At 02:25 PM 12/16/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Let me repeat, I am playing devil's advocate here. I do not
seriously believe these claims. On the other hand, there have been
several magic magnetic motor claims over the years and I am not
quite ready to dismiss them all.
I'm not making a general claim about "magic motors." Though I have
high skepticism that someone is going to find the "magic combination"
of magnetic fields and timing and all that in order to change the
very seriously verified understanding of conservation of energy, i.e.
that you don't get gains by playing a shell game with fields and
configurations, you only get greater or lesser losses.
This is entirely different from low energy nuclear reactions, which
don't involve such contradictions with fundamental and extremely-well
known theory (because there is no violation involved in "unknown
catalysis," for example, that allows bypass of the coulomb barrier --
such as muons, supposing that hadn't been observed before). It's
entirely different from some device that taps zero point energy,
there is no hint of ZPE effects on magnetic fields and forces at the
levels involved, etc.
It's an energy shell game, almost certainly, and that game can fool
the players, so I don't reject the sincerity of people who claim
magic motors, I merely note that when they get serious and manage to
get some funding, they are sometimes forced into a situation where
fraud does arise.
What I do claim is that the Steorn situation bears very strong marks
of being a con, a fairly sophisticated one, where they are
deliberately setting up demonstrations with obvious flaws, which they
can then remedy, setting up the rebound effect.
I.e., people will make charges against Steorn, such as charges that
the batteries are running the thing, etc. And so then they remove the
batteries, and it still runs, and then their explanation that the
batteries were just for blah, blah, previously seen as preposterous,
suddenly looks good, and that shift can wipe away skepticism that
would otherwise remain. Just doing the thing without batteries in the
first place, the other sources of deception or error would be more
obvious and wouldn't get so easily dismissed. And it looks to me like
they have surrounded this thing with layers of such tricks.
Imagine this dialog, a little down the way:
Steorn: They claimed that we were running this on batteries. Well, we
removed the batteries and it still runs. They claimed that we were
replacing the batteries when the webcams were off, and trading out
units. Well, we ran a continuous webcam for X time with no
interruptions. They claimed that the translucent panels were
obscuring the real mechanism. We replaced them with transparent
panels. So what objections remain?
Critic: It's fraud, there is a hidden battery within one or more of
the components, or some other transmission of power into the system.
Steorn: See what scoundrels these critics are? We answered every
objection, and so then they resort to claims of fraud. It's obvious
that they are simply out to deny whatever we demonstrate.
And remember, it doesn't have to convince everyone. Just a few. They
could keep this up for a long time!
Here is what I'd say: anyone considering investing in Steorn should
get together with others considering the same. If the possible
investors were to cooperate with each other, they could be protected.
Steorn may try to defend against this, but the very defense would be visible.
And then I'd say this: want to keep it secret, want to make the big
killing by being the only investor with the guts and perspicacity to
see beyond the foggy notions of modern physics, you will deserve what
you get. Hint: it won't be profit, it will be loss. You won't ever
see that investment again. If I'm wrong, a consortium of investors
could find out, and possible losses would be minimized.
If Steorn doesn't allow investment by corporations or partnerships,
that would be a hint. A corporation could be formed to be this kind
of consortium, easily, or it could be a partnership, and the partners
would certainly be allowed to share the information internally among
each other. An NDA which prohibited this would probably be
unenforceable, and I'd fully support subterfuge in attacking
unreasonable interpretations of an NDA. There is a legitimate purpose
to NDAs, and it would not be to prevent people from helping each
other to avoid disclosure that the thing was a scam and not
reproducible, *to each other, not necessarily to the public."
If the consortium found evidence of actual fraud -- and this whole
thing looks like, certainly, it's at or over that edge -- then no
contract could prevent disclosure, it would be completely
unenforceable. A consortium, of course, could afford lawyers. It
could have resources much greater than Steorn. And it could even
present itself to Steorn as an individual. All it would have to do
would be to wave enough money in front of Steorn's nose, I suspect.
It will be fun to watch, I'm enjoying this tremendously. Stay tuned
for the next Episode of Steorn Watch. Will all the devices run down?
Will one of them mysteriously keep running? Will the demonstration be
interrupted by a mysterious fire that burns the building down,
destroying all the very valuable demonstration models, constructed at
tremendous expense according to detailed plans that were also
destroyed? Or will Steorn remove all the veils, pulling those
translucent covers away like a magician turning the hat over?
