Nouslife: Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discovery

20 August 2006

Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discovery

I can understand the skepticism. I tend to have an inner voice which is only too quick to pipe up 'if it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true'. And this sounds a bit like the invention of a perpetual motion machine. And yet, the hopeful voice in me says, 'what if it is right?'

Sean McCarthy says that no one was more sceptical than he when Steorn, his small hi-tech firm in Dublin, hit upon a way of generating clean, free and constant energy from the interaction of magnetic fields. 'It wasn't so much a Eureka moment as a get-back-in-there-and-check-your-instruments moment, although in far more colourful language,' said McCarthy. But when he attempted to share his findings, he says, scientists either put the phone down on him or refused to endorse him publicly in case they damaged their academic reputations. So last week he took out a full-page advert in the Economist magazine, challenging the scientific community to examine his technology. McCarthy claims it provides five times the amount of energy a mobile phone battery generates for the same size, and does not have to be recharged.