Today I received the following from Said Salim Hamdan Al-Abri, the head of the IEEE engineering society at Sultan Qaboos University, who graciously responded to my question of whether he was present at Sean’s talk and if an Orbo device was demonstrated:

Yes Sir

I was there and he talked about some kind of motors that he invented.

Unfortunately I could not understand the talk very well may be because of his xent and my poor english.

One of the amazing and seems unbeleivable thins is that the motor which he proposed has an efficiency of 17000!!!!!!!!!!!

While this is only one unverified report, it sounds like Sean McCarthy did hold the planned talk in Oman, but there’s no indication that he had an Orbo to show off (given that it is referred to as the motor that “he proposed”). Why on earth would he be traveling the globe to stoke interest in his incredible claims, without bringing along a single shred of evidence to support those claims? One possibility is that the current talks are seen as ‘warm-ups’, outside of the reach of major media, and that he doesn’t believe a demonstration is required yet. Another possibility, of course, is that there just isn’t anything to be demonstrated.

Update:

In response to a follow-up question, Mr. Al-Abri made clear the Orbo was a no-show:

No he did not show us any actual motor. It was just power point slides.

Update 2:

The following was received from Arif Saeed Malik at SQU:

I have not had a chance to listen to Sean. But I asked my friend who attended it and he told me that he just talked about it. Apparently he tried to demonstrate but then said that it is not properly working due to set-up problem.

Interesting… has yet another Orbo demonstration fallen prey to ‘technical difficulties’?