Are Steorn's demonstration skills improving? McCarthy refines Over Unity claims in Steorn's latest public experiment, promises more good things to come: "Bring your own meters next week" says Sean. by creator
(libertarian)
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Steorn is continuing along a very intentional path of revealing and demonstrating its "free energy" technology to the world. Sean McCarthy, CEO of the small Irish company, demonstrated and explained three "key principles" of Steorn's Orbo technology, today, comparing and contrasting the Steorn Orbo with replication attempts by others.
As part of the "run up" to today's experiment, Mr. McCarthy recently promised the following:
"We will be conducting another live experiment... which we expect will be far more interesting than the one that we did before the Holidays."
My personal impression is that he delivered on that promise, or at the very least made a sincere effort to do so. In a clear attempt to improve company transparency, he encouraged anyone to bring their own test equipment next week. "Bring your own meters" he said "come in and measure it yourself, " offering to let anyone make their own measurements on a running Orbo. "Yes, you can put a load in the system, you can fire LEDs, you can do all of that, we encourage you to try it!"
While bringing the internet streaming system on-line today, Sean's audio test suggested the title for this article: "One, Two, Three - Overunity!" Mr. McCarthy seemed in a cheerful, upbeat mood despite dealing with a rib broken when he recently slipped on the ice.
As the demo began, Sean illustrated the difference between the replication attempts and the actual Steorn motor with a "side by side" comparison between an Orbo-configured motor and a "conventional" pulse motor. The setup was fairly simple: a common power supply and common control components were switched between the Orbo and the "conventional" motors. A variable resistor in the supply was used to adjust the supply to one or the other set of coils in the motors.
Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, he did not detail exactly what the differences are between the "conventional" motor and the Orbo. However, he surely gave us plenty of clues!
Here's what I saw and heard:
Today's public demonstration featured a list of what Mr. McCarthy called "key principles" of Orbo operation.
These principles were enumerated as:
Suffers no Back EMF
Produces an Inductance Energy Gain
Performs work.
Mr. McCarthy attempted to demonstrate each of these principles. He showed through the use of an infrared imaging camera that the demonstration Orbo generates heat in its coils.
Let's take a closer look at each of these three key principles.
Orbo Exhibits "Absolutely NO CEMF"
This part of the demo was a deliberate repeat of the first demonstration, with some additional clarification and explanation. He showed, perhaps more clearly than the original demonstration, the contrast between a conventional pulse motor (scope image on the left of the page) and an Orbo motor (scope image on the right of the page.) The "classic CEMF" image on the left shows the varying current profile as the magnets approach and leave the coil position, while the "Orbo no CEMF" shot on the right shows an extremely flat lack of current interaction with the magnets.
Throughout today's presentation, McCarthy also attempted to address questions and objections that have been raised since the first experiment shown in December.
One of those questions has been about an apparent delay between voltage and current waveforms on the displayed oscilloscope traces. A close-up scope shot shows that the current actually begins to rise as soon as the voltage is applied.
"What's happening... here is... we have a very significant change in the inductance of the core material." - Sean
Two high-end Tek scopes were used in the demo, with one showing the mathematical product of the voltage and current curves as absolutely flat all the way across.
Orbo Produces an Inductance Energy Gain
Mr. McCarthy said that, unlike conventional motors that exhibit inductance losses, the Orbo actually shows an inductance gain.
"The obvious place to look for the energy is in inductance loss... When you remove the voltage supply across the coil, that field will collapse and generate electricity... what Max is going to do now is to demonstrate that not only is there no inductance loss, but there is also an inductance gain..."
The inductance of both motors was measured statically by manually positioning the rotors at the entry and exit positions of the coils while reading the inductance on an industrial LCR meter. For the the "conventional" pulse motor, the inductance was 7.25 millihenrys - unchanged from entry to exit. The Orbo, however, showed an inductance of 961.0 mh at the entry point but 984.0 mh at the exit point.
Sean next discussed the equation ( E = LI2 / 2 ) that calculates the energy stored in an inductor.
"What's important about this is, the following, in that, if you consider the energy contained in inductance is defined by this very simple equation which is a half ell eye squared, ell being the inductance and eye being the current, that, when we fire the coil in an Orbo interaction, ell is in fact lower, so it costs us less energy to build the field, the current remains consistent because we have no back EMF through the interaction and when we dis-apply the voltage, ell is higher and what that actually means is that we've gained an inductance gain through the interaction." - Sean
He concluded by emphasizing that the electromagnetic components themselves actually return more electrical energy and/or heat than is put into them.
Orbo Performs Work
Sean said that this is obvious - it is obvious that the rotor moves, which requires work. The rotor turns by means of the magnet pairs... work being done is thus "witnessed by rotation of the motor."
He corrected a minor error from last presentation by demonstrating that the Orbo turns clockwise regardless of input current direction.
Sean concluded by stating that the sum of all the outputs, including the heat, rotational energy, and electromagnetic energy coming from the system demonstrates a coefficient of performance (COP) that is greater than 100%. "There is more energy being output than is being put into the system" he said.
Of course, there was no direct explanation of the design differences between the "classic" motor and the Orbo - simply a comparison and contrast of how the two different units behave in action.
Admission of More Evidence Needed
"To move from COP to Over Unity, we have to recognize that there are other energies in the system" Sean said.
Steorn plans to demonstrate this with a week-long experiment to be streamed live. They intend to show that the Orbo magnets do not lose any energy, and promise "a cumulative energy display showing energy in, energy out, and the inherent domain energy of the magnets."
A slide shown during the presentation stated:
"However certain components (such as the magnets used) store energy, to prove over unity we must prove that the energy of these components does not degrade during the interaction."
The final experiment, scheduled for the last week of January, is intended to show what we've all been waiting for... direct electrical input to electrical output. Sean explained:
"The reason we've taken this approach to introducing Orbo is that these systems can be quite complicated and have lots of moving parts, we have seen several attempts to replicate on the internet..."
McCarthy expressed concerns that trying to overload a prototype would result in early mechanical failure. Regarding replication attempts to date, Steorn has put a video on the You Tube Steorn Official site that addresses some of the errors made during those attempts:
"While we encourage people, and we actively want people, to attempt to replicate what we're doing, what we'd like to do is first of all to show some problems in replication, and specifically what we're going to do now, what Max is going to demonstrate, is why these anomalies exist, and why these systems aren't a proper Orbo configuration."
The Question and Answer Session
Questions from today's audience were much better both in quantity and quality than those after the first demonstration. Please consider the following partial summary not as a transcript, but as a combined paraphrase of the audience questions and a partial, edited quotation/paraphrase of Sean's answers.
Q: How much greater than unity is Orbo output?
A:About 150-200% in this test... it comes down to very specific arrangements...Theoretically there really isn't much limit...
Q: Have you measured the system with a calorimeter?
A:Yes, with our own... We will do so rigorously with a German company. By the end of month you can expect to see full measurements, and the test results will be put on our site. We will also be doing some supercooling tests to eliminate questions about thermal issues.
Q: Is Orbo based on Zero Point Energy?
A:A really great question - if you believe in it. "Give me a ZPE meter and I'll tell you..." What we're really doing is modifying time frames... Let scientists come on and develop theories for it afterwards... Scientifically, yeah, there are some big questions, but it's not our world to enter into that.
Q: Why the battery?
A:An absolutely brilliant question... Unfortunately I started to read the internet again which is not a good thing if you're me because there's all these things said about you... What we need to do with this interaction is deliver current in a very, very defined, in a very rapid response... We need to deliver the current virtually instantaneously." We have an effect that has huge value, not just commercially - that requires developers to adopt it.
More than once in his presentation, Sean used the analogy of the first hard disk drive... pointing out that, while the first drives were physcially huge, very low capacity, and incredibly expensive, it now costs only about $60 for a terabyte drive that fits in your pocket. He expects Steorn technology to follow a similar pattern. He repeatedly stated that Steorn as a company is not natively suited to product development.
Rapid development is important to us as a company... to us as a species... this is real, this is not some guy in his garden garage going "whoopeedo, I've solved the world's energy problems." We're trying to encourage developers to make that potential a reality - we can only carry that so far.
Q: What will you need to make battery smaller?
A:Buy a smaller battery! ... It's about the Current response time, trying to reduce resistance in the circuit. We're using a 1.2V battery for the reason that it matches the resistance of the number of coils we have in these systems that you see... We will be doing some things, from next week you'll be able to come in here, and the system's up here, you can bring your own meter, you can measure it... measure it yourself... and a lot of this is about having as much transparency as possible... From next Monday you'll not have to believe the good looking French fellow or the ugly fat Irish fellow, OK, you come in and measure it yourself, and we'd really encourage you to do that.
Q: Can you put a load on the system?
A:Yes, .... but "what's the point?" There's a lot of engineering required to go from prototype to practical systems... Yes, you can put a load in the system, you can fire LEDs, you can do all of that, we encourage you to try it...
Q: Are there any outside factors which may influence the result of the experiment, weather, temperature, presence of special persons?
A:Yes, there are real-world things that can, but that is not directly relevant to the core principle - you can stick [Orbo] in a Faraday Cage, you can isolate it, the effect will still be there... When people ask "What have you guys been doing for six years?"... It takes a long time to get to two magnets and a coil.
Q: If you drop the strength of the magnets by half, what happens? Have you tried bringing it down to the minimum level of magnetism?
A:It still works - We've tried a lot - we're playing around with the permeability of the core material... Two fields... You've got the applied field from your magnets and the field generated by the electricity that you're pumping into the system.
It's not linear in that fashion but in fact if you talk about power output, power output is really defined by speed, because if you consider there's no counter EMF, we're not degrading the torque imparted to the rotor.
In a typical motor, as you go faster, the back EMF increases, the current flow drops, which means your torque drops in line with the speed, because with no back EMF the torque imparted to the wheel is always the same whether you're doing 1rpm or a million rpm but power output is obviously, torque is obviously, energy over speed so...
Power is surprisingly not an issue for this, its about how fast you can cause the system to move and that's really again one of the great misnomers of Orbo, and maybe we're responsible for this because we really haven't put a lot of information into the public domain, we're a commercial entity, we're not required to.
But ultimately the faster you go the more powerful the device is.
Q: Why don't you have a prototype that demonstrates load? This is not very convincing to the general public.
A:We do. That's not our goal. We're not selling anything to Joe Public. We're trying to sell to the product development community.
Q: Would it not be in your interest to give a better demonstration?
A:Look at the responses before London... we were called frauds, con-men, and so on. What we're saying is so fundamentally against science... We're dealing with a mind-set... London was a mistake... We failed.
Our target community [is] the people who can make this into something that can charge your phone... pump water... A billion-dollar hard disk drive plant is what is needed to produce practically useful Orbo devices... The engineering required is highly comparable to that of a hard disk drive... Our demonstration is immediately useful to the product development community. [Orbo's] not going to be in the local WalMart at the end of January.
Q: You'd think the product development community would be jumping all over themselves to do this?
A:What makes you think they aren't? There are people knocking our doors down for Orbo. We made it very clear that until we're ready to commercialize we won't. We've been innundated with requests from people to do that. Ultimately when it comes to February 1st, we'll see how many developers actually get involved.
Plenty of Clues Available for Replicators!
Add today's demonstration to the many already published photographs, videos, and attempted replications, and serious experimenters have a wealth of information to work with.
Mr. McCarthy commented repeatedly today on the two magnets at each position on the Orbo rotor, and said that "two magnets and a coil" pretty much sum up Steorn's work over the past six years. "We're modifying time frames" he said.
You can find many other clues in today's presentation as well as in other articles I've written in this series (see list below.)
We Haven't Seen "The Holy Grail" Yet, But...
To see what I consider "The Holy Grail" of free energy, or "Proof of Steorn," please read this article about the criteria I am looking for. Sean McCarthy did claim Orbo will work in a Faraday cage and that an electrical input versus electrical output demonstration is coming up at the end of January.
As you know if you've been following this story, I am an optimistic member of "The Steorn 300," and I'm quite happy to be reporting on what, if "real," is undoubtedly one of the biggest stories of the century thus far. If you've enjoyed reading this, you can affirm that by offering your thumbs up or your thoughtful comments from any perspective.
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Being a Steorn 300 member myself, with what I have seen in their proprietary knowledge base (it would be hard to say it's not true), I am stunned that (as of Jan 13th,) only 1 news article can be found on Google News (this article) regarding the Jan 12th Steorn presentation. It just shows that journalists are more concerned about getting egg on their face, than covering a compelling story (be it true or not). If this turns out to be one of the biggest breakthroughs (I guess there is always a risk something will stop this - China restricting neodymium magnet exports), I am just proud to have been a very small part of this history.
Posted By: Sterling D Allan
Date: 2010-01-13 10:27:02
Excellent write-up. You obviously have your head wrapped around what is going on here and have become an outstanding observer and reporter on our behalf. I'll be linking to it from the PESN.com story I'm composing now.
Yes, it is true that I sometimes lose myself in the enthusiasm of the moment and consequently play fast and loose with my grammar. :)
Sadly, there seem to be too few true journalists anymore these days. I recall reading in school about the famous scientific hoaxes, such as Piltdown Man, and would agree that reporters need to exercise some measure of caution; however in today's world it seems to me that most writers choose to either ridicule or run from anything that isn't "politically correct." Has the instant transfer of information in the internet age resulted in a "herd mentality?"
Brian, I would say that if Orbo is engineer-able and scaleable as Sean continues to maintain, China will use their natural resources to profit from it rather than suppress it.
Your very kind words, Sterling, gave me considerable encouragement this morning that I hadn't merely wasted yesterday, Thank You! I regularly turn to PESN to get "the news" about what's happening in the energy world, and I tremendously appreciate your comprehensive covereage of the topic there! :)
Counter EMF is purely a function of tuning. The power spike is either aligned with the rotation or it isn't. Note two things: 1) they swapped the same timing sensor from one device to a different device, without explaining the differences; and 2) they adjusted the sensor resistor between making measurements, without exlaining why (a sufficient cause for higher CEMF).
IF the Orbo had absolutely no CEMF, it would accelerate indefinitely, never reaching a maximum rotation.
Orbo Produces an Inductance Energy Gain
... which is a normal feature of the orientation of the coil. The inductance rises when the coil is not engaged with the magnet. Jean Audin provides a precise measure of that change in his replication of the Steorn device (which McCarthy flippantly discards): [link edited for length]
Note that he is NOT comparing any replication to the Orbo. He is only comparing his own construction of a pulse phase motor to the Orbo. One of his videos does compare another (amateurish) attempt at a replication to the Orbo, while totally ignoring Audin's version.
Orbo Performs Work
Every motor performs work, at least in the form of rotation and heat. McCarthy says he can't put a load on the motor beyond an assistant's thumb (but promises he'll do that next month) because the excess work is very tiny. As the heat signature indicates, all the work is being done inside the toroidal coil's core: neutralizing the effects of magnetization. The rotor turns because the attraction component is "turned off" by the electrical pulse in the coil.
"There is more energy being output than is being put into the system"
The only basis for that assertion was the inductance increase, which is demonstrated by Audin with great precision and detail.
"trying to overload a prototype would result in early mechanical failure"
That certain occurred during the demonstration of his June 2009 configuration, which totally destroyed itself. In his next "experiment", maybe the excess energy will just disappear into some Tenth Dimension.
"What we're really doing is modifying time frames ..."
Jargon from the last century, when a few scientists claimed that it was possible to "fool" a magnet with an "instantaneous" jump in potential. Of course, there is no such thing as "instantaneous" in reality. I guess he sincerely believes he can achieve it: "We need to deliver the current virtually instantaneously." Except "virtually" won't do if you want to generate excess energy. See the papers cited on Audin's site from the 1880s-1910s explaining the theory that McCarthy is attempting to implement.
"... having as much transparency as possible... "
... when all of his experiments are specifically designed NOT to reveal the facts-of-the-matter?
"... It takes a long time to get to two magnets and a coil."
If it takes him six years to get to two magnets and a coil, we can expect a demonstration of his "free energy" some time in the next century, long after he's banked his developer fees.
Don't misunderstand: I like to see modern attempts to implement any ancient theory into practice. McCarthy may accidentally stumble upon something useful (but not miraculous).
Thanks again Westmiller, I smiled most of the way through your objections today... :)
Just a few "BEMF" ("Backwardly Entertaining and hopefully Methodically Funny" :) comments...
Yes, I agree with what I think is your main point... Steorn, while claiming "transparency" is still keeping things hidden... Kind of like an ecdysiast teasing her audience, creating an illusion of revelation without actually baring all... However, I disagree with some of your comment details...
There are other limits to rotational speed, including but not limited to air resistance...
I don't think Sean is treating Naudin "flippantly" at all - he has in fact offered to support his replication efforts via communication with some of his own company members, who are French and thus well suited to good communication with Jean-Louis. Sean's "special video" about replication (see YouTube Steorn Official) directly addresses Naudin's specific replication attempt including scope shots.
Some of your observations seem to put your thinking closer to the truth than other people I've read, while others evidence misunderstanding... so many clues! But no fault of yours, as we both agree that Steorn is not revealing all...
I have long been a big fan of J.L. Naudin and his absolutlely outstanding experiments and total transparency and support for anyone wishing to attempt to replicate his work. I note with pleasure that he is continuing to work on his interpretation of the Orbo. His motivation and purpose are however quite different from Steorn.
In fairness to Steorn, and something I did not cover clearly in this article, Sean very clearly and repeatedly explained during the demo and the Q/A session afterwards that Steorn, as a commercial company, is neither required to nor inclined to publish all specific details of their technology openly.
Yes, of course, that makes many observers unhappy, and in some cases apparently furious... but that is Steorn's call to make, and their target is really the manufacturers and developers with both the technology base and the deep pockets necessary to produce high-tech and efficient Orbo devices.
Creator: "Sean's 'special video' about replication (see YouTube Steorn Official) directly addresses Naudin's specific replication attempt including scope shots."
... but my recollection from watching it was that it critiqued a different "replication" by Eltimple, which is just a toy.
Two notes:
1. Audin's replication doesn't "verify" or "confirm" any of Steorn's claims. But, it does demonstrate the total absence of Back EMF in Audin's version, contrary to McCarthy's flat assertions.
2. There's an interesting change in both Steorn and Audin devices that isn't mentioned (I've emailed Audin for an explanation). The paired bottom coils of Steorn v1 (Dec) have disappeared in Steorn v2 (Jan) and the coils themselves have changed orientation from vertical to horizontal. This is also the case with Audin v2 compared to Audin v3, which was actually published two days before McCarthy's latest performance.
The change makes good sense, since it avoids a small EMF feedback that emits from the center of any toroidal coil. But neither one makes any mention of the revisions.
I don't expect Steorn to reveal anything until he qualifies for a patent (he has never filed for one, although others have), but all he has to do is show a device in calometric surplus, which is very simple. He doesn't need to describe anything, just have an independent lab conduct the test. Probably won't happen.
OK, very interesting regarding the removal of that video... I have no idea at this point why, but will comment if I learn why... What I recollect from watching it is that Sean was claiming that a "dip" or "sag" in Naudin's current waveform was indicating some CEMF?
I just looked to see if I could see any coil re-orientation in the live feeds, but they're down now... ( sure, say whatever you like about that! :) but I think that some of the "test rigs" used for demo-ing things were deliberately configured differently from the "constant running" demo machines on the other main display, and so I am unsure about your comment regarding v1(Dec) versus v2(Jan)... of course, I can easily see the changes that J.L. Naudin has been making...
McCarthy claimed yesterday that a calorimetric test by an outside German company is in the works... We'll see!
Steorn version 1 (Dec) photos are shown on this page. Naudin's webpage shows Orbo1 in the top two photos. Orbo2 (Jan)Â isn't shown here, but it's the third photo on Naudin's site and evident in Steorn's recent videos.
It isn't a big deal, but it indicates that McCarthy is rebuilding his Orbos as he goes along. No harm in that, but a loss of credibility if it isn't acknowledged and explained.
Yes, McCarthy did say that he was negotiating with a German company to do independent calometric testing. The last time, he drew on a "jury" of independent experts to review his "Over Unity" claims and they unanimously concluded that no such thing existed. You won't find any prominent mention of that on the Steorn site today ... though it is discussed in other forums.
Following up on the removed video, it was brought to my attention (after my last comment) that someone quick-witted managed to copy it and re-post it here:
Yeah, Westmiller, I'm pretty sure that "third photo" is simply a test rig set up for the demo/experiments (which are the subject of the "recent videos" you mention?) and not a "full up" functioning unit.
Of course, there's no harm/no foul if Steorn is changing things up as they refine the design? Either the "Orbo magnetic interaction" is real or it's BS, and they are still doing their "gradual reveal..." I for one plan to stay tuned right up to the bitter end... :)
The replication critique is back up, but the argument that the Audin device has (a very teeny-tiny) Back EMF is soundly countered by Audin's latest post addressing that specific issue.
Steorn critiques their own replica of Audin's v1, which isn't even remotely accurate. Audin's v3 clearly has no Back EMF. It's purely a matter of tuning (timing), not design.
The timing loop is also responsible for the direction of the rotor's rotation. It has nothing to do with the polarity of current in the coils. The "repudiation" of the Audin replica is pure fabrication.
I've said design revisions are perfectly fine, but ought to be disclosed. At this point, there is not one "Orbo", there are at least two, probably three, configurations. The most recent not only has horizontal coils, it has paired magnets on the rotor (8, rather than 4). You can see the changes by freeze framing (eg: at 3:13 of Part 1) the most recent video. There are now empty holes where the lower set of coils used to be placed.
I couldn't figure out why McCarthy was making such a big deal about the test equipment, which is standard fare in any electrical lab. Then, I noticed that he is now selling the equipment on his website, presumably making a profit at the expense of his intended "developers" (ie: clients, "marks").
I too will be following future demonstrations of Orbo4 or OrboX and reading your commentary ... like a lot of other "gadget geeks".
An interesting sidelight is that the Orbo is now the premier darling of the Green Machine, which is holding a big conference in Hawaii and will probably award Steorn the prize for most popular and aggressive energy fantasy.
Posted By: Átila César Ribeiro da ilva
Date: 2010-01-17 05:19:08
I do not believe more in this work!
An experiment that can't be reproduced, secrets under the bed, years waiting for the concretization of a dream...i'm tired...just do not believ anymore...sorry...
I was going to ask about the orientation change, too, and this was the first place I came since I have enjoyed the excellent coverage from your unique perspective here! Great job, and keep up the good work! SteornOfficial has a Flickr page where you can see the configurations in extremely high resolution before and after the change:
Then when I went to JLN's page, I was pleasantly surprised to see so much work to revise his original replication to match what we're seeing in the demos and refute any claims by Steorn that it is different in some critical way.
So JLN has shown the inductance increase, and the lack of back EMF, and he has shown that the motor turns, but I am very interested to see a definitive power in vs. power out demonstration that actually shows a COP>1. I was very unimpressed with a simple stationary inductance measurement by Steorn...
Friction and heat losses should be very easy to surpass with the claimed 150-200% Pout / Pin. My only guess for Steorn's delay is simply the drama of releasing the information over a month or two to build suspense. It's decent entertainment even if it turns out to be a hoax... I for one am hopeful for a positive result, and I wish I had the time and means to be as quick to replicate and experiment as JLN. Great job, man! And great blog here, creator!
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