Energy For Free

An Irish company – Steorn – is claiming that they have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy. Sigh, here we go again, perpetual motion machines are perpetually being touted. The company has even issued a challenge, and placed an advert in The Economist, to recruit 12 scientists to test its claims.

 

Let’s think about this for a moment – why is the company seeking to select only scientists? And note, too, it is the company that will pick and choose the 12 scientists. As James Randi says,  "Authority does not rest with scientists, when emotion, need, and desperation are involved. Scientists are human beings, too, and can be deceived and self-deceived". It would seem to me to be better for Steorn to submit its technology to Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge. That way, not only would the company have its claims subjected to intense scrutiny by skeptics, but it would also receive a cash injection of a million dollars, should the first law of thermodynamics be proven to be broken.

 

My bet is that the first law will not be broken and that this is yet another hoax.

 

Steorn’s video makes for entertaining viewing as well. Lots of fairly unsubtle playing on the fear that nasty people control our precious oil, or that it’s only available from difficult places. That latter point was underscored with a drawing showing an oil pipeline and two penguins. Er, oil exploration in the Antarctic is banned by international treaty for 50 years, and if that’s supposed to be the Alaskan oil pipeline, then someone should tell them that there ain’t no penguins in Alaska. 

 

I classified this entry under the category of Entertainment, since Science doesn’t strike me as being accurate.