Steorn is back, and it is still hawking its perpetual-motion machine, the Orbo. We spent several carefree days back in the summer of 2007 ridiculing the whole project, which purported to use spinning wheels and magnets to generate more electricity than the little Orbo took to run.

Now, the Orbo has relaunched. Ireland-based Steorn’s CEO, Sean McCarthy, explains the mechanics behind the machine, which exploits a magnetic anomaly discovered “during the course of developing another technology”. “The anomaly is that we could gain power from magnets with no apparent source” [emphasis added].

No apparent source. Perhaps there is a man behind the curtain? If you want to see the Orbo in action, it is now being demonstrated at the Waterways Centre in Dublin, and can also be viewed on a live stream. This is at least a step further than Steorn managed last time, when six sets of precision watch bearings, designed to last 25 years, all broke at the same time due to “hot lights”.

So how does the Orbo work? The device is a simple motor — a battery is connected to magnetic coils which then exert a turning force on the magnets in an internal wheel. On top is a generator which feeds a rectified current back into the battery. If those bearings hold up, the Orbo should run forever, and should also power other devices hooked up to it.

The trick is “time variant magnetic interactions”, which make it possible to “contravene the principle of the conservation of energy”. This appears to be something like the Flux Capacitor, which as we all know is “what makes time travel possible”.

Poor Orbo. We tease, but we love your plucky never-say-die attitude. If your gadget turns out to truly be a world-changing, free-energy machine, then we’ll happily hook up our laptops to one of your magic spinning-wheels. We have a feeling, though, that this snake-oil may just be another publicity stunt. A stunt we just keep falling for, again and again, perpetually.

How Orbo Technology Works [Steorn]

Steorn’s Orbo Page [Steorn]

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