Sean McCarthy believes his small Irish high-tech company has overturned one of physics’ most fundamental laws.
It happened by accident, he says. His company Steorn was looking for an efficient way to power closed-circuit TVs that spy on ATMs, and instead stumbled on a technique they think produces more energy than it consumes.
The company hasn’t released specific details about the process, other than to say it involves magnetic fields configured in precisely the right way. Using the magnets results in a motor that’s more than 100 percent efficient — essentially creating energy, McCarthy says.
For scientists and engineers, this is the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, and is almost unanimously viewed as flat-out impossible. McCarthy, an affable former energy company engineer, knows just how preposterous his claims sound. So, he advertised in this week’s Economist for a panel of the “most cynical possible” physicists to help validate them.
“If we’re right, that will come out in due course,” McCarthy says. “If we’re wrong, that will come out. It’s such a big claim that it has to be validated by experts.”
A big claim it may be, but hardly original. The clamor of voices saying they’ve invented revolutionary new “free energy” technologies has grown tumultuous in recent years, driven perhaps by the internet’s capacity to connect and inspire would-be tinkerers, or simply a that lay people are more fascinated with science.
The American Physical Society was worried enough about the trend a few years ago that its executive board put out a statement in June 2002, warning against such claims.
“(We are) concerned that in this period of unprecedented scientific advance, misguided or fraudulent claims of perpetual motion machines and other sources of unlimited free energy are proliferating,” the group said. “Such devices directly violate the most fundamental laws of nature, laws that have guided the scientific progress that is transforming our world.”
McCarthy says he’s not using his claims to raise money, at least not yet. Steorn is privately funded, but is not seeking new investment until after the tests have been done, he contends.
The company has, however, filed patent applications on some of its work, and hopes to commercialize it by creating batteries for mobile phones and laptops, both markets that can respond quickly to new technologies. In the unlikely event it is borne out, it could also radically transform the automotive business and other industries.
The drive to create an engine that powers itself, or a self-replenishing source of energy, has long been a holy grail for the tinkering class, with a history stretching back nearly a thousand years. Like alchemy, its medieval pseudo-scientific counterpart, it has attracted high names and low, scientists and faith-based researchers, believers and outright scam artists.
Among the most notable investigators was Leonardo da Vinci, who included drawings of several self-driving devices inside his notebooks. However, he was publicly critical of such schemes, comparing them to the alchemical quest to transmute lead to gold.
Documenters of such schemes nevertheless find an unbroken string of subsequent proposals, tests, and failures that stretch to the present day, occasionally crossing over lines where would-be inventors are accused of running out-and-out con operations.
Perhaps the most famous recent claimant is a flamboyant only-in-America figure named Dennis Lee, who has spent much of the last decade churches and auditoriums across the United States promising “free electricity,” among other inventions, and selling rights to open “dealerships” for thousands of dollars at a time. His efforts have led numerous state attorneys general offices to seek sanctions, including a recent string of fines and court orders in the state of Washington.
The flaw with such claims lies in one of the most fundamental principles in basic physics, known as the first law of thermodynamics.
In layman’s terms, the first law states that energy is always conserved inside a closed system. It can be transformed into different forms inside the system, such as heat or work, but it can’t be created or destroyed.
“Thermodynamics is largely an empirical field, and everything we’ve observed is consistent with the first law,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Ian Waitz. “When you make enough observations over a long period of time, things that start as hypotheses turn into things we call law. This would be not consistent with all other observations, which is a reason to be skeptical.”
In the past, most claimants haven’t met a standard of ordinary proof, much less an extraordinary one required to overturn a fundamental pillar of modern science. In most cases, sincere claimants have found that they simply didn’t calculate the energy produced and consumed correctly.
Some of the most flamboyant inventors have found that their devices were coincidentally broken or burned out when testing time rolled around. Others have simply been exposed as obvious frauds, with batteries or a generator hidden out of sight.
While outlandish, McCarthy’s claims have stirred up enough interest to at least hope for a thorough vetting, if not confirmation.
His Economist ad, quoting playwright George Bernard Shaw’s dictum that “All great truths begin as blasphemies,” is seeking a jury panel of 12 physicists to perform public tests. Whatever the unorthodoxy of that approach, he says the researchers will have no constraints on their work. They will be given full access to the company’s work, will be able to take the technology home to test in their own laboratories, or recreate the process themselves.
According to the company’s website, nearly 1500 scientists have “expressed interest” in testing the technology as of late Monday, and more than 17,000 people had signed up to receive word of the results.
“Ultimately the aim is so large, that the people involved, and the process that goes on, has to be purer than pure,” McCarthy says.
Written by: John Borland and Wired News
Renata Vincoletto says
It looks like some kind of joke, some kind of Cold Fusion 2.0
Create something from nothing is against everything that we know.
Or maybe it’s just another TV Show Lost’s mistery.
Renata
http://rvincoletto.multiply.com
Sam says
Maybe a new reality show for SCI FI “Who Wants to Be the next Zephram Cochrane.” 🙂
Bob from the UK says
I’m inclined to believe that hey THINK they’re on to something. But I seriously doubt it’s gonna hold up to scrutiny
Jeremy from Seattle says
oooooo Sam, good idea!
karl says
Vaporware.
If you believe this is true then send me an email- for a fee of only £10,000 I will provide you with the secret location of the fountain of youth.
Sam says
Hey Karl, checks in the mail. 🙂
d-Faktor says
I smell a scam. Perpetual motion doesn’t exist in everyday appliances. A magnet can get depleted of its energy just like a lump of coal. This device will cause the Gauss levels of the magnets to drop and render the magnet “empty” over time. Ergo, no perpetual motion, no free energy.
And btw, this isn’t the first perpetual motion device based on magnets. A few years back a German company introduced their Perendev machine, which also relied on aligned magnets. They suffered the same problem.
Dr Mi says
One cannot escape entropy.
I am in the preliminary stages of building my own UNLIMITED FREE ENERGY device. It’s a SPAM to energy converter and once finished, I get enough raw material in my e-mail account daily to power my whole neibourhood!
pritam says
hey i think an accident occured leading to a mysterious invention might have some relevance in it understanding the laws of physics would be the answer to our deteriorating natural resources. so we better get prepared for revolution in alternate source of energy. plz think abt it don’t be so sarcastic.
Mem says
As has been said: Truth will set you free! But first will piss you off!
The truth goes through in three stages
1- Truth will be denied!
2- Truth will ridiculed!
3- Truth is self-evident and accepted.
Therefore this invention will reach to critical mass
and will be worldwide accepted.
Just like in past times: Earth was believed to be “flat”.
It was utterly inconceivable that some said might be a round?
Also they said: Man could never fly?
Some ancient prophet had a vision and said:
With the aid of the metals, some day man, will fly!
They pronounced that the prophet was out of he’s mind!
Humanity is like little children playing in a sand box.
Despite the fact that great deal of mechanical advancement
human race achieved. Still these steps are very small
discovery in Cosmic sense of achievement.
People born and die like flies. Neither do they know
the soul nor the spirit. (Yet) Only the outer human
shell (body) is glorified, so far.
Yes you can polish the glass of the
lantern alright, but if you don’t pay attention to the flame
What good the glass alone will do, to you? When you need the light!
Slowly human race are involving,
it shall come to pass: that all this dirty mud will spin off the
round earth. Just like when you get stuck in the mud and finally
you make it through, you see all of the dirt spin off your tires…
Time is approaching that “this great hand finally will flush off the
toilet” and the foul small and look will be no more
shyam says
i think that this is is just another crazy claim by a madman….its like saying we can earn money without putting any effort be it legal or illegal….this guy is a conman….believing this nonsense will be a shame to humanity and its immense scientific progress.