# Irish company invents free energy **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 20, 2006, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419 "2006-08-20T03:59:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/61 "2006-08-30T15:37:58Z")
They could build one that doesn’t [break down](http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/delorean_ev.html) after 23 miles for no apparent reason. This kind of thing has been done time and time and time again; there’s no reason to cut these latest con artists any slack when their modus operandi matches scams going back hundreds of years. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/62 "2006-08-30T15:50:39Z")
[QUOTE=Mathochist] I claim they’re full of shit. Claims are claims, not peer-reviewed, repeatable evidence. Besides, anyone who’s watched a con-artist movie (yah, yah, movies != reality) knows that for big long cons you’ve gotta front some money of your own. [/QUOTE] I find premature sceptism more stupid than ingenuity. Were it not from fear of Sam and his bunch, I would excoriate you. We have a couple of weeks to watch and wait. Meanwhile I reckon that they will have enough offers of serious money (and legislation) to turn the thing into something bigger than Microsoft. It could be a prank, but it is not a con. - there is no way they can make money out of it if it were a con. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/63 "2006-08-30T16:08:48Z")
> [@](#): > > It could be a prank, but it is not a con. > > - there is no way they can make money out of it if it were a con. Um, why not? If they start asking people for contributions to build a working prototype - after they’ve handpicked the “scientists” who say, yes, this works - or offer people to become investors in the next Microsoft/Daimler, don’t you think there would be enough people to be scammed? Like that guy in Cecil’s article - he managed to to get rich? > [@](#): > > I find premature sceptism more stupid than ingenuity. Con men must love you, as well as quacks and charlatans. Yes, it’s important that scientists remain open for alternative possiblities; but not when the basic laws of physics (or, as Cecil put it, common sense), are ignored. And there’s a reason the scientific method of testing and double-blind and peer-review works best - better than belief in what a nice guy in a shiny suit tells you. Yes, scientists are only human, and therefore, there have been mistakes in the past with acknowledging oddball ideas - but they were accepted eventually, once there was enough evidence. In the long run, the scientific method works. And finally, there isn’t one giant conspiracy by “scientists”. There is an ongoing effort of some scientists (and Cecil himself) to try and educate the people about basic facts, so they don’t fall prey to scammers and con-men and charlatans, who leech money, disappoint emotionally, sometimes endanger the health of people (quacks) and so on. ---
**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/64 "2006-08-30T16:54:32Z")
[QUOTE=jjimm] Thanks for that insightful and illuminating post, **spingears**. If you bother reading any of this stuff, particularly the Guardian article, I think you’d conclude that they are very unlikely to be “scamers” - at worst deluded - and not looking for investment until they have a verifiable product. [/QUOTE] Where did I miss the link/reference to the Guardian article. I would like to see it too. I read everything, downloaded all downloads, watched the video and nothing to convince me it is nothing bit a scam. Email will bring the money pitch sooner or later. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/65 "2006-08-30T17:22:35Z")
[Guardian article here](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1858134,00.html). They have _no_ patents. They merely have applied for them. There is no evidence that the company has ever done anything in any field. Read the article closely. They were called in to do a job, but it never states that the job was done. They took out an ad. Magazines accept dodgy ads from unknown companies all the time if their money is good. The back of Writer’s Digest is filled with ads with scammers who prey on writers. They have no backup from any scientist. They have no independent source willing to say anything. They have nothing except hype. Those of us old enough to remember Joe Newman have seen this all before. At some point they will ask for money based on the evidence given by these unnamed scientists. People will give them money. In a couple of years they will need more money to do further research. People will give them money. The process is replicable to an astounding degree. Fleecing the gullible is truly a science. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/66 "2006-08-30T17:23:06Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] I think I saw some calculations to the effect that tens of thousands of years’ usage at the current rate would eventually make each day about a second longer, or something like that,… [/QUOTE] Am I the only one reminded of The Gods Themselves? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/67 "2006-08-30T17:52:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Right. I can see Chronos’s reaction now: > > “Oh, so they’ve been driving this car around for a year now without refueling it? Right. It’s a scam. A clever scam. They won’t let anyone take the thing apart and examine it, so how can we know they’re not lying to us? How do we know the interior isn’t hiding some RTG or clever batteries or something …?” Easy. If they drive the car around for a year, under constant surveilance (of the outside of the car), and are never once seen refuelling it, then they’re darned well onto _something_ big. Maybe they just have some super-duper fuel that they can put in it when they make it, and go for a year of driving on a single fill-up. OK, so that wouldn’t be free energy, and it wouldn’t inherently violate any laws of physics, but it’d still be huge, and something worth investing in. Note that they never need to open the hood and let me get a look at the innards, for me to see that they’re not refuelling it. **Mathochist** , I don’t think it’s fair to say that all of physics would come tumbling to the ground. Nöther’s Theorem, being a theorem, is of course true, but to apply it to specific physical situations (such as that time translation symmetry is equivalent to conservation of energy) requires a dollop of quantum mechanics. Mathematically, all that Nöther can tell you is that there’s some quantity associated with d/dt that is conserved, but you need a factor of [del]h[/del] to identify that conserved quantity with energy. So you could probably get away with just tearing quantum mechanics down to its foundation and rebuilding it from scratch, but it would still be possible, in principle, for there to be consistent laws of physics. Alternately, you could have the laws of physics changing in some predictable manner, with some meta-laws describing exactly how they change. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/68 "2006-08-30T17:55:21Z")
Is it actually possible for Steorn to be correct _without_ necessarily violating the laws of physics? Zero point energy? Some intertaction with the Earth’s rotation and/or magnetic field? Could free energy _theoretically_ be extracted from a known, but effectively “free”, energy source by such a device? ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/69 "2006-08-30T18:46:22Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] Is it actually possible for Steorn to be correct _without_ necessarily violating the laws of physics? Zero point energy? Some intertaction with the Earth’s rotation and/or magnetic field? Could free energy _theoretically_ be extracted from a known, but effectively “free”, energy source by such a device? [/QUOTE] That’s the thing – free as in beer? Or free as in… well, free beer with the understanding that you’re depleting an artesian well to an infentisimal degree and killing billions of yeast? Maybe its no “free energy” in the thermodynamics sense, but free as in so readily available that the cost will free aside from the device itself. Maybe we’re slowing down the orbit of the Earth – so what? It’s not free in the conservation sense, but it’s “free enough.” They never actually explain what they mean or whom they’re speaking to. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/70 "2006-08-30T18:53:25Z")
Hey, if it’s going to slow down the orbit of the Earth, then not only will we have free energy, but we’ll have more hours in the day in which to use it 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/71 "2006-08-30T18:54:21Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] Is it actually possible for Steorn to be correct _without_ necessarily violating the laws of physics? Zero point energy? Some intertaction with the Earth’s rotation and/or magnetic field? Could free energy _theoretically_ be extracted from a known, but effectively “free”, energy source by such a device? [/QUOTE] **IF** Steorn can actually produce real free energy the world will be turned upside down (figuratively speaking.) They would be the first to actually violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics! Liars can figure and figures can lie. I would suspect some computer sleight of hand being used to mislead any but the most critical of investigator(s). All due respect to Steve Boggan, he is a newspaper man not an experienced engineer nor a scientist. Exapno Mapcase: Thanks for the link. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/72 "2006-08-30T19:00:44Z")
Hmm. The company doesn’t scream “scam” at me. I get the impression that these guys really believe they have something. It’s likely they’ve managed to misinterpret their results, in which case you have to feel slightly sorry for them when they’re told of their error… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/73 "2006-08-30T19:14:11Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] Is it actually possible for Steorn to be correct _without_ necessarily violating the laws of physics? Zero point energy? Some intertaction with the Earth’s rotation and/or magnetic field? Could free energy _theoretically_ be extracted from a known, but effectively “free”, energy source by such a device? [/QUOTE] No, no, no, and no. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/74 "2006-08-30T19:16:21Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] Fleecing the gullible is truly a science. [/QUOTE] So there really **is** some true science behind it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/75 "2006-08-30T19:24:20Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] Hmm. The company doesn’t scream “scam” at me. I get the impression that these guys really believe they have something. It’s likely they’ve managed to misinterpret their results, in which case you have to feel slightly sorry for them when they’re told of their error… [/QUOTE] What’s the possibility that the company, as an entity managed by various individuals of the business persuasion, is not intended to be a scam, but that there is an expert at scientific bafflegab hiding somewhere within who is taking his own management for a ride? In the classic scenario, everybody in authority at the company knows the effort is a scam, and they’re looking for angel investors to fleece; in my suggested alternative, the company itself acts as a sort of angel-investor shell. The scam artist draws a healthy salary, and then vanishes, leaving the well-intentioned but scientifically-ignorant firm behind to hold the bag. In other words, the company is used as armor and insulation by the nefarious fraudster, who can disappear a lot more easily than those who run a formally licensed firm. Plausible? ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/76 "2006-08-30T19:43:57Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] I understand, but that doesn’t mean a replacement model couldn’t be constructed that was at least coherent (not that I fancy the task, and not that I underestimate the severity of such a thing). [/QUOTE] You might be able to form a coherent model, but it would lose all predictive power. For an example of what happens when you’re allowed sensitive dependence on time in your system, look at astrology. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/77 "2006-08-30T19:49:09Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] I find premature sceptism more stupid than ingenuity. [/QUOTE] “Premature”? To find it more likely that these guys are at best dumb and at worst malicious than that literally _everything_ we know about how the physical world works is wrong? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Besides which, skepticism cannot be “premature”. _Nothing_ gets a free pass. > [@](#): > > there is no way they can make money out of it if it were a con. This is naivete, pure and simple. It has been done before and it will be done again. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/78 "2006-08-30T19:51:07Z")
[QUOTE=spingears] They would be the first to actually violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics! [/QUOTE] First law. It violates the conservation of mass-energy. The second law is what they explicitly say they _don’t_ violate: deriving work energy from the ambient heat energy. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/79 "2006-08-30T20:51:20Z")
[QUOTE=Mathochist] “If it ducks like a quack…”? [/QUOTE] I must also applaude this. I will spend the rest of my life trying to fit this into any conversation that needs it (as this one we’re having so dearly did). I’m going to guess that the reason they put their ad in The Economist is that it is read by people who: a) have money and b) don’t have a lot of scientific savvy. I will not be the least surprised if we hear in a few weeks that several investors were already allowed in on the ground floor with some sort of non-disclosure gag clause in the contract. They think they’ve outfoxed everyone who’s waiting for confirmation, and they’ll be out in the cold when the confirmation never happens. Steorns could have done a lot of work on prototypes and research for their 75 kilopounds. Instead, they spent it to make some early contacts with gullible money people. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419/80 "2006-08-30T21:41:33Z")
If you are a scientist and you are thinking about signing up as a person “interested in testing this technology”, you are being taken for a ride. Currently, according to their webpage, they have about 4300 scientists signed up to this effect. Congratulations, guys and gals, you are now officially helping with the scam: the next stage of their campaign marketing for investors is going to say: “We have 4300 actual scientists interested in our technology”, which is going to be read as something other than what it actually means by the innocent. DNFTT. [QUOTE=Chronos] Easy. If they drive the car around for a year, under constant surveilance (of the outside of the car), and are never once seen refuelling it, then they’re darned well onto _something_ big. Maybe they just have some super-duper fuel that they can put in it when they make it, and go for a year of driving on a single fill-up. OK, so that wouldn’t be free energy, and it wouldn’t inherently violate any laws of physics, but it’d still be huge, and something worth investing in. Note that they never need to open the hood and let me get a look at the innards, for me to see that they’re not refuelling it. [/QUOTE] While I agree with the overall thrust of your POV, I think this is unrealistic. I agree that with Toadspittle that if they could do this, I’d just assume (like, I suspect, most skeptics) that they’d refuelled on the sly somewhere. This sort of long, woolly test (driving a car round for a year) is exactly the sort of test beloved of the Uri Geller’s and Breatharians of the world. But I think that if they wanted to actually convince real scientists and engineers of the device’s worth, they’d just: - put the device in a locked box with an external power outlet, - allow it to be put into a bare room controlled by an independant third party with cctv cameras watching the whole time - connect the power outlet up to the largest possible suitable load (motor, heat element, whatever) See how long runs for. Unless the device is huge, it wouldn’t be long before its power output would exceed that which could be outputted by any battery or fuel cell of the size of the locked box. [QUOTE=Colophon] Hmm. The company doesn’t scream “scam” at me. [/QUOTE] Do you think clever scammers would? What do you expect? Do you expect house thieves to go round with striped shirts, little black eye masks and big sacks, too? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irish-company-invents-free-energy/369419.md?page=5)