Steorn

Steorn are a technology development company based in Dublin, Ireland.

Previous Projects: Development of Compact Disc anti-fraud/counterfeiting technologies. The company drew the attention of the mainstream media in August 2006 by placing a full-page advertisement in The Economist, claiming to have developed a technology that produces "free, clean, and constant energy" and challenging the scientific community to review its claim.

In December 2006 Steorn announced that they had chosen a jury of scientists to test their claim.

This is, in essence, a claim that the company has developed free energy technology, or a perpetual motion machine. Such technology would violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics particularly the first law. To date, no evidence supporting the company's claim has been made available to the public.

Steorn was founded in 2000 and, in October 2001, their website stated that they were a "specialist service company providing programme management and technical assessment advice for European companies engaging in e-commerce projects". Steorn (pronounced stee-orn in UK English or in US English) is a Norse word meaning to guide or manage.

In May 2006, The Sunday Business Post reported that Steorn was a former dot.com business which was developing a microgenerator product based on the same principle as kinetic energy generators in watches, as well as creating ecommerce websites for customers. The company had also recently raised about €2.5 million from "high net worth individuals", and was three years into a four year development plan for its microgenerator technology. Steorn has since stated that the account given in this interview was part of a "crisis management plan" to prevent a leak of the free energy claim.

Announcement

In August 2006 Steorn placed an advertisement in The Economist to publicise its claim of discovering a free-energy device. A press release "issued a challenge to the global scientific community" to validate its claims. Steorn reported that, within hours of its advertisement, it was contacted by hundreds of scientists world-wide and many thousands of other interested people.

Steorn's advertisement in The Economist stated:

“ We have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy. Our technology has been independently validated by engineers and scientists — always behind closed doors, always off the record, always proven to work. ”

In explaining their claim, Steorn have further stated that, by free, they mean that "the energy produced is done so without recourse to external sources"; by clean they mean that "during operation the technology produces no emissions"; and by constant they mean that "with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely". Steorn believes that the sum of these claims is that their technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy.

Steorn maintains that its invention has already been validated by no fewer than eight unnamed independent scientists and engineers "with multiple PhDs from world-class universities", and found to work, but that none of them were willing to publish their results for fear of becoming embroiled in a controversy. The company has declined to name them, citing mutually binding non-disclosure agreements.

On February 9, 2007, Steorn stated that their technology would be available for license under the brand name "Orbo".

The Validation process

Steorn claimed that their advertisement in The Economist was to attract the attention of the world's leading scientists working in the field of experimental physics, challenging them to test their free energy technology. They intended that twelve scientists would be invited to take part in a rigorous testing exercise to prove that Steorn’s technology creates free energy and to publish the results worldwide.

On 1 December 2006 Steorn announced that a jury had been selected and had signed contracts, although their identities were not released. The validation process reportedly began in January 2007 but no reports on the progress of the validation process have been released to date.