has pointed in the opposite direction. Some members of the press were able to take photos of Sean holding a demo device, and Steorn did go through a lot of trouble setting up webcams, renting out the Kinetica Museum, printing t-shirts and making cute posters. While it's baffling to me that someone would go through all this trouble without actually having a working model of what they claimed, Steorn did it.

9. Who is Dr Mike - or at least - what's his relation to this blog and his credentials for being at the demo?
Was he sent by this blog? Does he run it?
How Dr. Mike ended up in London is an interesting story. Earlier this year, Steorn offered to have a skeptical forum member with a physics background come to Steorn, under NDA, and investigate their claims. This member of the forum would be able to report back to us on their opinion, without giving away any technical details about the device. The original volunteer had a falling out with Steorn, and Dr. Mike took his place as the forum representative. Dr. Mike frequently posts comments on this blog, and he is one of the central figures in this puzzle at the moment due to this special situation, so I frequently blog about him. For more details about Dr. Mike, see this post. Originally Dr. Mike was going to visit Steorn headquarters, but Steorn chose to have him attend the demo instead. Sean McCarthy stated that Dr. Mike would have a couple of days before the demo to do tests on the demo device, but unfortunately this didn't take place. We're all still waiting for Dr. Mike to return and give his opinion on the demo. He'll be returning Tuesday of next week.

.... (Aaargh - all so confusing and yet so interesting?!)
This whole ordeal has been both confusing and interesting. There is a part of me that hopes it's true. There is a part of me that knows it can't be. We're all just going along for the ride. The real truth hasn't been revealed yet, whether it involves a set of plans for a device that will change the world, or a few sets of handcuffs we just don't know. If it isn't real, we're not even quite sure what the whole point of it is.

Steorn has raised 14 million euros for this venture, you'd think if this were a scam, they would have been long gone by now. Instead they are creating a club and updating the public every now and then on a supposed Jury process, which no one can really be certain is happening. Pretty confusing and interesting. Thanks for your questions Jason.

Dr. Mike Gives a Brief Update Today

2007-07-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

We had our first quiet day in a while. Today in the forums, Dr. Mike gives us this update:

I got way to smashed last night to join the party this evening. There were a lot of people let into the kinetica site today around 11:00 this morning. Sean again profusely appologized, then answered a few questions. After that, we all went upstairs and several people played with rotors and stators and neos while Sean gave some descriptions of the core technology.

Sean said the main reason he had problems was the short time scale he gave the engineers. So he will not make any decisions for the next few days while the dust settles and he will give the engineers as much time as they need. If they have something before the end of the week, he may turn things back on - but he made no promises this time.

I left around 16:30 when most people headed off to the pub. I had to go back to my hotel to recover from last night out - there is no way I can keep up with these Irish drinkers!!!

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike

PS - I got to wear the "drmike" t-shirt today!

We're not sure what type of agreement Dr. Mike has with Steorn about releasing his opinion on the past few days at the moment. Hopefully we'll learn soon what events transpired. The whole bit about SPDC members playing with magnets doesn't surprise me at all :-). I wasn't under the impression that Steorn had given them the know-how to actually build an Orbo, so my hunch is that they are just playing around with magnets.

Also, I would like to give some credit to Steorn's forum administrators. All though we love to hate them, they've been doing a fair job in my opinion moderating these past few days. It's gotta be stressful for them. Remember, crank and Magnatrix are not Steorn employees and are volunteer moderators.

SPDC Fall Out

2007-07-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

Frank Grimer, a former SPDC member as of today, had a falling out with Steorn due to the botched demo. It all started with this comment from Grimer:

The faithful have been told not to post on this forum until the demo starts. I regard the 6pm time when it was supposed to start as a virtual start (bit like virtual particles) and therefore I have been posting ever since. At the very outset of this forum I suggested that people were gutless for not using their own names and hiding behind pseudonyms. I was heavily criticised for that attitude but it would seem that I am being proved correct.

The SPUD group are hiding behind their NDAs.

I'm not sure what to think of Steorn asking the SPDC members not to comment on the forum. This probably was to protect the SPDC from accidentally leaking additional information that they were given about the demo. We now know the leak over on Steorn's Orbo was 100% dead on.

Grimer's melt down continued:

It would seem that the only thing that's going to get broken round here is my NDA.

And what are Steorn going to do about it? Sue me? You are having a laugh. :bigsmile:
...
To sue me they would have to produce their perpetual motion machine in court to prove to the judge that they weren't lying. I can't see the judge being very impressed if the present performance is any guide. Piss-up and brewery springs to mind. :wink:

That would be an interesting court case to track. A cryptic Irish free energy company vs. an NDA melt down.

At some point in the discussion, Grimer posted a thread from the SPDC forum into Steorn's open public forum. crank removed the post, primarily due to the fact that it contained SPDC members names. Also, Grimer may be auctioning his NDA paperwork off on E-Bay and donating the money to African children.

Now Grimer is convinced that Steorn is some kind of cult. His guess is as good as any at the moment.

I think all of this highlights an important point. Don't sign an NDA with a company that has the possibily of being fraudulent or a cult. From Steorn's perspective, don't have 200+ people sign an NDA and expect them to keep your secrets. Clearly any information up to now in the SPDC is most likely leaked, and now I doubt Steorn will share any additional sensitive information with this group.

If Steorn is up to separating out the believers from the rest of us, I think this whole debacle did a pretty good job of it.

3pm Update Video

2007-07-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

Here is the Q&A session on video, thanks to Zen Master Lee in Steorn's Forum:

Sean states that due to this blunder, which he takes full responsibility for, there may be a need to re-evaluate their cryptic approach. Who knows what will happen next.

Also, Sean mentions that the engineers are still working on fixing the problem, but he's not going to commit to a deadline for when they get it working. He even suggested that next week is possible.

Update:
meta just posted this analysis on Sean's watch bearings comment:

What I found curious is Sean said they were using bearings from the watch industry, which are usually "jeweled bearings", they are designed to give very low drag-a jewel with a steel pivot running in it There are some small plain and ball bearings used too but...even small 1/4" x 1/8" neos throw some big shock loads when you run them past each other. I do not see watch type jeweled bearings surviving very long, they are not designed to take much load, or shock, at all. Nor do I have much confidence in any other tiny small bearing used in watches... this revelation about watch bearings just boggles my mind.

3pm Update Details

2007-07-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

Whitelite is the first to report details from Steorn's 3pm Update:

Anyway it was open to the public at that specific time and there were lot's of people taking pictures and filming, (with no objections from Steorn), so I'm sure someone will stick something on YouTube in no time, (if they haven't done it already!).

I'll post any additional information from others in this blog entry, if more appears.

The general gist of the discussion was Sean apologising profusely about the lack of any demo or device, (at that time), and basically taking the blame for the whole thing and saying that everyone else at Steorn was advising that the 3 days Sean requested the engineers to make the demo machine was too short.

3 days to build the demo unit? I'm sure a lot more time went into finding quotes for posters, etc.

I talked to a nice bloke who is a Kinetica staff member and I believe he said that Kinetica could still host things up to the 16th if the wanted but beyond that there are some major building works going on next door, (like digging up the pavements), so I can't see the demo continuing beyond there. Incidentally the guy was very complimetary about Steorn and he said Kinetica had a great relationship with them.

From Kinetica's perspective, this must all be some form of art project. I doubt it a botched over unity demo will heart their credibility at all. I hope we get a more detailed account of the Q&A portion of the update.

I took some screen shots of the gathering for your enjoyment:

Reactions from the Press

2007-07-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

Here are a few recent articles and blogs highlighting Steorn's failure to produce a demo:

I4U News - Steorn Orbo Demo delayed until further Notice

To cite a friend of mine who reads every issue of P.M. magazine: "This is one big marketing gag". It is just not clear what the benefit would be for the company.

Engadget - Steorn Orbo: canceled

Holy snakeoil Batman, The Steorn Orbo exhibition has been canceled. According to a press release by Steorn CEO (and lead shyster) Sean McCarthy, the company "will explore alternative dates for the public demonstration." Yeah, right.

Respectful Insolence - Repeat after me: Conservation of energy precludes perpetual motion machines

After falling for such claims enough times, you'd think that journalists would go back to the physics textbooks and read up on the basics, you know, like the Three Laws of Thermodynamics. You'd especially think that a techy website like Engadget would know better than to hype this stuff without a bit more of the appropriate level of skepticism.

You'd be wrong.

Belfast Telegraph - Irish firm's display of 'free-energy' machine delayed
NewsFactor - Perpetual Energy Demo Runs into Technical Difficulties
CBC News - Energy-from-nothing device fails to move

Free Energy, Next Time

2007-07-06T04:27:00.000-07:00

The CEO of Steorn, Sean McCarthy, has publicly announced that the Kinetica Demo of Steorn's Orbo will be postponed until further notice:

Folks,

We have had to make the unfortunate decision to deffer the public demonstration of our technology that was due to start on the 4th. I am very sorry that we have had to take this decision, I will provide a more detailed explanation of the reasons behind the decision later.

I would like to invite any of the forum members (SPDC or otherwise) who are in London to meet me at 15:00 here in Kinetica, were I will be available to answer any questions.

Very sorry about this, hope to see some of you at 15:00.

Thanks,

Sean

Steorn has also posted a press release regarding the decision:

Further to Steorn’s announcement yesterday (5th July) regarding the technical difficulties experienced during the installation of its “Orbo” technology at the Kinentica Museum in London, Steorn has decided to postpone the demonstration until further notice.

Sean McCarthy CEO stated that “technical problems arose during the installation of the demonstration unit in the display case on Wednesday evening. 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.”

He continued that “we apologise for the inconvenience caused to all the people who had made arrangements to visit the demonstration or were planning on viewing the demonstration online.”

Over the next few weeks the company will explore alternative dates for the public demonstration.

Kinetica Museum Walk Around Video

2007-07-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

To give us a better feel of Steorn's setup, RunningBare posted this video of the outside of the Kinetica Museum:

While we wait: Kinetica and Orbo Photos

2007-07-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

dobson points us to some photos he took while visiting the Kinetica Museum this week. (Here is a link to his flickr page):

"Too bad that Richard claims not to understand words like Entropy and Conservation. "

"Some of these guys had traveled a very long way to check out the Steorn exhibition, needless to say they were quite upset that it had not yet opened."

Another reader points us to this photo of Sean holding an Orbo:

If anyone scanned in the whole print article, let me know. The photo looks like the same hands and shirt that held the Orbo in Silicon Republic's article:

And so now we're still waiting on a higher resolution photo of the device. Hopefully Steorn will solve their technical problems and get the device on display. Then we can have some better photos, and something more to talk about then one of the most important laws, Murphy's.

Photos of the Lab, No Load

2007-07-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

One of our readers was able to get this photo of the lab where Steorn is working on the device:

"Attached are 2 pictures of the upstairs of Kinetica-Museum which Steorn are using as a temporary workshop. You can see a perspex disc, blu tack, a drill, a hammer and a hack saw. Over unity it would seem does not seem to require more than a few basic household tools! Though those hot lights clear play havoc with the blu tack!!!"

He was also able to speak with a Steorn employee:

You can also see pictures of the red jacketed Steorn employee I vented my spleen at around 10.00am, telling him that I had never in my 20 years in technology sales and marketing seen such an incredible display of incompetence. He had no answer to the most obvious of questions. He presented himself as a spokesman for Steorn.
...
Most tellingly he admitted before 4 witnesses that there was no load bearing Orbo device inside the Kinetica museum. No weights being lifted by any device. Just a spinning Orbo (still requiring fixing) . He explicitly said that "the load bearing device is back in Dublin".

Our first view of Orbo, All 4 Cameras are Live

2007-07-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

Camera 1:

Camera 2:
Camera 3:

Camera 4:

Steorn's Screwup in the News

2007-07-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

Here are some recent stories posted around the Internet:

SiliconRepublic - The heat is on Orbo

Steorn say that the intense heat should not affect future applications of the Orbo technology as this is just a prototype. The prototype was set up in the museum on Sunday and as of Tuesday night, McCarthy said it was functioning perfectly until yesterday when it froze suddenly.
...
“We did break the barings when we were installing it, but it looks to us almost certainly that it is probably the intense heat from spotlights that were only installed yesterday afternoon,” said McCarthy.

To remedy this, McCarthy said: “We could put fans all around but then we’re pushing air across the wheel,” which would attract the same amount of suspicion as hidden batteries.

ZDNet - Rupert Goodwins - Steorn demo fails to appear - update

Sean McCarthy: "We don't expect to convince anyone with the demo straight off, it's more a sort of cat and mouse game. We'll see how people react and change it accordingly"

Wired - The Perpetual Energy Machine: Art Project?

the live feed page on the Kinetica site makes us think this is all a big hoax in the name of art. The garbled visuals are accompanied by creepy new age music and some indistinguishable chatter

Brilliant reporting Wired, those are astream's test feeds.

Here are some other related stories:

PES Network - Orbo Free Energy Demo Has Botched Start
I4U News - Steorn Orbo free Energy Technology to be shown Today
Engadget - Update on Steorn's Orbo boondoggle
TECH.BLORGE.com - Irish breakthrough: free, constant energy supply?

Update:
Additional commentaries:
Machinist: Surprise: "Free energy" machine hits "technical difficulties"
Gizmodo: The Rise and Fall of the Steorn Orbo Free Energy Machine

More Delays, Feed 3 is Live

2007-07-05T04:21:00.000-07:00

SeamusF updates us again:

We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting. We have commenced a technical assessment and will provide an update later today.

As a consequence, Kinetica will not be open to the public today (5th July). We apologise for this delay and appreciate your patience.

I find it interesting that while the skeptics just get more skeptical, some of the believers in the forum argue that these technical difficulties show that Steorn is the real deal. I think that's a bit of a stretch! I'll hold off judgment until the dust settles.

Also, Seamus gives an answer to why the demo unit was assembled on site:

SteornSkeptic:Its probably so that they can show videos of everything from the construction phase to a full working prototype in that location.

SeaumsF: Correct!

On a final note, Steorn has updated their website, so now the previously non working links are all functional:
http://www.steorn.com/orbo/demo/

Note that currently, Feed #3 is an actual feed of the demo location, while the others are still Big Ben.

Fireworks

2007-07-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a wonderful fireworks display, and it seems there were some fireworks going on with Steorn as well. SeamusF left this message on the forums:

... they ran into some technical issues, firstly a problem with the bearings, which was fixed once identified. The next issue appears to be an environmental issue. We think possibly the temperature from the lighting system in the immediate area, but this has to be further assessed in the morning.

The laws of nature are not giving up without a fight!

On another note, this is the only official word we've received from Dr. Mike:

I am in London!

No sign of Mabuse, yet.

It's late, and the beer was good. Time for me to go to bed.

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike

Kinetica Museum Update with Photos

2007-07-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Kinetica Museum website has been updated:

From 5th-13th July, visitors to Kinetica can witness for themselves 'Orbo' as it perpetually spins a clear polycarbonate wheel with absolutely no supply of external energy or power supply attached.

THE MUSEUM OPENS AT 11AM ON THURSDAY 5TH JULY

Also, thanks to one of our readers, here are pictures of the outside of the Kinetica Museum:

"True Science teaches us to doubt, and in ignorance, refrain" - Claude Bernard

Update:
On Steorn's Website:

Due to technical difficulties we will now be live from London on the 5th July.

4 Cameras, Nice Flash Intro

2007-07-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

matdes posted this link in the forum:

http://www.steorn.com/orbo/demo/demo.html

It contains a nice little flash introduction to the streaming video, which will be going live here soon:
http://www.astream.com/live/steorn/camera4.html

Note that other links related to the demo are still not working:
http://www.steorn.com/orbo/demo/
http://www.astream.com/live/steorn/camera1.html
http://www.astream.com/live/steorn/camera2.html
http://www.astream.com/live/steorn/camera3.html

Steorn Over Unity, Today at 6

2007-07-04T05:21:00.000-07:00

Update:
From Steorn's Website:

"Due to technical difficulties we will now be live from London on the 5th July."

Maybe they let Dr. Mike take it apart, and then they had trouble putting it back together!

According to various news articles and blog sites, Steorn's July Demo of an over unity device will start today at 6pm, London time. From RTE News:

Sceptics can view the device lifting a weight from four different camera angles online.

Mr McCarthy said the company had decided against using the technology to illuminate a light-bulb as the use of wires would attract further suspicion from a scientific community that has already dismissed the device.

I am certain that this media event will be bigger than the Economist Ad. We're going to see Sean McCarthy in a zillion interviews, all mostly fluff I'm sure. What I'm looking forward to seeing is Dr. Mike's opinion. If he's baffled after two days of examining the device, I'm pretty sure there will be some fence movement.

Here are links to other websites mentioning the demo:
Independent.ie
Belfast Telegraph
Engadget
The Inquirer
Wired Blog

Update:
Here are some additional Stories starting to appear today:

SiliconRepublic

“This is as big a claim as you can possibly make in the world of technology and science,” said McCarthy.
...
“It’s too good to be true but it is true,” said McCarthy, “It will have such an impact on everything we do.”
“The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn’t real,” said McCarthy.

Ireland.com

Mr McCarthy insisted Steorn are contractually obliged to publish whatever the scientists conclude in full, adding that the €8 million invested in the technology to date and the company's reputation were at stake.
"Obviously Steorn and Sean McCarthy would never recover if there is a negative result here. But we don't see that as even an outside possibility," he said.

Also the Engadget story made it to the front page of Digg

Another Update:
Steorn has made Slashdot

CEO vs CoE

2007-07-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

The battle is about to begin. An anonymous poster here along with an anonymous emailer point us to this video:

As you can see from the video, Sean McCarthy is wearing a custom Steorn "CEO vs CoE" t-shirt, in front of some building smoking a cigarette. While the author of the video could have done a better job at showing us that they are actually at the Kinetica Museum in London, I'm sure someone here can verify the building.

Dr. Mike En Route to London?

2007-07-01T19:02:00.000-07:00

Other than some silliness going on in the comments here and on Steorn's Forum, not much happened today as we await the July Demo. One note, Dr. Mike hasn't posted at all today, so there is a chance that he is en route to London. Also in the forums today:

ferg: why do they want to did this? Surely you hardcore forumers who have been dedicated to Orbo and its outcome deserve to know when and wheres it on don't you?

Magnatrix: Quite right... those who are "dedicated" already know (people in the SPDC)

Dr. Mike's Bags are Packed

2007-06-30T19:14:00.001-07:00

Dr. Mike's bags are packed!

aveeguy: drmike, quit teasing us! Are your bags packed?

drmike: YES! My wife never let's me do anything "just in time".

I also found this post enlightening from Dr. Mike. He's given us a layman's explanation of Magnetic Viscosity:

OK, let's drop down to the atomic level. The atoms are in a lattice, and several atoms form a magnetic unit, like Fe_3O_4. 1000's of units make a domain. Millions of domains make a magnet. (a very small one!)

So let's take all the units to saturation so all the domains align. Now, let the external field go away.Most of the domains stay aligned, but some don't because they are not oriented along their "easy" axis, and the magnet slips back to Br. The time it takes for all the domians to flip depends on the temperature of the magnet and the "anisotropy energy". If you kill the external field instantly (impossible in reality, but let's just pretend) then the instantaneous Br will be higher than at some time 5 to 10 decay constants later.

That is magnetic viscosity.

He goes on to say:

Where does the energy go? It goes into the atomic lattice - the atoms oscillate a touch slower in the domains that don't align. They have to give up some thermal energy to go to a higher energy state of mis-alignment with their neighbors. It doesn't take long for them all to come back to equilibrium with the rest of the magnet though - the speed of sound in the material helps with that.

This seems counter intuitive to me - you'd think the misalinged domains would heat up - but that doesn't conserve energy. The fully aligned saturated system is at the lowest possible entropy state. From basic thermodynamics

T*dS = dE + dW

I guess I'll give Steorn an out here. If they can maintain T and increase dS, then dE has to increase and they can do work with it. I'll have to think about that a lot more!

Is it or Isn't It?

2007-06-29T05:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, an anonymous poster here and another anonymous source over at Dispatches from the Future claim to know details about the upcoming July demo. I almost didn't blog about the topic, I normally try to make sure any posts I make here have some substance.

Instead of spending time mulling over this potential leak, I'd like to bring up a related point. The SPDC is growing in size, and it will become, or has already become, very difficult to determine which members leak proprietary information out to the public, and even if it is possible to determine who leaked the information, the situation still boils down to the information being leaked.

For this reason, I find the SPDC NDA requirement a bit silly. Steorn must have realized from the start that anything presented to the SPDC has a very good chance of being leaked. The more revealing the information, the more quickly it will make it out to the blog-o-sphere. For those SPDC'ers out there, if this is all real, I cannot imagine a situation where Steorn would provide any substantial information to the entire 200+ SPDC'ers which would allow anyone to replicate their findings. If this is not real, then the SPDC'ers have signed an NDA with a company that has unknown intentions.

Could the whole purpose of this exercise in Free Energy be something as simple as attempting to scale up online security? Could Steorn have raised 14 million euros over the past three years to develop a product that can monitor online contractual agreements or something along those lines?

Disagreement, Even in the SPDC

2007-06-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

In the thread, Which will happen first?, some of the skeptics and believers have a public argument over evidence presented to the SPDC:

enginerd:I am in no-wise violating the NDA I signed when I say that I have yet to see any evidence for Steorn's claim presented in the SPDC forum.

There are some interesting discussions. Sean drops some intriguing hints. Some people who post there are doing some cool experiments. I like cool experiments.

007: LOL - You must have joined the wrong SPDC. The one that the rest of us joined has lots of "evidence" as you put it. Since you've been all but anonymous I actually thought you'd left?

lazy8: Um..I really enjoy the extra "clues" for the game we play that are presented in the SPDC.

But absolutely NO PROOF or EVIDENCE of anything at all has been presented there.

Sure, some stuff that is claimed to be patent "pending" AFAIK, but, utterly nothing in the way of evidence of anything.

NOTHING.

First it's nice to see that there are skeptics in the SPDC. It also amazes me that the will to believe sometimes outweighs actual evidence.

Magnatrix Sees the Goods

2007-06-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

Update: This thread has been removed from the forum

Today Magnatrix, one of the forum administrators, claimed on the forum that she has seen a "webfile" of the orbo running for a little bit of time, I'm assuming either it was a video or live webcast:

Magnatrix: The fact is the demo will happen.

How can I be so certain? Because I've seen the product.

pcstru4: And did it demonstrate OU, this product?

Magnatrix: That is a difficult one to answer...
I did not see it running long enough ( imho), not that it stopped or anything, it's just that this was via a webfile.
and since I don't have one in my hands yet, I could not state unequivocally that this is OU.... however, I do strongly believe that it is; (or rather will-be when I get one)
And I see no point in having a demonstration in such a public venue, making such claims, if it were not.
...
No more answers from me about Orbo...
either go to London yourselves, read what Dr. Mike has to say about it, &/or watch the broadcasts ()

Sean Returns for a Moment

2007-06-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

Update: This thread has been removed from the forum

Today in the discussion "All Great Truths begin with Blasphemes", Sean poked in for a moment and had this to say:

We are not planning any futher ads at this stage, we will annonce the details only on the day it goes live, its going to be lots of fun, it will be interesting from my point of view just to watch the analysis of what is going to happen. I am already aware of people planning to bring IR cameras and all kinds of test equipment, so on-line may be the best place to watch (however there is only one place were you can get the T-Shirts and thats in the venue - and yes they are free, just like the energy!).

So in addition to free energy, some will get free T-Shirts! While Sean doesn't explicitly come out and say it, I'm assuming from his attitude so close to the July Demo that things are going as planned.

No News, Good News?

2007-06-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted. I'm still reading the Steorn forums every day, there just hasn't been much to report! Steorn hasn't posted to the forums since early June.

Dr. Mike has posted more data from his Sv Experiment, but won't have time to analyze the data between now and the July Demo. Also, on the good news front, members of the SPDC have sponsored Babcat's trip to go to the demo. While it might be quiet this month, my guess is it will be tough to keep up with all the news starting in July.

On a completely different subject, I'm in the process of starting a SCUBA related website, and I could use some help! If you are a SCUBA diver and are interested in helping, please email me at wgorman AT gmail.com. Thanks!

Sv Experiment Photos

2007-06-09T18:26:00.000-07:00

Today, Dr. Mike posted photos of his new t-shirt and also a few photos of his Sv Experiment. As you can see, reality is a bit different then CG ;-).

Also today, Dr. Mike had this to say about the experiment:

Given Steorn's claim that power is generated, we should see some interesting phenomena which can not be easily explained with standard CoE physics. Since they get a mechanical gain, I would think we can see it with a mechanical set up.

Since I don't know what to look for, the more eyes and minds looking the better. Suggestions for data collection and doing analysis are welcome. It seems like spread sheet type software can do things like plot and mess with the data. Coming up with algorithms takes a little playing with - you need to try stuff, plot it, try something else, plot it and keep playing to see what pops out or changes. Then, when something looks strange, go back and try another experiment with different parameters to see what happens.

T-Shirts, Minnesota and Leaked Orbos

2007-06-07T18:54:00.000-07:00

Dr. Mike received a package from an anonymous fan containing Dr. Mike branded t-shirts for his upcoming trip to London. I don't know how I'd feel if an anonymous package appeared at my door, but that's a pretty cool gift!

Also today, the forum member gdaigle has published this article over at OhmyNews.com about how Orbo, if real, could impact the state of Minnesota.

Finally, nleseul points us to this first ever leaked photo of Steorn's Orbo:

Dr. Mike Sv Experiment Update

2007-06-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

While the experiment is still an on-going process, Dr. Mike has provided everyone with a lot of data to keep those interested busy :-). ramuk has published screen shots of excel graphs of the raw data to give us an idea of what we're looking at:

drmike: I'll take a few more blocks of data this evening if I can, then start to think about signal processing.

I'm still at a loss as to how this data may show a loss of energy and a violation of CoE, but I'm not a physicist ;-).

Dr. Mike's First Data, Sean Visits the Forum

2007-06-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Dr. Mike announced here that he has published the first set of experimental data to his website:

First data is uploaded. It's just accelerometer data, packed in a zip file. Let me know if there are problems, this is really just a test run. I've got to add magnets and magnetometers yet.

Also today, Sean chimed in on the "Why hasn't Sean posted any comments for the past two weeks" discussion:

As for the not posting in a while, its pretty simple, have been buried at work and had the flu, sorry its a bit mundane, but true.

He also answered Ping's question on Steorn Nominees:

Ping, agreed on the company structure, and we are preparing to restructure Steorn towards the end of the year, but as I said before in here Steorn Nominees is not for that purpose, it was a vehicle that we used to co-invest into Orbo Ltd. (nothing to do with our technology), it serves no other purpose at all.

The Slowest Week Yet...

2007-06-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering why this blog hasn't been updated for a few days. Unfortunately there has been no news to pass along. While we haven't heard a peep from Steorn lately, we are getting updates from Dr. Mike on his experiment:

I got the bearings! So now I get to build the actual experiment. Biggest problem is that the steel rod I got is exactly 0.75" diameter, and the bearing holes are exactly 0.75" in diameter, so it won't go together. I've got the rod in the freezer and I'll stick the bearings outside to warm up, so with luck I'll get .001" clearance be able to assemble my pivot. I don't think it's going to sag much.

The accelerometer and other two inputs (which will soon be magnetometers) are being read at 796 Hz and I can capture to file with no apparent loss using hyperterm. I think collecting data under linux or dos should be trivial.

But mostly, it's just plain fun!

For any of those folks who think validation or experiments, especially during someone's spare time, only takes a couple of days, Dr. Mike's setup shows that even something as simple as a pendulum takes a while to put together. Watching Dr. Mike's process on getting the sensors working, bearings fitted, etc is "just plain fun" for the rest of us also! I can't wait to see some photos and data.

38 days 21 hours 35 minutes

2007-05-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

After a nice break, I see that I haven't missed much. Dr. Mike and sonoboy continue to post updates and more details of their experiments on Steorn's forum here and here. Now that we are in the last week of May, we can start counting down till the July demo. My guess is that the demo will take place the same week as Live Earth in London, based on what Sean has posted in the past. The Live Earth London Website conveniently has a count down, so there is no need for us to implement our own!

Offline For the Weekend...

2007-05-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Other than some great hobbyist experiments, not much has been going on over in Steornville lately. I'm going to be spending the weekend relaxing on Sanibel Island, so I won't be posting or moderating for the next couple of days. Everyone have a great weekend! I'll do my best Monday night to capture anything that took place while I was gone.

Second SPDC Round Over and Some Blog Stats

2007-05-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

Today in the forums, SeamusF informs us that today was the last day for the second round of SPDC applications. He also mentions that there was a good response for new SPDC'ers. It will be interesting to see how many additional SPDC members there will be after the NDA's are received.

Unfortunately not much else has been happening in the forums that is Steorn related.

One Free Energy Tracker reader asked if I could post another map of visitors which I did a while back in the 1000th Visitor post. Since the start of this blog in early March, we've received over 31,000 visits and over 61,ooo page views!

A Weekend Update and a Possible Theory

2007-05-21T19:05:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, Dr. Mike has made some progress on his experiment:

I have a microcontroller board from another project which I'm going to modify. It will use 5 analog inputs (3 accelerometer, 2 magnetometer) and spit out serial data, hopefully at 230400 baud. I'll try for ascii so I can just use a terminal emulator to capture the data. Modification parts are on order.

I've got rubber/plastic coated neos (N42 class) being shipped. Shapes are 1/2"X1"X1/4" with N-S thru the 1/4" and 1/2" diam X 1/4" thick disk. Not exactly what I wanted, but easily available and cheap.

Also, in the comments of The Tickets Have Arrived here on Free Energy Tracker, 15-india-street points us to toiz's attempt to explain how the Steorn effect might work:

http://www.madpages.com/fe/

Also, thanks go to alsetoken who posted this link to photos of Steorn's test machinery.
I hadn't seen some of those photos before, even though they were posted back in November!

One final note, this is the 100th blog entry here at Free Energy Tracker since March. We've had a lot to talk about! My favorite part about this whole experience is the collaboration, which is in full swing right now. Together I hope we can figure out what the heck is going on, be it galactic conquest or galactic embarrassment!

The Tickets Have Arrived

2007-05-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

From the Few questions to drMike thread:

You will all be happy to know that I have received tickets to London (and back) for the July demo (and 2 days before). So I'll have to make sure my Sv Experiment hardware is portable, not just sloppy prototype!

I'd like to give Steorn credit for following through with this, there were a lot of doubts about whether Dr. Mike would ever get these tickets. Now let's see how they follow through with the demo!

Dr. Mike also has posted here a bit more about what he hopes to accomplish with the experiment:

The idea of this experiement is to test Steorn's methods by a direct attack on the physics. They claim Sv is part of it. They claim magnets moving towards and away from each other are part of it. This test does both, and if we don't see any Sv (either within a few runs or after many) then Sv can't be part of Orbo.

It's a cool test because it should show all the OU builders how to measure real world parameters. It's fun for me because Sv is based on quantum mechanics, so if I can measure something, I can dig into quantum theory to attempt to explain it.

So either way, it's fun and educational. We may not convince Steorn there's no such thing as CoE violation, but at least we can see reality for what it is.

Finances and Physics

2007-05-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today in the forums most of the activity was centered around Dr. Mike's experiment in the Sv Experiment thread. Sean chimed in pretty late tonight, he must be having some trouble sleeping! Also, ebswift took the time to render Dr. Mikes sketches in 3D. Thanks ebswift!

Now on to some finance information. Today 15-india-street posted this spreadsheet which combines the past seven years of Steorn's public investment data into one easy to read page. I still haven't had a chance to review the CRO documents myself, but this makes it much easier to see the big picture. It's mind boggling that Steorn will need to be worth more that 200 million euros before certain investors break even on their investment.

Dr. Mike's Sv Experiment

2007-05-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

After a bit of back and forth between Sean and Dr. Mike, which lead to a public approval by Sean for Dr. Mike to publish his experiment, we now have the beginnings of Dr. Mike's Sv Experiment.

Some thought Sean was a bit harsh on Dr. Mike today. There seemed to be some miss communication regarding whether Dr. Mike could publish his version of the experiment. While Sean had emailed Dr. Mike a critique of the proposed experiment, I wonder if Dr. Mike was still expecting a follow up email or communication allowing him to openly discuss the experiment. Once the dust settled, we got our answer from Sean:

Mikes experiment design is his own, he asked my views, I gave them to him, I saw many technical problems with it, if Mike wants to post his experiment, there is nothing that Steorn can or would do about it, other than to comment on the variety of problems that I see with it, although I do now see that Mike is suggesting stainless steel instead of the steel design that he originally mailed to me and posted above, there are lots of issues, I have no problem discussing them in public, IMO the design is not very good, but lets get the issues in the open, but again I do want an explanation of the lapse of memory issues.

While it's always fun to discuss finances and intentions, I prefer physics. The Sv Experiment thread is off to a great start and I'm sure we'll all learn a lot more about magnetic viscosity and Sv in the process.

Dr. Mike's Progress

2007-05-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

Over in the thread Few Questions to drMike blueletter asks:

Dr. Mike, How's your Sv testing progressing?

drmike responds:

I'm waiting on Steorn to OK my proposal. I'd like to create a public physics experiment so we can all discuss it, and I'd like for it to be so far off from Steorn's methods that you can't directly see how it connects to anything they are doing. I've got plans, and I've got a few parts listed I'd want to order to build the thing (steel frame mostly) but there's no point in proceeding if Steorn won't let me talk about it.

Hopefully Dr. Mike will get the thumbs up from Steorn soon and can move forward with his experiment.

First 8 Minutes Transcribed...

2007-05-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

It's a lot of work to transcribe interviews! It took about an hour to get the first eight minutes of the interview down on paper. You can read them here. I'll be working on getting the whole interview transcribed over the next few days. Below are some of the interesting parts of the first eight minutes.

Sean in response to whether he thinks that engaging the forums is a waste of time:

Sean: ... I don't see it at all as a waste of time, we’ve been asked by Trinity to do a similar kind of thing, ultimately its part of a process of erosion that people have now distilled the view, that I can understand, we're either for real, that people will say that it is such a small probability its not worth considering, or some kind of fraud. General opinion has actually consolidated into a very black and white vision. At the end of that, the black and whiteness of it will be resolved one way or another. Either we will be proven to be fraud, which we're not, or we will be proven to be right which we are, and then we can actually get on with the business of business.

Sean also clarifies some of the details leading up to the UCD debate, and clarifies comments he made about being lied to:

... eventually we got to speaking to the person who is responsible for issuing approval for filming in the university and he’d never heard of it, and that is specifically what I’m referring to ...

The Trinity visit should be interesting. I think we're going to have plenty of entertainment between now and July.

Dispatches from the front, an SPDC Update

2007-05-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of relevant activity today in Steorn's forum. Sean provided some interesting links in this post to some of Steorn's previous work, including links to FraudHalt and DiscMatch. Also today, crank started the thread Dispatches from the front to give us all a developer's club update:

Sean produces a test carried out on a €4000 machine, and within a few days people can replicate his results using parts cannibalised from other equipment.

It sounds like a lot of the SPDC members are very hands on. Here is part of her analysis of the current situation within the SPDC:

I think it's fair to say that there has been some movement towards the fence by hardened sceptics, and fence-sitters are gingerly lowering toes onto the believer side.

In the words of one sceptic "I'm only looking at recipes for humble pie, it's not cooking yet! But my skeptical foundation has just suffered a magnitude 5.5 quake."

pcstru4, an SPDC member and skeptic, mentioned in the thread that he's shifted a bit, from a 0.000001 chance to 0.00000125 chance :-) enginerd, another skeptic in the SPDC, also commented that no fence movement has taken place for him yet.

Make sure to read the whole thread if you have time. Crank goes on to say:

SPDC members now know the identity of the engineer in the Kinetica video, and know more about who has tested Steorn's tech in the past.

If you've listened to the interview from Friday, you'll know that I'm a bit fascinated with the whole SPDC model. I think it's great that there are true skeptics in the SPDC, and it's also great that crank is allowed to post updates like she has. The more informed we all are, the more likely it is we'll be able to figure out where this is all heading.

Hot Topics For Today: Financials and Banning

2007-05-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

Steorn was active today in the thread Sean can u clarify the financials? over in Steorn's forum. Steorn starts off by repeating their position:

There has been no new investment since August, I said this yesterday and for the past six months. Its that simple.

nleseul asks:

So is that new CRO document just reporting various transactions that happened during the first part of 2006, as crank is suggesting?

And Steorn replies:

Yep, this whole thing is what happens when you have a cynic trying to check accounts with no knowledge at all of what he is talking about - lol, its in a long list of errors that he has made on the subject, including accusing me of selling 750k's worth of shares.

There still seems to be some technical details regarding the dates of these transactions that are unclear based on what I've read here and in the forum. I haven't had a chance to review the CRO documents myself, so I'll wait to comment until I get a chance to read through them.

Also in the same thread Sean discusses the bannings of Ping and Big Oil Rep:

Well you cant really call pings banning a banning since he had set up a load of accounts, so its a bit of fun to be honest. Father Luke is a different matter.
...
FLD/The Pope/BoR had crossed the line one too many times. ping has many accounts set up (they all have the same avatar), so thats just playing around.
...
Lol, I could ban all of pings accounts in a few mins, but I have not seen anything recently that he has done that is ban worthy (you can always of course ask the question if one person should have multiple accounts). As for BoR he has posting information about Steorn that is factually incorrect, he could phrase this kind of stuff as a question, but the point he posted info that is stated as a fact and is just untrue and I strongly suspect that he knew it was untrue.

I apologize again for not getting a chance to transcribe the interview today. I listened to the interview while driving, and I especially want to pull out some of Sean's comments regarding Magnetic Viscosity and Sv.

One final note, if you didn't get a chance to view the UCD debate, I noticed that Dispatches from the Future has links to working versions of the videos on YouTube. Check it out while they last!

More Bannings, Financial Questions

2007-05-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

Today "a" aka Ping1400 was banned in the forums for the umpteenth time, Big Oil Rep was also banned. They were most likely banned due to the discussion on Steorn's financials, which started when Big Oil Rep quoted Thicket's questions in the forum here. At first I wasn't connecting Thickets dots, but then nleseul dug this up:

I withdraw my earlier argument. Steorn filed a document with the CRO on April 3, 2007 showing an allotment of 5,284 ordinary shares for a total of 8.4 million euros cash on March 26, 2007.

crank may have an explanation:

Shares can be issued up to three years after the money has changed hands, as far as I know. I checked with an accountant friend when that article was published, and the share issue things were downloaded, to see if the shares would have been paid for at the time they were issued. He laughed at me

It would be nice to get a clarification from Steorn on this one. In regards to the phone interview, I didn't get a chance tonight to pull out the good quotes. Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend. If anyone else feels up to the challenge, it would be greatly appreciated!

Free Energy Tracker Interview with Sean McCarthy

2007-05-11T07:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Sean pinged me and asked if he could get a chance to address some of the skeptics that have posted here on the Free Energy Tracker Blog. Earlier today, we spoke for a little over an hour going over everything Steorn. We spoke on a wide range of topics, and later tonight I hope to transcribe the phone interview.

Unfortunately due to some technical difficulties the quality of the recording is low, but I wanted to post it ASAP to give you all something to listen to and think about. At the end of the interview, Sean volunteered to do future interviews, so start thinking of great questions! Here's a link to the mp3.

The Game is Afoot

2007-05-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

Dr. Mike has posted this message over in the Few questions to Dr. Mike Thread:

I have received a description of an experiment and some results. It's proprietary, so that's that. If you get the paper listed in References on magnetism about magnetic viscosity you can see where the term Sv comes from.

Anisotropy energy has a time constant in nanoseconds. Sv has a time constant in milliseconds. One of the formula in the above paper shows

Sv = -k*T/(dE/dH)

where k = Boltzman's constant, T = absolute temperature, and dE/dH = change in energy barrier with respect to external field.

What's interesting is that they claim dE/dH should be measured at constant M_irr where "irr" is a reference to irreversible processes. M is permanent magnet field strength (I think). If it's irreversible it's an energy loss and entropy gain. That says
it will be really hard to see any violation of CoE in this process.

But I've got more to read, and lots of questions to ask. So check out that paper and let's see if we can figure out Sv!

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike

Also in the forums, nleseul asks:

Care to tell us your initial impression of their setup, though? Does it look like an experiment that would answer the question and be worth your time to do?

And Dr. Mike responds:

I've got some questions for them, but I want to read up on magnetic viscosity and how Sv is used in the literature. The main tie in for me is via anisotropy energy - seems like it's quite similar and has the same underlying physics as magnetic viscosity.

I think one of the main problems is that the term "magnetic viscosity" has different meanings in different contexts. I think "domain realignment time" is more appropriate for what Steorn is talking about compared to what ferrofluids or AC motors use the term for. Maybe - I have to read some more.

Dr. Mike also posted this comment here in regards to his trip in July:

No tickets yet. Promise was for next week. But I have something to read up on, so I can wait! For fun, check out:
http://joam.infim.ro/JOAM/pdf6_2/Grossinger.pdf
and read up on Sv.

Now everyone start reading!

Can Dr. Mike Sv CoE?

2007-05-09T17:53:00.000-07:00

Dr. Mike, our favorite skeptic, and Sean, our favorite free energy CEO, went at it in the forums today:

drmike: To not have anything to show anyone after all this time from last August's big splash and also to have claimed to have worked on it for 3 years prior to that, just makes it
look like there's really nothing there.

I claim the emperor has no clothes. I'm a skeptic. I'm also an engineer that likes to play with toys - no toys, no play time! That's boring. I'd rather see a toy and get a clue how to build it, that's all.

Steorn: Dr. Mike, You are also a scientist, there is enough there to go and prove us wrong if you feel that you can - go for it, you are a scientist, engineer and skeptic - surely you are in a position to test and demonstrate that an Sv reaction is thermodynamically resolvable?

drmike: Yes, I have all the tools necessary to do that in my own personal laboratory.
How'd you like to send me a toy to hook up to all that equipment?

Otherwise, I'll get together some equipment in London and do it before the demo starts.

I'm sure the forum members would like to watch, so any chance there's an internet connection at the demo site? A web cam would be very cool!

Steorn: lol Mike - as you said in your post above "I'd rather see a toy and get a clue how to build it, that's all." - well you can get that clue in July, but not before. But surely you are in a position to test an Sv interaction and prove via test that it is thermodynamically sound?

drmike: Sure. What's the set up?

Steorn: Try any interaction that includes Sv.

This next comment made me laugh:

Big Oil Rep: So any interaction that involves Sv violates COE? And no one noticed this before? Hmmm

Back to the conversation:

Steorn: look forward to hearing how your own Sv testing goes - will you keep the forum updated?

drmike: Like this paper found by Emeraldsong: http://joam.infim.ro/JOAM/pdf6_2/Grossinger.pdf? Anything in particular or just replicate something at will?

Steorn: Mike, I just mailed you a simple Sv test setup and so on, try to replicate it and then sum the energies!!

As nleseul put it, "Some excitement to fill the time between now and July! Thanks, Sean! Thanks, Dr. Mike!"

In the same thread Sean had some general remarks about the debate:

Steorn: I have to say that I had zero expectations on anything other than a bit of fun on Friday. It was the last day of college before the exams start and I was pretty sure that the whole thing would end up as an student prank. It was not that, so be it. With respect to being laughed at, so what? It is not in my nature to back down, even though we had been repeatedly lied to about the event by the organizers we went through with it, we expected nothing more than the treatment that we got.

I will continue to do this kind of thing because I think that its the right thing to do, if someone asks me to talk about it to a group of people who I think might have a genuine interest in it I will talk to them, if I have the time. They can decide to debate the issues or call names, this says more about them than me.

The UDC thing was just another day in this forum, people get emotive about the claim and revert to cries of foul - this says a lot more about them than me.

And finally, on a lighter note, Spiritual Beggar brings us another in a series of great Steorn Cartoons, which Sean used in the debate to break the ice:

Debate on YouTube: Real OR BOllocks?

2007-05-08T17:56:00.000-07:00

Second Update: The folks over at Dispatches From the Future have links to working videos on YouTube.

Update: Unfortunately the videos have been removed from YouTube due to copyright issues, see michael's posted below.

Singularity over in the Steorn Forums points us to YouTube, where michaeldoyle has posted what seems to be most of the university debate mentioned earlier. The video quality is unfortunately rough, so slides are next to impossible to make out, and the audio isn't great either.

Some of the highlights include Sean mentioning 4 PhD's that work for Steorn, the "take Conservation of Energy on Faith" comment by the rebutters, and also Sean reminds everyone that threats of physical violence were made by scientists towards Steorn.

If you can't make it through all five videos, make sure to watch the last one, which is a short Q&A session with Sean.

Steorn Part 1

Steorn Part 2

Steorn Part 3

Steorn Part 4

Steorn Part 5