Take this with a grain of salt, but the following comment was left here this morning by someone calling himself “MikeDuke”:

Expect news of this to break next week in the mainstream press. A working model of the orbo device is going on display in a London Museum. www.kinetica-museum.org

UPDATE:

More (possibly) inside information from MikeDuke:

What day does the demo begin? How long does it last?

As I understand it the “demo” as far as the visiting public are concerned is going to be an Orbo device spinning round inside a glass cabinet. (Presumably behind protective glass). From that perspective I would expect it would last the entire time that the device is on public display. It will have a camera trained on it and will be viewable over the internet 24 x 7. Might have a little trouble with demand for that video mind you unless Kinetica has dark fibre access to the Internet backbone.

Press interviews are scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. The Kinetica museum opens Wednesday at 11am but there is some confusion as to whether Wednesday will be a press event and close to public or open. The Museum are saying nothing. Thursday 5th seems like the first day which is a safe bet. Mind you press people are lazy f’kers and I would imagine that coming late on the Wednesday shortly before closing time might also work because the press have deadlines and they’ll piss of early. You might be able to sneak in after they’ve gone on the 4th July.

By Tuesday 3rd evening you should see the first press reports and that will tell you more.

Have you seen the Orbo working yourself?

No, I’ve never seen the device. My understanding is that what will be shown is a freestanding Orbo device with no wires going in or out. You push it with a finger to start the rotation and it continues rotating by itself, overcoming air friction and friction at the bearings. Apparently the motion of the device is smooth and continuous not jerky and staggered like a cog inside clock or ratchet. I might be wrong, of course, but assuming this is essentially correct then this is going to be a rather compelling demonstration, because the device will clearly be drawing additional energy from somewhere in order to overcome air resistance and mechanical friction, (since those things cause it to lose energy as heat). Members of the public will bring testing devices to make sure that the device is not being powered by electrical induction (pretty easy to detect a 25,000 volt power cable hidden in the roof). Forum members believers and skeptics alike have said they will bring measurement devices. I know of no battery technology small enough to be hidden inside such a device and turn it around for 150 hours so that would seem unlikely also. 150 hours of powered motion is a lot of joules of work. I would assume that the Orbo device will be mounted on perspex or something so viewers can see it from every direction. I would also assume that the case will be sealed so we know it has not been tampered with overnight. (web cam on it 24 x 7)
Of course none of this is “proof”, but then again it is building their case for it being real. One day the National Physical Laboratory will test the device I am sure, but probably not until it has been powering your mobile phone for 9 months.

I don’t know how reliable this source is, but it won’t take more than a few days to find out. Thanks Mike!

UPDATE 7/1:

The following is an excerpt from a comment left on this post (see the original comment here). This information hasn’t been verified, but we should know the truth in a few days.

Transcript of telephone call recorded at 17:24 BST July 01, 2007
Kinetica receptionist: “Hello Kinetica”
SH: Hi, I’m just looking at your website, what have you got on next week, because the old Soundwaves one has finished hasn’t it?
Kinetica receptionist: Yes, Soundwaves exhibition is over and then we’ve got a private exhibition next week, umm, which is not curated by Kinetica. It will be open to the public from Thursday, but unfortunately I can’t say anything about it.
SH: From Thursday, yeah, not your normal open times, Wednesday?
Kinetica receptionist: No, because Wednesday we still won’t be set up, So Thursday it is open to public
SH: Right
Kinetica receptionist: and it’s running until the 15th of July.
SH: Right
Kinetica receptionist: And were all the way through, we are staying open Mondays and Tuesdays as well for that week
SH: So of the following week you’ll stay open Monday and Tues?
Kinetica receptionist: Pretty much all the way through from the 5th to the 13th,
SH: From the 5th to the 13th, did you say 15th earlier?
Kinetica receptionist: No the 13th, Friday the 13th, lucky for some.
SH: Ok, excellent, thanks very much goodbye.
Kinetica receptionist: Bye.

Anyone who’d like to test the veracity of this conversation might follow Sherlock’s lead by ringing up Kinetica themselves, at 020 7392 9674.

UPDATE 7/3:

Kinetica Museum has posted a page about their upcoming exhibit:

http://www.kinetica-museum.org/new_site/index.php?ptitle=Future%20Exhibitions&mfile=event_exhibition_main.php?mode=future

There is no information about the exhibit at all, just dates: July 5th through 13th. This lines up exactly with the information we’ve been getting about the Steorn event.

Also, a Steorn forum account that had posted a link to this post on that forum has been banned — more indication that the information in this post is on the right track.

UPDATE 7/4:

A brief article has begun appearing on several news sites, stating that Steorn’s demo is indeed set to begin today. No location is given. Here are a couple of the pages where it has been posted:

Independent.ie
Belfast Telegraph

Here’s the text of the article:

Irish firm to put free-energy machine on display today

Wednesday July 04 2007

The Irish company which claims to have designed a machine that creates energy from thin air is due to put the technology on display today.

Steorn claims its Orbo device uses the interaction of magnetic fields to generate a constant source of free and clean energy.

If true, the technology would defy the laws of physics.

It is currently being tested by 22 of the world’s top scientists, who are expected to conclude their review sometime next year.

In the meantime, Steorn is putting the Orbo on display in London and on the Internet later today.

For more up to date news stories about Steorn, try Google News.