Orbo works

[K.I.L.E.R]

...like a fish out of water.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/too-good...he-steorn-orbo-free-energy-machine-275451.php

 

[soylent]

You should read the steorn forums; it's hillarious, in a sad kind of way. There's actually a few true believers out there who insist that A) of course perpetual motion machines exist, only sheeple think otherwise, B) OMG! Big oil strikes again.

"HOLDING SOMETHING IN PLACE WHILE IT IS TRYING TO FALL TO THE GROUND BECAUSE OF GRAVITY IS WORK".

That's fantastic news! How many horsepower does a sack of rocks put out? I've got quite a few rocks out back and I want to be able to profit from this emerging new energy source.

 

[Davros]

"Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting"

Ive just come up with the killer app for it
get it to power a camera light and - voila you've got a strobe

 

[nutball]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6283374.stm

When asked about the conservation of energy Mr McCarthy says quite frankly that he does not know where the energy that provides perpetual motion comes from. He wonders whether he is somehow harnessing so-called "zero point" energy, a type of residual energy found in a system and first proposed by Einstein.

Zero point energy is the lowest possible energy a system can have and therefore cannot be removed.

He also points out that cosmologists believe in the presence of dark matter and dark energy. Might they somehow help his cause?

Magnetic fields, motion-in-a-circle, zero-point energy and dark matter. Heh, didn't see that coming.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

What I don't understand is who is giving him money and why are they doing it? Why haven't scientists spoken up more about this guy by calling him a kook?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

What I don't understand is who is giving him money and why are they doing it? Why haven't scientists spoken up more about this guy by calling him a kook?

There's no point in denouncing something until there's something to denounce. Most scientists are usually cautious (ie tend to "give them enough rope to hang themselves") because you can never tell when someone will come up with something revolutionary. Until there's a piece of equipment or a reproducible experiment, it's just hot air and a waste of time to comment on something that doesn't seem to exist.

 

[nutball]

What I don't understand is who is giving him money and why are they doing it?

Having money and having common-sense don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. The company is said to be privately funded -- there are lots of people out there with oodles of cash who love to give it to kooky causes. Who funds UFO research institutes, for example?

Why haven't scientists spoken up more about this guy by calling him a kook?

I think that article was probably just that. If science were required to explicitly debunk every claim for perpetual energy / anti-gravity / warp-drive / car-that-runs-on-just-water then scientists would end up doing little else. There's a lot of it about.

Any scientist who does stick their head over the parapet and make a noise will be accused either of being closed-minded and trying to stifle the little guy with the big new idea that'd upset the cozy scientific world, or of being paid off by the oil companies.

That's not to say that his device shouldn't be looked at, maybe there's something interesting going on, but (10^6-1) times out of 10^6 these claims are a result of muddy thinking on the part of the inventor. This guy admits he has no clue how his device works (and from the evidence currently made public it doesn't work), which doesn't inspire confidence on the muddy thinking / not-worth-getting-involved-with front.

 

[soylent]

Here's a thread with 4k replies of endless bickering about a glorified pendulum and a magnetic toy: http://www.steorn.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=13991&page=1#Item_0
. Omnibus may well be a bot, at least I hope he is..

 

[linthat22]

I just read about it, glad I haven't been following it as long as some folks. I'll still long for my Glaze3D card with 15 megs of embedded RAM to kick the ass of all!