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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
 Posted - 08/18/2006 : 23:23:31
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An Irish firm has announced that they've developed a way to create "free energy" using magnets. They've taken out an ad in Economist magazine challenging the scientific establishment to test their claims.
quote:
Steorn issued its challenge through an advertisement in the Economist magazine this week quoting Ireland's Nobel prize-winning author George Bernard Shaw who said that "all great truths begin as blasphemies".
Sean McCarthy, Steorn's chief executive officer, said they had issued the challenge for 12 physicists to rigorously test the technology so it can be developed.
"For the first six months that we looked at it we literally didn't believe it ourselves. Over the last three years it had been rigorously tested in our own laboratories, in independent laboratories and so on," he said.
"But we have been unable to get significant scientific interest in it. We have had scientists come in, test it and, off the record, they are quite happy to admit that it works.
"But for us to be able to commercialise this and put this into peoples' lives we need credible, academic validation in the public domain and hence the challenge," McCarthy said.
My guess is either a) someone's trying to use this publicity to drive up the stock value of the company for some sort of scam, or b) further tests will show the "extra" energy is actually coming from some other source they've missed.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
Edited by - H. Humbert on 08/18/2006 23:24:53
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2006 : 03:05:45 [Permalink]
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Egad! Another perpetual motion machine.
My granddad invented one, eighty years or so back. It was a mechanical contraption, a wheel somewhat like a Ferris wheel. Weighted parts would flop forwards as they reached the apex of the turning wheel, supposedly adding angular momentum to the whole device. Gramps worked on his device for years, "improving" it until it would turn for many minutes, before eventually grinding to a halt.
He felt he had friction problems with its bearings, that he was unable to overcome. And indeed, fiction was the problem, aside from one minor fact Gramps missed, that the same action which flipped the weights forward also slowed the wheel down proportionally in reaction. In effect, the complex device was simply a poorly-designed flywheel.
The laws of thermodynamics are bitch-mistresses. I don't expect any breakthroughs in energy creation from nothing to be found in the land of the Blarney Stone, or elsewhere.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2006 : 03:08:27 [Permalink]
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| If they want academic validation, they should detail their protocols and publish their findings in a scientific journal. If this is proprietary information, they would not publish, but instead build a prototype product, sell it and become gazillionaires. Some scams are just too easy to spot. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2006 : 04:18:11 [Permalink]
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Magnets again! Why am I not amazed?
Who are the 12 "physicists" and what have they published, and where? What was their reaction to the challenge, if any?
And why exactly, is this being "advertized" in The Economist and not submitted to Science or Nature, or some other, peer-reviewed journal?
Magnets are wonderful things but, by their very nature, are a natural for flim-flams. They both attract another magnet and repel it, and stick to ferrous metals without glue. Without them, in one form or another, electric motors and generators would not exist. It's almost like magic, so even the fairly well educated might assign properties to them that they do not have.
I think we can safely assume that this is either a wishful delusion or another trap for the "ones born every minute."
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2006 : 09:41:01 [Permalink]
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Did you hear that?
<quack>
There it is again!
This rates on the crackpot index.
Seriously, if this worked as they say, the scientists who "examined" it would be lining up to get onboard and do some rigorous testing. Not limiting themselves to "off the record" remarks.
There would be Nobel prizes and patents in their futures, if it really worked.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 08/19/2006 : 21:25:31 [Permalink]
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From pleco's link:It wasn't so much a Eureka moment as a get-back-in-there-and-check-your-instruments moment, although in far more colourful language... If they're relying on instruments to tell them whether it's working or not, then they haven't done the most-basic test: move the equipment to a large empty room with bare concrete floors, and then power the contraption using its own output wires. Whether it can power itself for any length of time should become quickly obvious, without any need to measure anything.
If I were working on this stuff, I wouldn't be satisfied until I could put out a press release with the headline "AFTER INITIAL ONE-KILOWATT INPUT PULSE, DEVICE HAS POWERED ITSELF AND A 60-WATT BULB FOR 120 DAYS." That's more along the lines of what I would expect from someone who's done the proper testing for themselves. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 05:14:23 [Permalink]
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| Just the fact hat the ad was in the Economist and not a science journal ad shows that investment is their true purpose, hell the US gave some guy 50 million because his own book said how great his machine was....still waiting on that. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 07:34:54 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by BigPapaSmurf
Just the fact hat the ad was in the Economist and not a science journal ad shows that investment is their true purpose, hell the US gave some guy 50 million because his own book said how great his machine was....still waiting on that.
Details on this bonndogle please. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 08:24:21 [Permalink]
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quote:
Just the fact hat the ad was in the Economist and not a science journal ad shows that investment is their true purpose
Excellent point BigPapa.
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If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 10:23:28 [Permalink]
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Heres that info, GS. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=170 Www.Blacklightpower.com
To his "Paradigm-Shifting" credit he does include negative press releases on the website for you to read...
Heres our previous discussion Link |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 14:48:34 [Permalink]
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I can't simply understand this Randell Mills stuff, having not enough expertise in physics. But for those of you Einsteins who are capable, there is a discussion of the "hydrino theory" in Wikipedia.
One particular thing I cannot understand is that Randell Mills is indirectly quoted thusly in "Damn Interesting": "The key, he says, is a form of hydrogen atom called a 'hydrino,' comprised of only one electron and one proton." One proton, one electron -- isn't that just the most common isotope of hydrogen?
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 15:37:46 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ricky
quote:
McCarthy claims it provides five times the amount of energy a mobile phone battery generates for the same size, and does not have to be recharged.
Mobile phone batteries generate energy?
Yeah, this is news to me too, and I worked with mobile phones for almost 10 years... |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 22:51:45 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by HalfMooner
One particular thing I cannot understand is that Randell Mills is indirectly quoted thusly in "Damn Interesting": "The key, he says, is a form of hydrogen atom called a 'hydrino,' comprised of only one electron and one proton." One proton, one electron -- isn't that just the most common isotope of hydrogen?
The hydrino is supposedly a hydrogen atom where the electron has gone to an energy level below its ground state. Presumably it is so close to the nucleus (a single proton in this case) that it is almost but not quite a neutron hence the name hydrino I guess. Sounds about as likely as cooling something below absolute zero.
I don't know where BPS gets his figure of 50 million from the US government. It seems like 50 million is the total fleeced so far from all suckers combined. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2006 : 23:03:45 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
quote:
Originally posted by Ricky
quote:
McCarthy claims it provides five times the amount of energy a mobile phone battery generates for the same size, and does not have to be recharged.
Mobile phone batteries generate energy?
Yeah, this is news to me too, and I worked with mobile phones for almost 10 years...
Sounds to me like he is confusing power (work/time) with energy (work). Comparing power with a cell phone battery is meaningless since the power output of a battery is dependant on load (up to a maximum). The old Ni-Cad batteries could put out a hellacious amount of power when they were shorted out which is why you shouldn't put them in your toolbox or your pocket.
I am amazed at how often these clowns who are going to overturn relativity and quantum mechanics do not have a grasp of simple classical mechanics, confusing force with work (energy) or energy with power.
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"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
| Edited by - Ghost_Skeptic on 08/22/2006 06:42:10 |
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