Steorn Jury Reports: Launch Of Orbo In 2009 Continues

Official Steorn Press Release
source: http://www.steorn.com/news/releases/?id=1151

Steorn today confirmed that the internet ‘blog’ stjury.ning.com had been posted on behalf of members of the Jury of scientists that Steorn had engaged to conduct an independent review of its Orbo Technology.

In a statement, Steorn CEO, Sean McCarthy said that “he was grateful to the Jury members for the time and effort that they had devoted to the process.”

McCarthy continued on to state that he “fully understood the frustration of the Jury members with respect to the time that the process was taking. Implementing Orbo in a reliable and consistent manner had remained a challenge for the organization, one that we had made no secret of. Due to these difficulties we had focused on providing the Jury with test data relating to the underlying magnetic effect behind Orbo. This work concluded at the end of 2008.”

McCarthy concluded by stating that “during 2009 the company had resolved the key technical problems related to the implementation of Orbo and is now focused on commercial launch towards the end of this year, at which time academic and engineering validation would be released concurrent with public demonstrations”.

ENDS

The question is why did the jury give up, but yet launch still goes ahead?

I would suggest that there is a much more complicated story going on. Could it be that some of the 22 were either disenchanted with Steorn, were pressured / threatened, felt it was career suicide (even if there was a n anomaly shown). I t is entirely likely that some members would not want to risk being the next Pons & Fleischman no matter what. Maybe some came to the realisation of what kind of intrusion this would bring to their family and lives and had decided against it.

The members of the jury listed so far are as follows:

Rezaul Karim
Medford, MA
United States

Dr. Rezaul Karim received his Ph.D. in Experimental Physics from Northeastern University, Boston in 1990 on the Microwave Properties of High Temperature Superconductors. He joined Colorado State University as a Post-doctoral Fellow in the study of high frequency losses in Hexagonal ferrite materials. In 1991 he was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor at Colorado State University. In 1993 Dr. Karim joined the Northeastern University Faculty as a Research scientist in the Center of Electromagnetics Research. He worked on Pulsed Laser deposition techniques to develop artificial ferrite films. In 1995, Dr. Karim started work as a Scientist at Digital Magnetics Systems (DMS) Corporation. He worked on a new concept Resonant Vibrating Sample Magnetometer. He invented several new techniques to improve hard disk metrology systems. From 1997 to 2007 Dr. Karim worked at ADE corporation (now KLA-Tencor) and studied to develop a comprehensive Calibration technique for Magnetometers. Later, he designed a highly sensitive Polar Kerr Measurement station to perform Metrology on Perpendicular Storage Media. He also designed a new concept Pulsed Magnetic Device. From 2007 to 2009, Dr. Karim was a Senior Scientist in the Advanced Instrumentation Division at Radiation Monitoring Devices (RMD), Inc., where he conducted research in Magnetic Imaging applications of various Magneto-resistive sensor technology. He has over 20 publications in various journals.

Creon Levit
Mill Valley, CA
United States

Jordan Maclay
Richland Center, WI
United States

Christian W. Fabjan
Vienna, Vienna
Austria

Experimental particle physicst, Ph.D. from Harvard University. My research concentrates on studying the strong or nuclear interaction; I also develop new detection methods for particle and nuclear physics. I have strong interests in questions pertaining to energy, energy efficiency and sustainable development.

Michael McKubre
Menlo Park, CA
United States

Keith A. Joyner
United States

Keith A. Joyner received a Ph.D. in condensed matter physics from the University of South Carolina in 1979. For 21 years, he worked in several areas of research & development, product, process and device science and engineering at Texas Instruments Inc in Dallas, TX. Since 2001, he has been teaching physics at Richland College in Dallas, TX. He has been issued 25 U.S. patents and was author or co-author of 40 refereed publications and conference papers in a number of technical areas, mostly relating to semiconductor technologies.

Kevin J. Negus
Hyattville, WY
United States

Kevin J. Negus received the Ph.D. degree in Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1988. From 1988 to 1998 he held various R&D management positions with the Hewlett-Packard Company where he led the development of RF chipset solutions for systems such as GPS, GSM, IS-54, IS-95, DECT and 802.11. From 1998 to 2002, Kevin was the Chief Technology Officer of Proxim Corporation in Sunnyvale, CA where he was responsible for core technology strategy including silicon development, acquisitions, standards participation and intellectual property licensing. He has published more than 40 technical papers and holds several US patents. Kevin’s base office is in Hyattville, Wyoming where he and his wife Eva run a working cattle ranch. He is currently a General Partner with Camp Ventures in Los Altos, CA (a venture capital investment firm specializing in early-stage technology startup companies) where he leads investments in Quantance and GainSpan, a management advisor to SiTime and Mojix, and a consultant on IP litigation matters to multiple clients. Kevin was also formerly a member of the FCC’s Technical Advisory Committee, a member of the Wyoming State Telecommunications Council, Executive Chairman of WiDeFi (acquired by Qualcomm in 10/07), and a management advisor to several successful startups including Resonext Communications (acquired by RF Micro Devices in 12/02), Athena Semiconductor (acquired by Broadcom in 10/05), and Quorum Communications (acquired by Spreadtrum in 1/08).

P. Boyle
Chicago, IL
United States

PhD in High Energy Astrophysics, National University of Ireland, 1999
BSc in Experimental Physics, University College Dublin, 1994

My research is focused on the production of high-energy radiation in celestial objects (such as supernova explosion, black holes, pulsars etc) and its propagation through interstellar space.

Balloon-borne Projects
TRACER - NASA Cosmic-ray detector
CREAM - NASA Cosmic-ray detector

Ground-based Projects
Whipple - Atmospheric Cerenkov Telescope
ARTEMIS - Antimatter Telescope
VERITAS - Gamma-ray Astronomy

Davor Pavuna
Lausanne
Switzerland

David Powell
United States

PhD Aero/Astro 1970
Professor (Emeritus) , Aero/Astro and Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
Fellow, AIAA and ASME

Research specialties have been on IC engine control, spacecraft control, and aircraft navigation.

Victor Tikhomirov
Minsk
Belarus

Cand. Sci. (PhD) 1984 Belarusian State University
Doct. Sci. 1993 Belarusian Academy of Science

Research Institute for Nuclear Problems Belarusian State University, head of lab. since 1993.
Nuclear Physics Department of Belarusian State University, professor since 1995.

Research activity: nuclear physics and astrophysics, QED of phenomena in strong fields, magnetic cumulation, high energy particle interaction with matter and crystals, in particular. Predicted several phenomena studied at CERN for 25 years.

Guido Stockhausen
Germany

Research Scientist
German Aerospace Center
Institute of Propulsion Technology
Engine Measurement Systems

Jean-Paul Biberian
Marseille
France

I am a Physicist working at the University of Marseilles, France. I worked for many years in the field of surface science, but for the past 16 years, I work in the controversial field of Cold Fusion. I have therefore lot of experience in measuring energy.

J P
France

56 years old. PhD in Electrical Engineering, specialist of magnetism applications and magnet systems. He has published more than 170 scientific articles and holds 33 patents.

Brian Dodson
Albuquerque, NM
United States

John C. Stover
Tucson, AZ
United StatesPhD in Electrical Engineering, Purdue University 1970
Fellow of SPIE
Owner of The Scatter Works, Inc.

Over thirty years experience in the use of scattered light for the inspection of optics and semiconductors, surface roughness characterization, stray light suppression and the measurement of appearance.

Ian MacDonald (Chairman, Steorn Jury)
Canada
PhD EE 1975
Senior Member IEEE
Fellow, Optical Society of America
Professor (Emeritus) Electrical Engineering, University of Alberta (Retired)

Steorn Jury Reports: Launch Of Orbo In 2009 Continues