Steorn

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Steorn Ltd.
Type Private Limited
Founded Dublin, Ireland (2000)
Headquarters Docklands Innovation Park, East Wall Road, Dublin 3, Ireland
Key people Seán McCarthy (Chief Executive Officer)
Industry Information and energy technology
Products None (R&D based company)
Revenue € 1,000 (2005) [1]
Employees fewer than 20
Website www.steorn.com

Steorn Ltd. is a small privately held technology development company based in Dublin, Ireland.

The company attracted mainstream media attention in August 2006 by placing a full-page advertisement in The Economist claiming it had developed a technology that produces "free, clean, and constant energy" and challenging the scientific community to test it.[2][a] In December 2006 the company announced it had chosen a jury of scientists to make such tests.[3]

Steorn says its technology, named Orbo, violates the law of conservation of energy,[4] a fundamental principle of physics.[5] To date, no evidence confirming that the technology works has been made available to the public.

Contents

[edit] History

Steorn was founded in 2000[6] and, in October 2001, their website stated that they were a "specialist service company providing programme management and technical assessment advice for European companies engaging in e-commerce projects". Steorn (pronounced /ˈstjɔrn/ in English) is a Norse word meaning to guide or manage.

In May 2006, The Sunday Business Post reported that Steorn was a former dot.com business which was developing a microgenerator product based on the same principle as kinetic energy generators in watches, as well as creating ecommerce websites for customers. The company had also recently raised about €2.5 million from "high net worth individuals", and was three years into a four year development plan for its microgenerator technology.[7] Steorn has since stated that the account given in this interview was part of a "crisis management plan" to prevent a leak regarding their free energy technology.[8]

[edit] Financial history

Steorn's accounts for the year ending 31 December 2003,[9] show that the company's Profit and Loss Account had an accumulated loss of €192,661, while its cash reserves were €94. A revision of the company's web site on February 9, 2007 included an informal summary of the company's accounts as of 2006.[1] The summary shows pre-tax losses of €779,047, €1,815,666, and €3,247,938 in 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively.

The company's investment history shows share allotments for cash in August 2000, January 2001, March 2001, March 2004, then several rounds in December 2004, and one in October 2005.[9] The investments amount to €3 million in total.[7] According to the Sunday Tribune, Steorn secured over €8m in funding from a range of investors to continue its research in 2006. Its most recent accounts for that year also reveal that it had accumulated losses of €5.9m by that year. According to its 2006 accounts, which were provided by the company, Steorn's two directors, Seán McCarthy and Michael Daly, shared over €350,000 in remuneration in 2006. Wages and salaries for 13 staff, including the directors, totalled a further €988,000.[10]

[edit] Free-energy claim

The Orbo logo

In August 2006, Steorn placed an advertisement in The Economist to publicise its free-energy technology.[2] A press release "issued a challenge to the global scientific community" to validate its claims.[11] Steorn reported that, within hours of its advertisement, it was contacted by hundreds of scientists worldwide and many thousands of other interested people.[12]

Steorn's Economist advertisement said:

We have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy. Our technology has been independently validated by engineers and scientists—always behind closed doors, always off the record, always proven to work.[2]

Steorn said that "free" meant that "the energy produced is done so without recourse to external sources", "clean" meant that "during operation the technology produces no emissions", and "constant" meant that "with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely". Steorn said any technology including all three of these factors would be a violation of the principle of conservation of energy.[4]

At the time of the initial announcement Steorn said their technology, which would be available for license under the brand name "Orbo",[13] had already been found to work by eight independent scientists and engineers "with multiple PhDs from world-class universities" but that none of them were willing to publish their results for fear of becoming embroiled in a controversy.[14] The company has declined to name these scientists, citing mutually binding non-disclosure agreements.[14]

[edit] Validation process

Steorn's advertisement in The Economist was intended to attract the attention of the world's leading scientists working in the field of experimental physics, challenging them to test their free energy technology.[11][15] It intended that 12 scientists would be invited to take part in a rigorous testing exercise to prove that Steorn’s technology creates free energy and to publish the results worldwide.[11]

On 1 December 2006, Steorn announced that a jury had been selected and had signed contracts, although their identities were not released.[3] The validation process reportedly began in January 2007[16] but no reports on the progress of the validation process have been released to date.

[edit] Failed demonstration

A notice at the Kinetica museum announcing the cancellation of the public demonstration

On 4 July 2007, an example of the technology was to be displayed at the Kinetica Museum, Spitalfields Market, London. A unit constructed of clear plastic was prepared so that the arrangement of magnets could be seen and to demonstrate that the device operated without external power sources.[17][18] The public demonstration was delayed and then cancelled because of technical difficulties. Steorn initially thought that the problems had been caused by "excessive heat from the lighting in the main display area"[18][19] but later blamed the failure on damage done to bearings due to a greenhouse effect within the box.[20]

[edit] Announced commercialisation

On 4 February 2009, Steorn announced that they were beginning commercialisation of their technology and asked for 300 engineers and engineering organisations to sign up to a testing process to be completed by the end of 2009.[21] They also released a video of three engineers saying that, having witnessed an experiment and studied the testing equipment and software generating output graphs, they were generally supportive of Steorn's excess energy claims.[22] Following these announcements, Steorn were criticised for their continued failure to provide a public, working demonstration[23] or to release information without non-disclosure and licensing agreements.[24]

[edit] Details of the technology

No specific details of the workings of the claimed technology have been made public. Seán McCarthy has stated in an RTÉ radio interview that, "What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy... The energy isn't being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It's literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy."[25]

The device has been reported to be a motor that uses magnets, but no electromagnets.[26] Following a meeting between McCarthy and Professor Sir Eric Ash in July 2007, Ash reported that "the Orbo is a mechanical device which uses powerful magnets on the rim of a rotor and further magnets on an outer shell"[27]

In a demonstration to The Guardian at Steorn's office in August 2006, a computer display reported the device to have an efficiency of 285 percent. Steorn say that they have measured efficiencies of up to 400 percent[14] and that the technology is scalable to almost any size, powering anything from a flashlight to an aeroplane.[28]

[edit] Responses

Steorn claims to violate the law of conservation of energy, a fundamental principle of physics[5] which they have referred to as scientific dogma.[27] In response, Sir Eric Ash has said that there is no flexibility in choosing to accept that energy is always conserved since rejecting conservation of energy would undermine all science and technology.[27] Following a July 2007 meeting with McCarthy, Ash formed the opinion that McCarthy was truly convinced in the validity of his invention, but that this conviction was a case of "prolonged self deception".[27]

Steorn describes their technology as "a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy".[5] Barry Williams of the Australian Skeptics has pointed out that Steorn is "not the first company to claim they have suddenly discovered the miraculous property of magnetism that allows you to get free energy".[5]

Eric Berger, writing on the Houston Chronicle website, commented that:

Recall that Steorn is a former e-business company that saw its market vanish during the dot.com bust. It stands to reason that Steorn has re-tooled as a Web marketing company, and is using the "free energy" promotion as a platform to show future clients how it can leverage print advertising and a slick Web site to promote their products and ideas. If so, it's a pretty brilliant strategy.[29]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

a. ^ The usual cost for such an advertisement according to the Economist's published costings was GBP £85200.[30]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Steorn Investor Relations". Steorn Ltd.. 9 February 2006. http://www.steorn.com/about/investor/. Retrieved on 11 September 2007. 
  2. ^ a b c "Copy of Steorn advertisement featured in The Economist, hosted by dispatchesfromthefuture.com" (JPEG). http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/images/steorn_economist_ad.jpg. Retrieved on 21 January 2009. 
  3. ^ a b "Steorn finalises contracts for jury to test its free energy technology". Steorn (archive copy from archive.org). 1 December 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20070221052040/http://www.steorn.net/news/releases/?id=911. Retrieved on 5 March 2009. 
  4. ^ a b "Steorn: Our Claim". Steorn Ltd. http://www.steorn.com/orbo/claim. Retrieved on 12 April 2007. 
  5. ^ a b c d "Irish energy miracle 'a joke'". The Age. 20 August 2006. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/08/19/1155408071307.html. Retrieved on 20 August 2006. 
  6. ^ "Wanted: scientists to test free energy technology". Irish Examiner. 20 August 2006. http://www.irishexaminer.com/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=business-qqqm=business-qqqa=business-qqqid=11133-qqqx=1.asp. Retrieved on 20 August 2006. 
  7. ^ a b Daly, Gavin (21 May 2006). "Firm strives to extend mobile battery lifespans". ThePost.IE. http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/05/21/story14326.asp. Retrieved on 25 October 2006. 
  8. ^ "Energy Issues". Steorn. 1 October 2006. http://www.steorn.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=17962&page=5&Comment_271002. Retrieved on 26 October 2006. 
  9. ^ a b "Steorn Company Submissions". Companies Registration Office. http://www.cro.ie/search/submissionse.asp?number=330508&BI=C. Retrieved on 16 October 2006. 
  10. ^ Downes, John (10 August 2008). "'Free energy' firm generated €8m in funding". Sunday Tribune. http://www.tribune.ie/article/2008/aug/10/free-energy-firm-generated-8m-in-funding/. Retrieved on 5 November 2008. 
  11. ^ a b c "Steorn develops free energy technology and issues challenge to the global scientific community". Steorn Ltd.. 18 August 2006. http://www.steorn.net/en/news.aspx?p=2&id=22. Retrieved on 17 October 2006. 
  12. ^ "Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discovery". Guardian Unlimited. 20 August 2006. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1854305,00.html. Retrieved on 20 August 2006. 
  13. ^ "Orbo - The Magnetic Free-Energy Generator from Steorn". Steorn Ltd.. 29 February 2007. http://www.steorn.com/orbo/. Retrieved on 9 February 2007. 
  14. ^ a b c "These men think they're about to change the world". The Guardian. 25 August 2006. http://environment.guardian.co.uk/energy/story/0,,1858172,00.html. 
  15. ^ "Steorn announces plans for widespread deployment of its free energy technology post-validation". Steorn. 11 January 2007. http://www.steorn.net/news/releases/?id=981. Retrieved on 6 July 2007. 
  16. ^ "The Steorn Validation Process". Steorn (archival copy from archive.org). February 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070212023419/http://www.steorn.net/orbo/validation/. Retrieved on 5 March 2009. 
  17. ^ "'Free' energy technology goes on display". The Irish Times. 4 July 2007. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0704/breaking46.htm. Retrieved on 5 July 2007. 
  18. ^ a b "Irish firm promise to display 'free-energy' machine". Belfast Telegraph. 5 July 2007. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/article2737932.ece. 
  19. ^ "Steorn announcement: Kinetica Demonstration". 6 July 2007. http://www.steorn.com/news/releases/?id=1001. Retrieved on 5 June 2007. 
  20. ^ Schirber, Michael (August 2007). "Harsh light shines on free energy". Physics World 20 (8): 9. 
  21. ^ "Steorn launches SteornLab and sets out plans for 2009 launch of Orbo". Steorn. 4 February 2009. http://www.steorn.com/news/releases/?id=1141. Retrieved on 4 February 2009. 
  22. ^ Gregory Daigle (5 February 2009). "Steorn Raises the Magnetic Curtain". OhmyNews. http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=384756&rel_no=1&back_url=. Retrieved on 5 February 2009. 
  23. ^ Nilay Patel (4 February 2009). "Steorn returns, promises to open Orbo specs, give you a pony". EndGadget. http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/04/steorn-returns-promises-to-open-orbo-specs-give-you-a-pony/. Retrieved on 5 February 2009. 
  24. ^ Rupert Goodwins (5 February 2009). "Steorn is at it again!". ZDNet. http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10012080o-2000331777b,00.htm. Retrieved on 5 February 2009. 
  25. ^ "Irish company challenges scientists to test 'free energy' technology". Yahoo! News. 18 August 2006. Archived from the original on 3 September 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060903183705/http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060818/bs_afp/irelandscienceenergy. 
  26. ^ "Steorn to Push Tipping Point for Magnet Motor Technology". Pure Energy Systems News. 21 August 2006. http://pesn.com/2006/08/21/9500298_Steorn_free_energy_gauntlet/. 
  27. ^ a b c d "The perpetual myth of free energy". BBC News. 9 July 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6283374.stm. Retrieved on 9 July 2007. 
  28. ^ "Free, Clean Energy For All?". ABC News. 23 August 2006. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2343913. 
  29. ^ Berger, Eric (19 August 2006). "Steorn and free energy: the plot thickens". SciGuy. Houston Chronicle blogs. http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/08/steorn_and_free_1.html. Retrieved on 21 August 2006. 
  30. ^ "Advertising Rates £" (PDF). Advertising Information. The Economist. 2006. http://printmediakit.economist.com/fileadmin/pdfs/Other_pdfs/Rates_2006_sterling.pdf. Retrieved on 19 August 2006. 

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