Physics Denied: Tonight!

Steorn, the Irish company that has made a claim to have found a way to create free, unending energy with an efficiency exceeding 100% (something that some of the basic laws of physics tells us is impossible) will be displaying their creation starting at 6 PM EST tonight (July 4th) on streaming video from their website. If you miss it, be sure to look around for some kind of recorded copy; I know that I will be recording it, if I can.

The technology itself uses momentum and magnets in some combination not yet fully explained (a panel of 22 scientists are doing experiments on Steorn's technology in a challenge to validate their claims) and, according to Steorn, can be scaled to power something as large as a car to something as small as a cell phone. Hopefully after tonight, they will be releasing more detailed answers to fight back the onslaught of questions that are sure to arise. See the below video for more information on the project.



Why is it such a difficulty? Well, the basic idea is that, through using a series of permanent magnets, one is able to create an "energy spike" that seems to come from nowhere when turning a magnet in this assembly, stopping and starting at the same point. The problem with this is that it violates on of the most fundamental scientific principles; the Law of Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can be neither created, nor destroyed, also known as the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Therefore, in essence, Steorn is claiming something as seemingly preposterous as suggesting that humans can flap their arms and fly, or that running at a certain speed can send you back in time. However, science is just the accumulation of data from experimentation, and it only takes a single experiment to prove something false, so we will see. Perhaps we had it wrong all long, or perhaps Steorn is just a big hoax (or simply a very expensive mistake).

Read more.

UPDATE: Due to technical difficulties, the stream will be shown at the start of July 5th in London. One can stream the live video, once it is up, from one of the following four cameras: