And yet again, another company that believes it has broken the laws of physics and can produce energy from nothing. :-)

An Irish company has thrown down the gauntlet to the worldwide scientific community to test a technology it has developed that it claims produces free energy.

The company, Steorn, says its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy — a concept that challenges one of the basic rules of physics.

It claims the technology can be used to supply energy for virtually all devices, from mobile phones to cars.

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”.

Irish company challenges scientists to test ‘free energy’ technology

I do enjoy it when new companies pop up making this and similar claims. :-) It proves they’re full of shit right from the outset.

The front page of the Steorn website proudly quotes George Bernard Shaw in very big bold letters, “All great truths being as Blasphemies.” Well, sorry folks, but the simple fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as free energy. Its not possible. Not even in the dead of space with no gravity to interfere.

Simply put, you will never get out equal or more energy than you put in. Because of friction, gravity, inertia and countless other hurdles, you’re full of shit if you claim to get back even equal energy to what you put in. Even in deep space.

The closest thing we have to free energy is solar power. And thats not technically free. Its just utilising energy from an extra terrestrial source. And then, no matter how efficient the panels might ever become, because of little things Ohm’s Law, heat disipation and so on, you’ll never get out equal energy to what you’ve received from the sun.

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.

“What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy,” McCarthy said.

“The energy isn’t being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It’s literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy,” he told Ireland’s RTE radio.

McCarthy said Steorn had not set out to develop the technology, but “it actually fell out of another project we were working on”.

Irish company challenges scientists to test ‘free energy’ technology

Free energy using magnetism? Okay, show me it working with gravity instead of magnets. Isn’t gravity comparable to a REALLY BIG magnetic field? Build your machine in orbit using the Earths gravity as a means to develop this power.

Honestly, there has to be an energy source. You cannot create energy. You cannot destroy energy. You can only transform it from one form to another. Using photovoltaic cells, we can transform solar radiation into electricity and heat. Using magnetism we can convert kinetic energy into electricity and heat. We use heat from radioactive materials or we use combustion of volatile materials to generate kinetic energy. And still there are many other sources we use to ‘generate’ eletrical energy.

All of these processes aren’t creating energy. They’re transforming it. There is still an initial energy source and the resulting useful energy we get from that source is still less than the energy the source originally had itself. There is no pure way to convert energy from (for example) water to electricity through a turbine without losing some of the energy in the first place. Through inertia/friction, heat loss and many other reasons. Even then we still rely on gravity to provide the initial power to start the process.

If what these people claim is true in any form, then a very small version of their powersource should be capable of supplying a city with its energy needs. Never charge batteries again.

The most unfortunate part of all this is that it’ll never be known what the end results truly are. Like all the others, these guys are getting their 15mins of fame, and then within a few short days or weeks they’ll completely vanish from everyones minds. No one will even remember to bother shaming them for their absolutely ludicrous claims.

Oh well, guess I’m doing my part instead. ;-)