Today Steorn publicized the opening of the SKDB Lite and has invited anyone interested to join and participate in the learning community. You actually don’t have to join up to see what’s going on in there since non-members have read-only permission.

According to Steorn’s Web site:

It’s been a while since Steorn has done anything new in the public arena, but a new publicly accessible forum has been launched by the company — the SKDB Lite.  As the title suggests, this forum provided some of the features of the fee-based SKDB, which is the development community for Orbo technology. The SKDB Lite provides a forum for discussion as well as many e-learning modules that deal with physics, magnetism and electricity, an understand of which is fundamental to understand Orbo.

The SKDB Lite is available for free to anyone who would like to sign up. My understanding is that unlike Steorn’s previous public forum (which is now defunct) the SKDB Lite will be monitored on a 24/7 basis, so it is unlikely to be as wild and wacky as the public forum was at times.

People can register for the SKDB Lite here.

Steorn has announced that from today, April 1, the SKDB, its online develpment community, is open. Below is the press release announcing this.

SKDB LAUNCH

Dublin, Ireland, 1st April 2010.

Following the success of its recent live demonstrations of Orbo technology at the Waterways Visitor Centre in Dublin, Steorn is delighted to announce that its online development community will open for membership on 1st April 2010.

Orbo is a new technology from Steorn that provides free, clean and constant energy at the point of use. Orbo is controversial – it is an “over-unity” technology, meaning that it produces more energy than it consumes.

The Steorn Knowledge Development Base (SKDB), as the online community is known, is a collaborative environment designed to share, explain, employ and expand the science, engineering and intellectual property comprising Orbo technology. In short, it is ground zero for the Orbo revolution.

The SKDB will be the sole medium for the dissemination of Orbo technology and its future enhancements. All developments and improvements to Orbo technology will be shared amongst the members of the SKDB for further research and development.

The main focus of the SKDB at launch will be on the solid state electromagnetic configuration of Orbo, the development of which Steorn has recently completed.

Access to the SKDB will be granted via the SKDB Developer License, which will be available online to developers, individual enthusiasts, researchers and all other interested parties as of 1st April 2010. The Developer License and SKDB membership are renewable on an annual basis, subject to interested parties confirming their acceptance of the License and Terms of Service and payment of license and membership fees.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen much indication on Steorn’s Web Site of when the SKDB was opening up to the public so people could start learning about Orbo technology and developing Orbo products. This was originally slated to become available to subscribers on February 1st, but since then the date has been postponed more than once.

Today a new page has been put up on Steorn’s site: https://kdb.steorn.com/registration

An announcement on the page reads, “This week the SKDB is open only to those private and commercial developers in possession of a personal invitation from Steorn. Please do not attempt to register if you do not have a personal invitation , as you will be unable to access the SKDB.”

Apparently then, some people have received special invitations to join the SKDB. There’s no announcement yet regarding when the general public will be able to sign up, but at least we have some action!

Steorn has placed a notice in their web site stating that they have extended their stay at the Waterworks Centre in Dublin in order to continue testing of their technology by interested parties.

“The Waterways will remain open for a further three weeks, until Friday 19th March, due to additional applications from third parties interested in testing Orbo technology.”

This indicates that there has been a high level of interest in Orbo from parties that Steorn considers worthwhile working with. This means, of course, that the wait continues, but it will be interesting to what results from this testing period.

Since the end of Steorn’s public demonstration in Dublin last month there has not been too much in the way of news from Steorn.

They announced at the last live experiment that during the month of February independent testers would be able to come to the Waterways Centre and test Orbo devices for themselves. Apparently that is what is going on at the moment.

Last week Steorn issued a press release which stated:

On 30th January 2010 Steorn announced that it would make Orbo technology available for testing at the Waterways Visitor Centre.

Since then Steorn has been hosting third-party testing and finalising calorimetry tests.  This third-party testing will continue until the end of February.

Steorn will make the results of the calorimetry tests available alongside other test data in the coming weeks. These results will be pivotal to a widespread uptake of Developer (and ultimately, Commercial) Licenses. Steorn will open the SKDB to the general engineering community after these test results have been released.

Developers wishing to come and test Orbo technology at the Waterways should make a booking at http://www.steorn.com/demo/bookings/

The opening of the SKDB to developer has been delayed then until the release of independent testing results. Until then I am expecting that public information from Steorn will be limited.

You don’t have to look to hard to see economic problems everywhere. The world is floundering in debt: countries, states and individuals are facing a dire situation where borrowing for the needs of today have caused a great deal of uncertainty about tomorrow. Economic activity has shrunk during the worldwide recession, unemployment is growing and many economists see little prospect of a rapid turnaround.

Yet with the advent of Orbo technology, unveiled by Steorn recently, we have the prospect of a game-changing element introduced into the world economy. Yes, the technology is in its infancy and certainly it will take time and engineering effort to bring practical products into the world, but eventually a source of free energy could have a dramatic and permanent impact on economic activity everywhere.

Here are some possible implications.

1. Much greater self-reliance for individuals if the power grid is no longer necessary to supply consumers’ electrical needs.

2. With that self reliance would come less of a need to labor as much for many of the necessities and luxuries of life. How much of people’s income is currently spent on energy either directly (electric bill, gasoline) or indirectly (e.g. the costs built in to transporting goods)?

3. Costs for governments everywhere could reduce significantly with the burden of paying for welfare decreasing as many basic needs of citizens (utilities, transportation) become much cheaper.

5. Costs of raw materials would likely decrease if they could be extracted and transported with free energy. This would lead to reduced costs of goods and services.

6. There could be a technology boom beyond anything we have seen to date. New devices with internal power sources will surely be developed, and no doubt ingenuity and invention will come up with all kinds of new products made possible by Orbo technology previously thought impossible or impractical.

7. Those companies and nations who could quickly transition to producing high quality orbo-based products would see the most change coming about.

8. Infrastructure needs would change dramatically. No longer would economic development be dependent upon the availability of power stations and power lines. With transportation costs decreasing there would be less of a need for companies to be located close to major population centers and transportation hubs. Communities could be affected as these infrastructure and transportation needs change. It may be more desirable for people to live further away from population centers as transportation costs decrease and off-grid power sources are available.

These are just a few thoughts about some of the possible repercussions of Orbo- based technology becoming a viable alternative to current energy sources. Steorn has let the cat out of the bag now, and it will be fascinating to see what the engineering community does with this technology. It could make a dramatic difference to our current economic outlook.

Now the groundbreaking demonstration from Steorn is over, it’s very interesting to see the response from major and minor media outlets. There really is none.

Following Steorn’s failed 2007 demonstration in London there were plenty of reports from major media sources reporting on how another free energy claim had gone down in flames. Following this weekend’s demonstration however, it is hard to find any news about it outside of the few blogs and forums that have been paying close attention for some time.

I received this interesting comment on yesterday which illustrates how some Steorn enthusiasts could be feeling right now:

“It’s a disgrace that one of the biggest break-throughs in technology – possibly since fire – has gone so unnoticed. Steorn have done an amazing job at bringing this technology to market in the face of undignified ridicule.

Their recent demonstrations have now proven their claims without shadow of a doubt, and any sceptics have been invited to examine the readings for themselves to rule out the only other possible explanation; which is fraud. How much longer can the world sit back quoting the rules of laws of thermodynamics in the face of a working prototype? Orbo will change our lives, embrace it and increase research in this area!”

The lack of attention is not seeming to bother Steorn too much. Throughout the public demonstration process they have said that the people whose attention they are trying to attract are not the media, or the general public, but the engineering an product development communities. They are executing their business plan as they said they would, opening the SKDB yesterday and signing up people to come to the Waterways Centre in Dublin to run tests on their Orbo devices.

What will it take for mainstream science and the mainstream media to start paying attention? My guess that it will require  a respected and well known individual or entity in the scientific or engineering world would test Orbo and confirm what Steorn is claiming. And it might take a number of such claims to really make people stand up and take notice. Perhaps even that might not be enough — and only working Orbo products will be convincing.

Sean McCarthy has said that he has always expected validation of Orbo to be a process, not a one time event, and so far he is right.

For those who missed Saturday’s demo from Steorn, the video has been released and posted on Steorn’s web site. During the live stream of the video, the counter showing the number of live viewers was at around 900 — relatively few, I thought, considering the magnitude of what Steorn had said they would be showing.

Perhaps in time when people have had time to analyze the information presented, and after independent tests have been done, and test results released, these videos will generate much more interest — and it could well be that they one day achieve the status of being truly historic as they do seem to show that Steorn has discovered a way to create overunity technology.

If you have spent much time looking at the internet chatter going on following Steorn’s latest (and final) demo, you will see that there are a number of observers who were underwhelmed. Many people it seems were hoping to see something with more of a “wow” factor than what Steorn displayed yesterday. (According to steorn.com the video of the event will be posted February 1)

So today on Steorn’s public forum CEO Sean McCarthy spent quite a bit of time responding to some of the criticisms and laying out the reasons why the demo was presented in the way it was. You can see his comments at this link – McCarthy posts under the name “Steorn”.

Here are some excerpts of his comments in that thread.

“Ok – a little entertaining to read some of the comments this morning. Let me state something very clearly here. The system demonstrated last night is clear evidence of over-unity, or clear evidence of fraud. We either rigged the scope or we did not – and we did not…

“Ok, we are not into showing magic tricks, so if you want flashing lights go some place else. The experiments shown are targeted at a specific audience, indeed the final nature of how to demonstrate the core effect came not from Steorn, but from the consensus opinion of those people who visited the waterways who expressed an interest in developing and had a capability to develop…

“I am not getting defensive at all – quite the opposite in fact – we have been ‘defending’ the technology for 3 years in the public arena. No more, we have shown the goods, there is no longer a question of ‘measurement’ error. Its real or fraud…

“The point about yesterday was how I started this thread (and how I will now leave it). We showed a significant energy result that can only be achived on the basis of the tech being real, or the experiment being rigged – a rigged experiment would be fraud and no doubt I would go to jail for that.”

There were a number of Q&A exchanges in this thread discussing particular details of the experiment , so I would recommend visiting the forum for detailed discussion. The quotes above provide the general position Steorn is taking.

On Steorn’s website there is now a place to sign up if you want to go in person to the Waterways centre in Dublin and test the Orbo devices in person. On the sign-up form, Steorn requests that potential testers provide their educational or professional background so it appears that they will be screening for testers they feel will be suitable candidates.

Did the demo provide conclusive proof of overunity? Apparently many are not convinced, but Sean McCarthy seems to be quite satisfied with what they showed and has said that this will be the extent of their public disclosure of the technology.

So it does appear that for many questions and doubts still linger and it remains to be seen how many have seen enough evidence to take the plunge and become paid up members of the SKDB. So while the waiting game for Steorn’s public revelations is over, the one for real-world useful Orbo powered products has just begun.