Occam's razor suggests to me that the most likely explanation of what happened is that the engineers and researchers at Steorn simply deluded themselves. It's easy to do, I know from personal experience – even with the best intentions, especially if you believe you are interpreting and/or applying the physics at hand correctly when in fact you haven't. Sometimes, all it can take is assuming a fundamental value should be applied positively when it should have been applied negatively. Whatever...
Regarding fraud, there exists a similar explanation placed out at Wikipedia, our source of "accurate" news – with tongue firmly lodged in cheek. I personally find the explanation, the rationale a tad too dramatic and unnecessarily complex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn > Many people have accused Steorn of engaging in a publicity stunt > although Steorn deny such accusations.[19] Eric Berger, for > example, writing on the Houston Chronicle website, commented: > "Steorn is a former e-business company that saw its market > vanish during the dot.com bust. It stands to reason that Steorn > has re-tooled as a Web marketing company, and is using the > "free energy" promotion as a platform to show future clients how > it can leverage print advertising and a slick Web site to > promote their products and ideas. If so, it's a pretty brilliant > strategy."[20] Thomas Ricker at Engadget suggested that Steorn's > free-energy claim was a ruse to improve brand recognition and to > help them sell Hall probes.[21] It seems to me that much of this kind of juicy conjecture involves a far too complex and elaborate game plan, at least within my personal paradigm of how the universe works. But then it's only my own "created" universe we're talking about here. ;-) As Otter once tried to console, Flounder, in the classic film, Animal House – "Hey! You f_cked up!" Well... "Hey! Steorn! You F_cked up!" Well, who hasn't. Perhaps it's time to move on. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
