Steorn is back on the radar...

Naturally we all live in hope that this sort of thing is true.

Having looked at this website though as well as a look elsewhere on the web there doesn't seem to be much to elevate this above known frauds.

My concern is how he is selling himself on his website.

I am immediately suspicious of any attempt to leverage anti-science sentiment to generate wealth as opposed to transparency so the fact that he is selling this as controversial smells a little funny. If it works it is not the technology that is controversial, but the science saying it shouldn't. How many times does he need to state 'It is controversial' as if he is trying to make us believe it.

Also, saying science tells us that energy cannot be created is a little false in this context. True conservation of energy prohibits the creation of energy from no-where, but it definitely does not say that stored energy cannot be released. 'Over-unity' seems to be a term created so it can be copyrighted. 'Orbo is an over unity technology - it provides more energy out than is put in.' We wouldn't be able to generate power from any fuel if it wasn't releasing energy. Nuclear power puts out more energy than is put in, it just happens that the energy we are releasing was 'put in' during supernova. There is no mystery.

I once imagined myself building a machine that used solid state magnets to push against each other, each one flipping the next, so the polarities pushed each other round - all in a circle so it would continue forever. Of course forever just means until the magnets weakened, but anyway. As i grew up my imagination developed and i imagined this without the moving parts, in effect magnetic fields in solid state devices pushing against each other in a circular self feeding pattern, much like what this Orbo sounds like. I never invested much time as i imagined i would lose energy to heat etc and that it would not be possible to derive much form it. It will be fantastic if he as actually built it.

If we are to extract energy from it though then it will need to create energy. This is his claim. He thinks it creates it without a source, rather than just releasing energy from storage like we do at the moment, be the storage chemical or nuclear. I am highly suspicious of this. Even if he has found something like this i find it much more likely he has simply discovered a means of releasing stored energy from some new force principle or coupling mechanism. If that was the case then his use of controversy as part of an advertising strategy may be clever, but is not physics.

I also can't find any evidence of a patent, which is up to him of course and there can be reasons why he hasn't got one yet. The only public demonstration he has made (he has pulled out of some at the last minute) included a battery, which he said was being charged by the device. Many can't help noticing though that the demonstration of a power generating device would have been much more believable if it hadn't contained a power source.

I also both lament and become bored by the number of scientists who are apparently willing to say that something works only in private as well as how often concealing expert witness is used as a strategy by frauds. If a physicist cannot tell whether a power generator is creating power when nothing else is plugged into it from which the power could be coming with enough confidence to stake their reputation on it then i'm not confident in their verdict anyway.

Of course I also get pretty excited about new BioWare video games, orgone generators, Carl Jung's Red Book, and the seasonal Samuel Adams beer twelve packs, so I'm not really too reliable.

Aah. so I'm not the only Grailer who has lost massive amount of sleep time due to Mass Effect 2 ;)