While browsing for hovercraft design, the name "Searle" came up along with references to a "Searle Effect Generator", or SEG as he calls it. Most of the site smells con-ish: only vague references to testimonials, need to pay him $50 to join his "forums" and/or gain access to the "really useful documents", needs money to further his research, claims earlier work was stolen and/or destroyed (complete with a conspiracy theory to boot!), and so on.
He has recently posted some videos of his (recently rebuilt) device, though it doesn't actually show it "levitating" [that seems to be a side effect when the generator is "overloaded"] The first part of these videos are quite compelling: an (appropriately bored looking) technician explains some parts of the concept, and actually shows the device "working". Then he brightens up a bit and points out "you don't have to take MY word for it, here is the real inventor, Mr. Searle, to tell you more" This is the point they lost me...
"Mr. Searle" is dressed in an [ancient?] oxford university professor robe, can't string together a single sentence without throwing in unrelated terms and buzzwords, and generally comes off looking foolish. He admits to being "self taught" and "not a scholar", but presumes to know more about his fantastic device than any scholar could ever hope to learn [ummm, "well duh!"]
On to the device itself: what is shown [as working] is a toroidal magnet at the center, surrounded by about a dozen cylindrical magnets, and further surrounded by a series of electromagnetic coils of some sort. POWER is applied to the coils and behold: THE MAGNETS MOVE AROUND THE CENTRAL CORE (oh wonder of wonders...) All I get out of this is that he has created a rather novel brushless motor, but I don't see any practical way to draw mechanical power/motion from the device [the magnetic cylinders are independent from each other, so the fact that they move and the core doesn't is pretty pointless in my book]
this is also obviously NOT a "free energy/perpetual motion" device as the video shows that removing the power source causes the magnets to slow down and stop [fairly quickly, I might add...] HOWEVER...
in the "final version" of this thing, the outer ring of electromagnets is supposed to be replaced by another toroidal magnet, another set of cylinders, and finally an outer toroidal magnet. /somehow/ at this point when you start the magnets moving, they all push against each other to create that magic perp-motion/free energy device. This also has other interesting properties: as the magnets spin, the local temperature DECREASES (to absolute zero?) and (I guess...?) the device becomes superconductive and/or "looses gravity" and levitates.
Now, it would be TOTALLY COOL if that really happens, and sure enough I could think of some exciting applications for such a device -- I'd /really/ like to see this thing succeed (so I can build my own George Jetson flying car...) but I'm not about to pay $50 for the privilege of being allowed to talk to the guy and get the details on how to build my own. Any suggestions on what I should do next to follow up on this?
He has recently posted some videos of his (recently rebuilt) device, though it doesn't actually show it "levitating" [that seems to be a side effect when the generator is "overloaded"] The first part of these videos are quite compelling: an (appropriately bored looking) technician explains some parts of the concept, and actually shows the device "working". Then he brightens up a bit and points out "you don't have to take MY word for it, here is the real inventor, Mr. Searle, to tell you more" This is the point they lost me...
"Mr. Searle" is dressed in an [ancient?] oxford university professor robe, can't string together a single sentence without throwing in unrelated terms and buzzwords, and generally comes off looking foolish. He admits to being "self taught" and "not a scholar", but presumes to know more about his fantastic device than any scholar could ever hope to learn [ummm, "well duh!"]
On to the device itself: what is shown [as working] is a toroidal magnet at the center, surrounded by about a dozen cylindrical magnets, and further surrounded by a series of electromagnetic coils of some sort. POWER is applied to the coils and behold: THE MAGNETS MOVE AROUND THE CENTRAL CORE (oh wonder of wonders...) All I get out of this is that he has created a rather novel brushless motor, but I don't see any practical way to draw mechanical power/motion from the device [the magnetic cylinders are independent from each other, so the fact that they move and the core doesn't is pretty pointless in my book]
this is also obviously NOT a "free energy/perpetual motion" device as the video shows that removing the power source causes the magnets to slow down and stop [fairly quickly, I might add...] HOWEVER...
in the "final version" of this thing, the outer ring of electromagnets is supposed to be replaced by another toroidal magnet, another set of cylinders, and finally an outer toroidal magnet. /somehow/ at this point when you start the magnets moving, they all push against each other to create that magic perp-motion/free energy device. This also has other interesting properties: as the magnets spin, the local temperature DECREASES (to absolute zero?) and (I guess...?) the device becomes superconductive and/or "looses gravity" and levitates.
Now, it would be TOTALLY COOL if that really happens, and sure enough I could think of some exciting applications for such a device -- I'd /really/ like to see this thing succeed (so I can build my own George Jetson flying car...) but I'm not about to pay $50 for the privilege of being allowed to talk to the guy and get the details on how to build my own. Any suggestions on what I should do next to follow up on this?
