Re: Watch This Space II
- From: "michael adams" <mjadams25@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 09:38:54 +0100
"michael adams" <mjadams25@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4kqop7Fd7769U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<quote>
Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discovery
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1854305,00.html
</quote>
<quote>
These men think they're about to change the world
Heard the one about the two Irishmen who say they can produce limitless
amounts of clean, free energy? Plenty of scientists have - but few are
taking them seriously. Steve Boggan investigates
Friday August 25, 2006
The Guardian
Do you remember that awful feeling as a child on Christmas Day when Santa
left you the toy you wanted . . . without any batteries? This feeling comes
to me as I meet Sean McCarthy and Richard Walshe, two men making the claim
that they are about to change the world - for ever.
These dynamic and personable businessmen from Dublin insist that they have
found a way of producing free, clean and limitless energy out of thin air.
And they are so confident that they have thrown down the gauntlet to the
scientific community in a bid to prove that they have rewritten the laws of
physics. 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.
So, as they prepare to demonstrate this wonder of science to me at their
modest offices near the Liffey, I feel all the excitement of Christmas Day.
There is a test rig with wheels and cogs and four magnets meticulously
aligned so as to create the maximum tension between their fields and one
other magnet fixed to a point opposite. A motor rotates the wheel bearing
the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. The magnets,
naturally, act upon one another. And when it is all over, the computer tells
us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system
as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient.
That's a lot of "free energy" and, supposedly, a slap in the face for one of
physics' most basic laws, the principle of conservation of energy: in an
isolated system (the planet, say), energy can be neither created nor
destroyed; it can only be converted from one form into another.
"We couldn't believe it at first, either," says McCarthy, chief executive of
the company. He is a 40-year-old engineer born in Birmingham but brought up
in Dublin. After a couple of decades in the oil industry, McCarthy, Walshe
and two others set up Steorn as a technology and intellectual-property
development company. "We did difficult things. If someone had an idea that
they wanted to make work, we'd work on it with them, help them recruit staff
and get them through to their first product."
Then, by chance, came their "discovery". They were called upon by the police
to help gain forensic evidence against "skimmers" who cloned the cards of
people using ATMs. Subsequently, when banks approached asking how they could
prevent such fraud, Steorn advised that the best way was to catch the small
number of people committing most of the crime. They came up with a system of
16 tiny CCTV cameras that could guarantee recording the identities of the
perpetrators.
"We wanted the cameras to be independently powered, so we tried out small
solar and ambient wind generators," says McCarthy. "We wanted to improve the
performance of the wind generators - they were only about 60-70% efficient -
so we experimented with certain generator configurations and then one day
one of our guys [co-founder Mike Daly] came in and said: 'We have a problem.
We appear to be getting out more than we're putting in.'"
That was three years ago. Since then, McCarthy says, the company has spent
£2.7m developing the technology. Steorn has also gone into partnership with
a European micro-generator company to develop prototypes.
In Steorn's theory, fixed magnets could act upon a moving magnet in such a
way as to make it a virtual perpetual motion generator. In an electrical
appliance - a computer, kettle, mobile phone or toy - that would provide all
the power for its lifetime. Of course, free-energy cars, power plants and
water-pumping systems could follow. A better world indeed.
But then that Christmas Day feeling kicks in; doubts about the power source.
According to McCarthy and Walshe, the marketing manager, there have been no
fewer than eight independent validations of their work conducted by
electrical engineers and academics "with multiple PhDs" from world-class
universities. But none of them will talk to me, even off the record. I am
promised a diagram explaining how the system works, but then Steorn holds it
back, saying its lawyers are concerned about intellectual property rights.
And that European partner, the one with the moving, almost perpetual,
prototypes? It won't talk to me either and Steorn has undertaken not to name
it.
"It's the Pons-Fleischmann factor," says McCarthy, and he and Walshe look at
each other darkly. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were the last experts
to excite the scientific community with free-energy claims when, in 1989,
they reported producing a nuclear-fusion reaction at room temperature - what
happens in the sun at millions of degrees centigrade. The subsequent
controversy resulted in the scientists being pilloried, even though the
scientific community remains divided to this day over claims of "low-energy
nuclear reactions".
"No one in the scientific community wants to become embroiled in the kind of
controversy that Pons and Fleishmann faced," says McCarthy. "With our
challenge, we're hoping to provide a respectable public platform for serious
evaluation of the technology. Then, perhaps, scientists will feel confident
enough to challenge the conventional view."
Certainly, the Steorn team seems genuine and well-intentioned. Walshe says
that if the technology is accepted it will be licensed to manufacturers, but
given away to electrical and water projects in developing countries. And,
until their claims have been assessed by the jury, McCarthy says they won't
be accepting any investor offers. So if this is a hoax, it would appear not
to be a money-making scheme; Walshe says the Economist ad alone cost
£75,000.
"Before we went public, we realised that if we're wrong it could have a very
adverse effect on our business, so we're not doing this lightly," says
McCarthy. "We expected stick, and we're getting it already. We've had a lot
of abusive emails and telephone calls -people telling us to watch our backs,
that sort of thing. Someone even published my home address on a website."
The conspiracy theorists are, indeed, having a field day in a forum section
set up by the company on its website, www.steorn.com.
"We've been accused of being a publicity stunt for the next Microsoft Xbox
gaming system because some of the artwork on our website was similar to
theirs," says Walshe. "Some people have said our offices don't exist and one
accused us of simply being a call centre in Australia because one of our
telephonists has an Australian accent. My favourite is the one that says we
are a CIA or oil-industry front intended to discredit research into free and
clean energy. In other words, our claims are deliberately false and when
they are found out to be, it will be a blow for all free and clean
research."
Steorn says it has seven patents pending on its technology, though it is
difficult to see what can be patented; magnets already exist and so do the
360 degrees of a circle. Yet it is the positioning of the magnets that seems
to be at the heart of this "new" energy. And, as McCarthy points out, the
Patent Office rejects inventions that fly in the face of such fundamental
principles as, say, the conservation of energy. Nevertheless, as of
yesterday, almost 3,000 people claiming to be scientists had expressed an
interest in sitting on the Steorn jury. The 12 best will be chosen at the
end of the month and then testing will begin.
"We've been advised it could take between a week and 10 years," says
McCarthy. "We don't have any doubts. We've conducted meticulous research and
we're getting such phenomenal results - up to 400% efficiency - that small
glitches and errors in testing can be ruled out. We really believe we've
found something that can change the world."
The rest of us can only wait and see. In the meantime, I ask Martin
Fleischmann, the cold-fusion scientist, now 79 and retired, what he thought
of the Steorn project.
"I am actually a conventional scientist," he says, "but I do accept that the
existing [quantum electro-dynamic] paradigm is not adequate. If what these
men are saying turns out to be true, that would be proof that the paradigm
was inadequate and we would have to come up with some new theory. But I
don't think their claims are credible. No, I cannot see how the position of
magnetic fields allows one to create energy."
With great charm, Dr Fleischmann wishes the Steorn team luck. And if their
"free" energy can light up a developing-world village or the eyes of a child
with a toy, then perhaps we all should · 'Some have said that our offices
don't exist - or we are a front for the CIA'
</quote>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html
michael adams
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