I suppose I really ought to say something about the “demonstration” of Steorn’s perpetual motion machine that’s supposed to start today, but, really, I don’t have much to say. I mean, if they were claiming that their device extracted free energy from extra dimensions thanks to their revolutionary new theory of quantum gravity, I might need to think about it for a few seconds before dismissing it as crap, but that’s not their claim:
Orbo is based upon the principle of time variant magneto-mechanical interactions. The core output from our Orbo technology is mechanical. This mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy using standard generator technology either by integrating such technology directly with Orbo or by connecting the mechanical output from Orbo to the generation technology. The efficiency of such mechanical/electrical conversions is highly dependent on the components used and is also a function of size.
You know, I’m just not seeing a whole lot of unexplored loopholes in Maxwell’s Equations. We’ve got E & M nailed down pretty well, and if there were time varying effects of the sort required to violate energy conservation, somebody would’ve noticed them in the last hundred and fifty years.
I have the utmost respect for people like Bob Park and James Randi, but I don’t understand how they can do what they do. I just don’t have the mental energy to expend on this sort of nonsense, but those two are absolutely tireless in running down cranks and kooks and charlatans. Me, I can’t even muster the energy to do bloggy debunkings. Happily, I don’t need to– Joe Fitzsimons and Orac have it pretty well covered.
So let me just do what I do well, and throw in a flippant reference to genre literature. In Geoffrey Landis’s excellent spoof “What We Really Do Here at NASA” (which isn’t available online, but is in this collection) there’s a bit where the narrator goes past the room of perpetual motion machines. He notes in passing that they’re easier to build than you might think, but they wouldn’t really be perpetual motion machines if you could turn them off, now would they?
Given that Steorn can’t even get their machine started, I’m going to guess that their device doesn’t meet the Landis Criterion…