3 ms·

There was an Irish company called Steorn in this "space" between 2006 and 2016. I was invited in 2006/7 to a discussion of the company's technology hosted by t

There was an Irish company called Steorn in this "space" between 2006 and 2016. I was invited in 2006/7 to a discussion of the company's technology hosted by the CEO. I was there with a small group of journalists and potential investors. I was there because a publisher I was involved with was contemplating a book about them. What amazed me was how low the bar is for people to discuss something seriously. There were glaring inconsistencies in their presentation and in the associated materials. The back story they told was completely different to the story which the author of the book had outlined to us. Even quite basic questions were deflected in the most obvious way. I am absolutely not a scientist but there were very simple and obvious gaps in what they described. Nevertheless people's politeness and/or credulity prevented any serious discussion taking place.

wccrawford 5y ago
I suspect it's because if you push them, you don't get better answers, but you might get a lot of shouting and swearing. There's no point in poking holes in their theories because they believe them and cannot be persuaded otherwise. So you just quietly sit through their presentation, poke a couple holes that the audience already knows exist, and watch them fail to answer it. Done.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  If you check my other comment, the English-language coverage I found, which just involves journalists communicating to an audience with no interested party involved anywhere, is also written in a surprisingly credulous style. (Yes, acknowledging that no machine of this type has ever failed to be fraudulent. But doing so in a low-key, hope-the-reader-doesn't-notice kind of way.)
time0ut 5y ago
I remember thinking at the time that it was just a viral/digital marketing stunt. In other words, not a demo of a violation of conservation of energy, but a demo of how much buzz they could generate. Does anyone have any in depth material detailing the saga?
jcims 5y ago
This instantly brought back memories of Steorn. I went down a rabbit hole on that one, learned a ton about the vagaries of magnetism, FEA, hydrodynamics, etc. It always had a crazy smell to it but the diversion scratched an itch. (The underlying concept was that you could use magnetic viscosity (Sv) to create a time variant BH curve in a magnetic field and cheat a few (micro)joules out of the hysteresis loop of a round trip to/from a permanent magnet. Trouble is that the viscosity always worked exactly against you, like it does in liquid/fluid mediums, dumping your joules into the magnet as heat instead.) There’s an article on Hackaday about this beast of a machine [1]. A comment there got me wondering if you could build an art piece that breaks gravitational symmetry with the moon. A metric ton on earth would experience ~.03mN (~1 sugar cube) of force towards the moon. In the extreme if you floated a one ton granite sphere in liquid mercury, you would likely see some displacement (edit: actually no b/c plane of mercury would be normal to net gravity vector). Building something even remotely acceptable to demonstrate the concept would be tricky. My aforementioned Steorn interest taught me that ferrofluid can make an extremely low stiction bearing. You could potentially ’float’ a mass on a ferrofluid film and let the moon drag it over an exquisitely flat and leveled (1ppm) surface. You’d need to maintain the oil film but it should otherwise just ’work’. 1 - https://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-real-or-fake/comment-page-3/ https://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-re...
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >A metric ton on earth would experience ~.03mN (~1 sugar cube) of force towards the moon. Would be nice to see more of these physically feasible, but futile, mechanisms to extract energy. Just recently came to know about Atmos'clocks, for instance, and wondered if you could use something similar to power one light of your house or w/e.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Whoa, that's a cool mechanism and even a modest volume would seem to generate quite a bit more power than the clock needs. Betavoltaics are another cool one. You wrap a beta emitter (like tritium) with a solid state 'betavoltaic' that works like a photovoltaic but for beta particles. These are commercially available and will provide microwatts of power at 1-2v for for 30+ years. (With the downside of a bunch of possible health/waste/regulatory implications) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device https://citylabs.net/products/ https://citylabs.net/products/ RTGs are their bigger/badder cousins, used for space probes and super-remote monitoring/military applications - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

wccrawford 5y ago

I suspect it's because if you push them, you don't get better answers, but you might get a lot of shouting and swearing. There's no point in poking holes in their theories because they believe them and cannot be persuaded otherwise. So you just quietly sit through their presentation, poke a couple holes that the audience already knows exist, and watch them fail to answer it. Done.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
If you check my other comment, the English-language coverage I found, which just involves journalists communicating to an audience with no interested party involved anywhere, is also written in a surprisingly credulous style. (Yes, acknowledging that no machine of this type has ever failed to be fraudulent. But doing so in a low-key, hope-the-reader-doesn't-notice kind of way.)

time0ut 5y ago

I remember thinking at the time that it was just a viral/digital marketing stunt. In other words, not a demo of a violation of conservation of energy, but a demo of how much buzz they could generate. Does anyone have any in depth material detailing the saga?

jcims 5y ago

This instantly brought back memories of Steorn. I went down a rabbit hole on that one, learned a ton about the vagaries of magnetism, FEA, hydrodynamics, etc. It always had a crazy smell to it but the diversion scratched an itch. (The underlying concept was that you could use magnetic viscosity (Sv) to create a time variant BH curve in a magnetic field and cheat a few (micro)joules out of the hysteresis loop of a round trip to/from a permanent magnet. Trouble is that the viscosity always worked exactly against you, like it does in liquid/fluid mediums, dumping your joules into the magnet as heat instead.) There’s an article on Hackaday about this beast of a machine [1]. A comment there got me wondering if you could build an art piece that breaks gravitational symmetry with the moon. A metric ton on earth would experience ~.03mN (~1 sugar cube) of force towards the moon. In the extreme if you floated a one ton granite sphere in liquid mercury, you would likely see some displacement (edit: actually no b/c plane of mercury would be normal to net gravity vector). Building something even remotely acceptable to demonstrate the concept would be tricky. My aforementioned Steorn interest taught me that ferrofluid can make an extremely low stiction bearing. You could potentially ’float’ a mass on a ferrofluid film and let the moon drag it over an exquisitely flat and leveled (1ppm) surface. You’d need to maintain the oil film but it should otherwise just ’work’. 1 - https://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-real-or-fake/comment-page-3/ https://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-re...

moralestapia 5y ago
>A metric ton on earth would experience ~.03mN (~1 sugar cube) of force towards the moon. Would be nice to see more of these physically feasible, but futile, mechanisms to extract energy. Just recently came to know about Atmos'clocks, for instance, and wondered if you could use something similar to power one light of your house or w/e.
- jcims 5y ago
  Whoa, that's a cool mechanism and even a modest volume would seem to generate quite a bit more power than the clock needs. Betavoltaics are another cool one. You wrap a beta emitter (like tritium) with a solid state 'betavoltaic' that works like a photovoltaic but for beta particles. These are commercially available and will provide microwatts of power at 1-2v for for 30+ years. (With the downside of a bunch of possible health/waste/regulatory implications) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device https://citylabs.net/products/ https://citylabs.net/products/ RTGs are their bigger/badder cousins, used for space probes and super-remote monitoring/military applications - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...