Jury: No free energy.

In August 2006 the Irish company Steorn published an advertisement in the Economist announcing the development of “a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy”. Qualified experts were sought to form a “jury” to validate these claims.

Twenty-two independent scientists and engineers were selected by Steorn to form this jury. It has for the past two years examined evidence presented by the company. The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn's attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.

The jury consists of scientists and engineers in relevant fields from Europe and North America, from industry, universities and government laboratories. Information about individual members can be found at http://stjury.ning.com/

R.I.MacDonald
Chairman, Steorn Jury

This is from 2007:

They said it couldn't be done. And it probably can't. A year after an Irish company called Steorn promised a perpetual energy source that required only magnetism, not fuel, the device called Orbo was set up for a 10-day public demonstration. Yesterday, at the Kinetica Museum in London, was to be the scheduled unveiling and although the lead scientist was not named Dr. Octavius or Dr. von Doom, something about the "time variant magneto-mechanical interaction" at the center of this process seemed ominous. Nevertheless, the public was invited to watch. Using Internet Explorer, you could even check out four different cameras in the Orbo's chamber. As you may have guessed, the demonstration did not go according to plan.

No, Steorn did not create a wormhole to another part of the universe. There was no white hot spinny thing raging out of control, though there were problems with spinny things, and they did involve excessive heat. The "technical difficulties" message appeared thusly:

We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting. We have commenced a technical assessment and will provide an update later today. As a consequence, Kinetica will not be open to the public today (5th July). We apologise for this delay and appreciate your patience.

via Gizmodo - The Rise and Fall of the Steorn Orbo Free Energy Machine - orbo.