Steorn is an Irish company that in 2007 promised to demonstrate their “over-unity” technology – called “Orbo”. That’s a fancy way of saying that they made a perpetual motion machine, or free energy, or that they discovered a way to break the pesky laws of thermodynamics. The demonstration failed – not, they argued, because their fundamental concepts were flawed, but because of a bad ball bearing.<\/p>\n
In the last two and a half years they have teased the world, and their investors, with a carrot and stick routine – their promised demonstrations were always just down the road, as soon as they fixed some minor technical glitch.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year an independent jury of scientists <\/a>reviewed Steorn’s Orbo technology and concluded that it was bogus (surprise, surprise).<\/p>\n At the time I speculated about what Steorn was up to. Over-unity, or a process that creates more energy than it consumes, is impossible by the laws of thermodynamics. There is no free energy – energy has to come from somewhere. This law of physics is so well established that any claim for over-unity should be met with the highest degree of skepticism. Added to this is the fact that the last century has been met with an endless procession of failed over-unity claims. When a thousand impossible claims turn out to be false, it’s hard to get excited about the 1001st.<\/p>\n Steorn presents itself as a serious company – unlike the carnival show of someone like Dennis Lee. So what are they up to? Did they bamboozle themselves by building a complex motor and missing some hidden source of external energy, or by making some math error? Are they extrapolating wildly from what ultimately is a minor error? Or, do they know exactly what they are doing – building a brand through media hype and luring investors with perpetual false promises about perpetual motion?<\/p>\n Well – Steorn is back in the news again with a slick ad campaign and fresh promises about a demonstration. This video by Steorn<\/a> pushes me in the direction of concluding the latter – that Steorn knows exactly what they are doing.<\/p>\n Rather than addressing the concerns of their critics, they have chosen to mock them – ironically embracing the terms used to mock Steorn’s claims. It’s a clever gambit – too clever, if you know what I mean. For example, they show their Orbo engine happily spinning away, and then quotes from critics calling the technology “fairy-powered” and “powered by blarney.” It is a version of the Galileo gambit – trying to make it seem as if those who are criticizing your pseudoscience are simply blind to your visionary genius. Michio Kaku says Orbo is a “fraud”, but here it is “working.”<\/p>\n Nice try, Steorn.<\/p>\n The bottom line is the same – generate demonstrable usable energy, or there is no other reasonable conclusion than your technology is a fraud. Showing a motor spinning is useless, until independent scientists can satisfy themselves that the motor is truly over-unity – that all sources and outputs of energy have been accounted for.<\/p>\n After viewing Steorn’s explanation of the technology, I am totally underwhelmed. It’s just another magnet scheme – really, Steorn, that’s it? Magnets? They hook up a motor to a battery. The battery spins the motor, which they also hook up to a generator, which returns some of the energy back to the battery. Wow. This is not even an original free energy scam. This is old-school nonsense in slick new packaging. And yet they would have us believe that this simple scheme has somehow broken the laws of physics.<\/p>\n Garage cranks and free-energy hopefuls, not to mention real engineers, have picked over the idea of using some configuration of magnets to generate free energy for years. It’s simply a lost cause.<\/p>\n Engadget also makes an interesting point<\/a>. Recently Steorn marketed a “USB powered diving rod.” This is essentially a magnetometer. Engadget writes<\/a><\/p>\n Meet the \u20ac289 (that’s $400 mister) USB Hall Probe that turns your $1,000 PC into a $40 magnetometer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When companies like Steorn start branching out into other dubious technological devices it is difficult for me to conclude anything other than selling pseudoscience is their business model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steorn is an Irish company that in 2007 promised to demonstrate their “over-unity” technology – called “Orbo”. That’s a fancy way of saying that they made a perpetual motion machine, or free energy, or that they discovered a way to break the pesky laws of thermodynamics. The demonstration failed – not, they argued, because their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[39,147,148],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pseudoscience","tag-free-energy","tag-over-unity","tag-stoern"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t