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The above advertisement appeared in an issue of The Economist on 18 August 2006. It was placed by the Irish technology company, Steorn, as a way to publicise their alleged discovery of a free energy technology. They made the discovery by accident whilst developing covert surveillance equipment for ATMs. As they knew the scientific community would not believe them - they could hardly believe it themselves - they took the decision to go public in this dramatic way in the hope of attracting interested people to look at their discovery.
The reason for their disbelief is that creating a device that produces free energy is considered impossible. Free energy, also called overunity, means that the device produces more energy than is put into it which violates the second law of thermodynamics. This law states that, in a closed system, you can only get out of the system the same or less energy than you put into it. But, according to Steorn, their technology does just that. Orbo, as they have since named their technology, works by the use of moving magnets and, they claim, is over 100% efficient or, in other words, it produces more energy than is put into it. Despite approaching several academic institutions, most refused to even look at the technology, but those that did complete testing confirmed their claims, according to Steorn. However, they have refused to go on the record publicly perhaps due to fear of the loss of reputation that would quite likely follow the backing of such claims.
So Steorn's reason for placing the ad in The Economist was to propose a challenge that would attract highly qualified individuals to make up a jury to test and validate their claims of overunity. This they achieved and, after verifying the qualifications of the members, the testing and validating process began. In July 2007, they publicised a live demonstration of the technology. But when it came to the day, they could not get it to work due to some technical difficulties. This resulted in ridicule from some members of the scientific community who were already understandably skeptical of their claims. After two years of study, the jury announced their findings on 23 June 2009 in which they found unanimously that Steorn had failed to show any energy production from their devices.
However, despite this disappointing result, Steorn were undeterred and continued to launch and market their Orbo technology. They held another demonstration on 30 January 2010 to an audience of about 100 at the Waterways Ireland Visitor Centre in Dublin with another 800 watching online. According to the following article, the results were promising: The Demo's done - has Steorn won? (for those scientists among you). Their claim is that their Orbo technology total energy output is 327% of the total energy input. Since then, they have developed other applications of the technology such as the overunity water heater, Hephaheat. Their business plan is not to produce devices themselves for sale in the marketplace, but instead to sell licences to other technology companies to develop their own products.
If Steorn's claims are as ground-breaking as they say, it means that they will be among the first to start a revolution in energy production that will change our lives beyond recognition. As one person said, this technology is as important to humanity as the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel. Therefore I, for one, will be watching them very carefully.
Links:
www.steorn.com
Steorn Announces HephaHeat Overunity Technology
