A reader writes:
I am super sceptical about Steorn's claims of over-unity, but can you please decipher their latest video? I just don't understand the testing methods and the physics involved – I just want an easier to understand explanation. The video is here http://www.steorn.com/ and I've read the explanation and comments here http://www.nolanchart.com/article7327.html and some really interesting (but over my head) replication experiments here http://jnaudin.free.fr/steorn/indexen.htm.
I can't see anyone showing exactly how it doesn't work, or anyone easily explaining how it does. Can you please devote a blog entry or page to it?
(Just re-read my email – I sound like I'm promoting them, but I am just interested and looking for explanations)
Andrew
Well, I'll devote this blog post to it, but it won't be quite what you asked for!
Until Steorn start handing their devices over to testers that aren't on their payroll, there is nothing to explain. For the same reason, most people don't spend a lot of time analysing the amazing ability of Transcendental Meditators to levitate, turn invisible and walk through walls, because they have never actually demonstrated that they can do these things, in anything remotely like a test that eliminates blatant, basic, wouldn't-fool-a-five-year-old cheating.
I mean, what did Steorn even actually show in that video? Something going round and round, and a man saying that it was an over-unity device? That Hutchison Effect guy seems to have done a lot more presentation work.
Steorn are either about the ten-millionth free-energy scam artists, or about the ten-millionth "free energy pioneers" to fail to correctly measure what's going on, because they don't measure RMS power, mistake voltage for power, put their lopsided antigravity machine on a bathroom scale that can't properly weigh something that's vibrating, et cetera.
(Whenever a perpetual-motion huckster mentions "back EMF", you've got a pretty ironclad guarantee right there that he needs to buy some more expensive multimeters.)
To believe otherwise is to watch Transcendental Meditators bouncing around on their bottoms, and immediately rush to sell all of your Boeing stock.
Don't worry, though. I'm sure all of your questions will be answered with great enthusiasm in an upcoming Discovery Channel special called "The Exciting New Science Of Perpetual Motion"!
25 February 2010 at 4:45 am
Yeah, a friend of mine apparently built one, and claimed to have generated like 0.1W from it. Which immediately made me think he was well within the margin of measurement error. *sigh*
25 February 2010 at 4:19 pm
Dan, while the substance of your reply is absolutely correct may I suggest you make the tone a bit less smart-ass? Andrew himself is not the scamster, just a rather naive person seeking advice. He's more likely to listen to the advice if you don't insult him.
26 February 2010 at 6:04 am
I would like to introduce you to my new over unity device I just made!
I tied a string to a rock and then swung it around over my head. After the first failed experiments involving a badger and three hobos, I have finally found a method to create energy with little or no effort on the part of anyone else.
Derrida: I read it as scorn and derision toward Steorn, but text does have the disappointing ability of not being easily deciphered emotionally or contextually without inflection or physical queues of direction.
Hmm, my alliteration didn't come out as planned. Bah.
26 February 2010 at 4:26 pm
A reasonable test doesn't even require expensive multimeters(Though, I'd expect someone serious about this would have good equipment), just start the thing up, connect it to a light, remove any batteries and see if it's still lit in a week.
1 March 2010 at 10:58 am
Additional reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics