Friday, December 18, 2009

the amazing perpetual bullshit machine

You'll remember that lovable Irish charlatan and magic bean salesman Sean McCarthy and his company Steorn were going to have some exciting developments for us "by the end of 2009". And here they are: firstly the official Steorn YouTube channel, and secondly and more excitingly a live demo of the Orbo device at the Waterways Visitor Centre in Dublin. That should quieten those pesky nitpicking nay-sayers, right?

Weeeeeelllll......Steorn have been kind enough to provide a graphical breakdown of the kit they're demo-ing in Dublin - here it is. All the sort of stuff you'd expect: bracket, magnet, rotor, coil, magnet, magnet, magnet, D-cell battery, magnet.....WAIT A MINUTE! A battery? No, there really is one. Check out item 28.

Apparently the battery is there to power the electromagnets which spin the rotor which generates energy which charges the battery, and so on and so on, or something like that. So it needs to be there, and is definitely not being used for cheating or anything, right? Note that the original incarnation of the Orbo which was not quite demo-ed over two years ago used an array of permanent magnets, not electromagnets.

It's interesting to speculate what Steorn's business model is: I assume they must have already soaked up millions in speculative venture capital from rich people with more money than sense, presumably with some contractual small print that says they don't have to give any of it back if someone discovers a conclusive reason why it won't work, like for instance THE LAWS OF BLEEDIN' PHYSICS. They are also apparently selling licences for some sort of "developer kit" whereby you can build your own piece of battery-powered spinning perspex pointlessness for the princely sum of 419 euros (is this a subtle joke perhaps?), as well as various other tangentially-related spin-off tat at eye-watering prices.

You do wonder who's going to pony up for this stuff, but despite it all being hilariously bollocks people probably will be queueing up to hand over money. This guy, for instance. His enthusiasm is commendable (though clearly misdirected); I just hope he hasn't remortgaged his house or anything. He also appears to be a highly religious libertarian, just to give you an insight into his critical thinking capabilities.

If that particular flavour of magic bean doesn't light your fire, then other flavours are available: here's Blacklight's website. Blacklight's claim is that they can do magic net-energy-generating stuff with water by cracking it into hydrogen and oxygen and then recombining it - not just any old hydrogen like you might have in your kitchen cupboard, though, no, this is a "prior undiscovered", or, if you will, "made up" form of hydrogen called the "hydrino". So it's chemistry-based bollocks rather than physics-based bollocks, while still very much remaining bollocks, though, obviously. They do have a much cooler name than Steorn, though, and they have knocked out a much more impressive by-product along the way:
The theory upon which BlackLight's technology has been developed is based on the classical laws of physics. The Company recently released the finalized Grand-Unified Theory of Classical Physics that comprehensively addresses many of the basic problems in chemistry and physics using these physical laws without using approximations or pure mathematics, devoid of physics, as is the case for the incumbent atomic theory of quantum mechanics.
So while Steorn offer some sort of over-priced USB-powered magnetic anal probe, Blacklight have literally Sorted Out that whole physics and chemistry thing for us. Respect.

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