Should I Throw My Charger Away?

Something very wrong is happening right now. Right now, in Dublin, Ireland, there is a machine that is spinning. It will continue to do this till December 23rd and will resume functioning on January 5th. And it isn't any ordinary machine. It's called Orbo and it's violating every Physics law in the text book.

Steorn, a private Irish company that deals in technology development, was established in 2000. It started out small but burst on to the technology scene when it's ad in The Economist in August 2006 claimed that they had discovered how to produce free energy. Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, pointed out that researchers at Steorn found an 'anomaly' that allows extraction of energy from a magnet without any energy source. As many of you may be well aware of, the Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created. Yet, this is exactly what Steorn claimed it was doing. Details were kept under wrap and the principle behind such a technology was not disclosed until a few days ago.

This past Tuesday, Steorn began demonstrating the Orbo technology at the Waterways Ireland Visitor Centre. If you aren't the privileged few that live in Ireland, you can watch the live streaming provided by Steorn itself, on the Steorn Homepage. The Orbo, allegedly, is a perpetual-motion machine that is powered by electromagnets which in turn are powered by a battery. Steorn has used the rotating disk at the center of this arrangement (surrounded by the magnets) to power a micro-generator which charges the battery. As per Steorn's claims, the Orbo isn't only producing energy to match the energy lost by the battery. It's producing energy at a 3:1 ratio! This means that it's producing thrice the amount of energy it consumes. If Thermodynamics was a baseball, Steorn just hit it out of the park.

Let me elaborate further by giving you another perspective. The typical gasoline engine that runs your car has an efficiency of 25-30 per cent. That means that approximately 75 per cent of the energy supplied by the fuel is wasted. Even the turbines that help generate electricity at a power plant near you, do so at a maximum efficiency of 40 per cent. If what Steorn says is true, the Orbo is operating at an efficiency of 300 per cent! What does that imply? In simple terms, it means that if this technology is valid and is implemented, you will never ever feel the need to charge any of your electronic devices again. You will not require gasoline for your car and power plants will not require fuel to generate electricity. Energy will truly become free. No electricity bills ever. How awesome does that sound?

Probably not that much to any scientist in the world. This technology has created more skeptics than believers. A lot of people believe it to be a scam, a scheme to attract investors and rake in the cash. Others think that Steorn may have just gotten their numbers wrong. Steorn may have gotten it right too. Maybe we're going to experience a "the Earth is round, not flat" moment soon. Or maybe we're going to hear about the biggest scam since Madoff's Ponzi Scheme. The truth is, Steorn hasn't released any data regarding this technology and until Orbo is completely tested, those skeptics aren't going anywhere. We'll have to wait and see whether the Orbo is a blasphemy or one of those great truths George Bernard Shaw spoke about.