Steorn's Orbo

Steorn is a small company based in a two level office hidden in a nondescript corporate park in Dublin, Ireland. They're inventors of things useful if somewhat dreary, like security devices to prevent ATM fraud. But one way or another, that's about to change. Their latest product is either a brash scam, an onerous mistake, or the single most important discovery - ever.

Orbo is the name Steorn has given to the technology based on an effect that they've supposedly uncovered. We still don't have many specifics about how it works, but here's what we do know. It's based on a specific arrangement of permanent magnets, and involves cyclical movement. Once one cycle is complete, more mechanical energy has been put out than was originally put in. Arrange this system so that it puts its energy back into the next cycle, and presto, you have the impossible - a perpetual motion machine. A wheel that will spin forever (or bob, or jitter - again we don't know the details yet) and in the process seem to create energy from nothing. Energy that could run an iPod, or a car; a furnace, or a spaceship. All without batteries or any kind of fuel.

At this point, many of you will want to dismiss Steorn and its claims out of hand, to relegate them neatly into the class of fanciful dreams along with unicorns, faeries and Jedi mind tricks. And I don't blame you. If anything at all can be called "scientifically impossible", it's the perpetual motion machine. The "free energy" produced by such a device would do much more than violate some obscure tenets of electromagnetic theory. It would fly in the face of what is probably the most fundamental and well established law in all of science - that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, they can only change form. If Steorn's device does keep spinning indefinitely, it must be taking its energy from someplace, or else physics has to be rewritten from the ground up.

I agree, Steorn's claims do sound extraordinarily unlikely. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a few months, and here's why:

1) To my eyes, the people at Steorn are acting like they're convinced they have something real.

2) We'll find out the truth this year - maybe as soon as July. Steorn is pressing ahead and has staked their credibility on going public with this technology in the coming months.

3) In the remote chance that they have what they claim, everything changes. No person on Earth, indeed no living being, would be unaffected by this.

I'm writing this blog for those of you who are interested in catching up with Steorn's story and in following it forward.

Here's how it all unfolded. According to CEO Sean McCarthy, in 2003 Steorn's engineers were hard at work developing a security camera system to keep watch over ATM machines. They were playing with the idea of using a small wind generator to power the camera system so it wouldn't need to be hooked up to an electric line. Being tinkering types, they were trying out various configurations of the wind generator's magnets in an attempt to improve its efficiency, when the engineer working on this bumped into a problem: the generator appeared to be putting out more energy than it was taking in.

Their first reaction was to be annoyed that their meter had broken. After more testing proved it wasn't due to a faulty meter they set this all aside to look at later, while they finished up their ATM camera project. In the end they never did get the wind generator idea off the ground.

But they did return to investigate their magnetic anomaly. The company is stocked full of professional engineers and none of them were in any hurry to decide they had stumbled upon what they knew was impossible, a perpetual motion machine. They replicated and tested the effect in many different ways, looking for where the energy was coming from. They found that the permanent magnets being used were not losing strength over time, the surrounding air was not changing temperature, and so on.

According to Sean McCarthy, Steorn invited several leading university physicists to test out their device themselves. These physicists, Steorn would have us believe, all agreed that they could not find an explanation for the effect. But not one of them would allow their opinion to be put on the record - none wanted to take the risk of being associated with such a radical and unlikely idea.

Failing that route, Steorn decided to find scientists who would agree to go on the record in validating their claims - by calling for them publicly. In an August 2006 issue of The Economist, Steorn placed a full page ad (at a cost somewhere between $70,000 - $200,000) promising a future of clean and free energy, and asking for applications from qualified experimental physicists who would be willing to thoroughly test their device and publicly release their findings, whatever they may be.

Thousands of people applied through Steorn's web site, hundreds of whom were genuine scientists. From this pool, Steorn chose a jury of 12. (The 12 most qualified? The 12 most gullible? 12 most fictional? Only time will tell.) According to Steorn, this group convened to begin testing the device in January of this year. The time schedule will be set by the scientists, not by Steorn, but Sean McCarthy's expectation is that they will come out with a result by the end of this summer. He continues to be committed to publishing their entire report, whatever they conclude. And it is when this "jury" has finished their report that Steorn plans to finally release all details of their device publicly, and to begin licensing out the technology for other companies to produce.

Here's what's coming up in Steorn's future, from what they're telling us:

- Yesterday, Steorn opened up their "developer's club" (called the SPDC) to an initial group of a
couple hundred people, selected mostly from the membership of Steorn's online forum. The SPDC will eventually be where any engineer who wants to develop a product using Steorn's technology can go to learn how to do it. In its initial stages, though, members are not finding out how Orbo works; they are instead vetting the educational material on magnetics that Steorn is developing, to act as a primer for engineers who want to learn about their technology. Exactly when Steorn will reveal how their technology works to the SPDC is unknown, but it is expected to be well before they release the information to the public.

- At the end of the first quarter of 2007 (ie., the beginning of April) Steorn will release an update on the progress of its jury of scientists. They will also release certain specifications of their Orbo technology, such as its ratio of volume to energy produced. They will not yet release information about how it works.

- Starting in the first week of July, Steorn has plans to display several of their devices publicly, both in the U.K. and in the U.S. The locations are unknown, but (according to Sean McCarthy) have already been reserved. That specific week was chosen because it will coincide with a worldwide series of concerts put together by Al Gore and featuring a long list of musicians, with the purpose of raising awareness about global climate change. Steorn hopes to ride the press' interest in issues concerning clean energy during that week.

- Steorn has contracted a manufacturer to produce a simple and small device to demonstrate their effect. 100,000 of these will be manufactured, and released to the public around the time that the jury of scientists is done validating (Steorn hopes) their technology.

- All of the above is intended to raise awareness and acceptance of Steorn's bold claims, and once that's done, Steorn plans on licensing their technology to any companies that want to incorporate it into their products.

- Steorn is also working on an Orbo powered water pumping system that they hope to provide to third world villages at no cost. They may begin deploying these before the jury of scientists has finished validating the technology.

Let's not take Steorn's impossible claims at face value. What's really going on? There are at least four main possibilities:

1) Marketing promotion. When Steorn first went public with their claim last August, many people figured it was just part of The Lost Experience, an online alternate reality game that ABC was running at the time. It does fit in nicely with Lost's world of magnetic anomalies and Hanso subsidiaries working on scientific schemes to alter the future. Another group noticed the similarity between Steorn's logo and an XBox logo, and decided it must be part of a marketing campaign for Halo 3.

2) Fraud. Steorn would not be the first to attract investors with bogus claims of a free energy technology, then try to run off with their money. The suggestion that Orbo is a scam strikes some people as obvious, others as cynical, and a few (most of them working at Steorn) as offensive.

3) Mistake. Hanlon's Razor advises, "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice." Sure, Steorn is manned by a number of well educated engineers, but magnetic effects are not fully understood, and a dash of measurement error along with a smidgen too much enthusiasm could explain the whole ordeal.

4) The Real Thing. Science determined free energy was categorically impossible centuries ago, but that didn't stop hundreds of smart people from trying anyhow. Nonetheless, no exception to this rule has ever been found (at least by anyone competent enough to sell it). So what are the chances Steorn has stumbled upon the impossible while working on an automated ATM camera?

Here's some evidence we have so far, to help us choose from among these possibilities:

1) Steorn is on public record as a real company that's been around since 2000. Sean McCarthy is a real person, on public legal records as being associated with Steorn. Steorn has been been involved as a witness in court proceedings dealing with their (original) core business, credit card security. Steorn's web site has been online and evolving since 2001.

2) Steorn's financial records are publicly available from the Irish government, and are accessible also on Steorn's site here. The numbers show that Steorn's revenue dropped to nothing in the years following their supposed discovery, and at the same time their research spending ballooned. This can be seen as consistent with the story that they refocused on developing Orbo, abandoning their previous course of business and bringing in private investors to fund their new research. However, it can also be interpreted in light of the "Mistake", and, more insidiously, the "Fraud" theories.

3) Steorn has maintained public forums on the web since the time of their announcement last summer, and CEO Sean McCarthy has participated in discussions on these forums on an often daily basis. One noteworthy point is that Sean has been involved in several highly technical discussions about magnetic physics on this forum with other people who know what they're talking about; this indicates that at least the technical knowledge appears to be there, which would not necessarily be expected if the "Fraud" or "Marketing" theories were correct. A number of forum members have also visited Steorn's office and met with Steorn employees. One member (Crank) was even invited to take photos of one of their test rigs recently. The positive impressions of these first hand witnesses strike me as a good indication that this is a real group of people who think they truly have something. But, we also can't discard the possibility that these forum members are just part of the charade.

The end of the first quarter is fast approaching, when Steorn has stated they will release an update on the progress of the "jury" of scientists evaluating their technology, as well as some basic specs (unfortunately, no blueprints yet - not until the jury validation process is complete, says Sean). Just a few developments this week to report.

According to a forum post by Crank, the developer's club (SPDC) has been running through the first section of the physics tutorial that Steorn is putting together (for the eventual intended audience of companies and individuals who want to develop Orbo-based products). They haven't been given any Orbo-specific meat yet, but are working on various projects such as ideas for designing a do-it-yourself "Orbo kit". Sean has been away from the forum for the week, supposedly hard at work on the demonstration device that will be unveiled in July.

Finally, the blog Free Energy Tracker broke an interesting story today based on an anonymous tip. Back in November when the "Jury of 12" scientists were chosen to examine the Steorn technology, it seems that one of the selected scientists made mention of it at a Physics related meeting at the college where he teaches. Well, the minutes of that meeting were posted on the web and (given that this is not a hoax) we now know the identity of one of the jurors. Jeff Bechtold is a physics professor at Austin Community College in Texas. While that in itself isn't very impressive (nothing against community college professors, I've been one myself - but they're generally not world class scientists), he may also be listed as an author on several published papers. While the papers that come up for "J Bechtold" on the topic of astrophysics belong to a Jill Bechtold at the University of Arizona, the "J Bechtold" who authored a number of papers on superconductivity in the '80s, and who was then based at the University of Houston, may well be our man. (Disclaimer: please don't harass the poor fellow, he's under an non-disclosure agreement.)

What's most interesting about this is that it's a sign that the jury process is for real. Up until now, we've only had the word from Steorn to support that. If Steorn were faking the whole thing to perpetrate a hoax or bilk more money out of investors, they wouldn't need to involve actual physics professors -- fictional professors are much more easily persuaded.