Steorn
Irish energy company

Steorn Ltd () was a small, private technology development company based in Dublin, Ireland. In August 2006, it announced that it had developed a technology to provide "free, clean, and constant energy" via an apparent perpetual motion machine, something which is contrary to the law of conservation of energy, a fundamental principle of physics.
Steorn challenged the scientific community to investigate its claim and, in December 2006, said that it had chosen a jury of scientists to do so. In June 2009 the jury gave its unanimous verdict that Steorn had not demonstrated the production of energy.
Steorn gave two public demonstrations of its technology. In the first demonstration, in July 2007 at the Kinetica Museum in London, the device failed to work. The second demonstration, which ran from December 2009 to February 2010 at the Waterways Visitor Centre in Dublin, involved a motor powered by a battery and provided no independent evidence that excess energy was being generated. It was dismissed by the press as an attempt to build a perpetual motion machine, and a publicity stunt.
In November 2016, the company laid off its staff, closed its facility, and prepared for liquidation. It was finally liquidated in May 2024.
“Steorn” enters the record as irish energy company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steorn, Irish and energy can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2717232. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2009, 2007 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Steorn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.