The Morningstar Energy Box
Paul Murad · Morgan Boardman · John Brandenburg · Jonathan McCabe · Wayne Mitzen
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source
In one page
John Searl’s rotating magnetic device, and the version of it built by the Russian researchers Godin and Roschin, are two of the most-repeated stories in the anomalous-propulsion literature — and hardly anyone has built one. Paul Murad, Morgan Boardman, John Brandenburg, Jonathan McCabe and Wayne Mitzen built one, ran it, weighed it and took the numbers to the AIAA aerospace sciences meeting in January 2012. Their machine, the Morningstar Energy Box, is a main ring carrying a ferromagnetic fluid with laminated rollers running around it, the rollers held in place by a mechanical cage. Their account of how it works uses rotating electromagnetic fields and differs from both earlier ones. The Russian team had reported losing up to 35 percent of the weight of a 375-kilogram armature. The Energy Box, weighing 190 pounds, showed a few pounds at steady state in early runs, tens of pounds while the rotation was changing, and 14 pounds — 7.3 percent — in a final series.
Why it matters hereChapter 8 is about reducing the inertia and weight of a machine by the fields it carries rather than by throwing mass out of the back, and this is one of the few cases where a team actually built the disputed hardware, weighed it and published the numbers at a mainstream aerospace meeting; chapter 11 collects the rotating-field and superconductor weight-change experiments this one belongs with.
What it claims
01The Morningstar Energy Box is a derivative of the Searl device and of the variant built by the Russian scientists Godin and Roschin: laminated rollers and a main ring with ferromagnetic fluid are used to enhance the electrical and magnetic properties, and the rollers are constrained by a mechanical cage.Abstract, sentences 1 and 2; AIAA 2012-0998
On the bench now02The operational theory the authors give for the Energy Box uses rotating electromagnetic fields, and is different from either Searl’s account or the Russian one — the nomenclature of the paper is the ordinary vocabulary of field theory, magnetic field, electric field, current and Poynting vector.Abstract, sentence 3; nomenclature list
Designed, not yet built03The claims being tested are stated plainly: the Russian team reported self-acceleration sufficient to generate electricity, a large weight loss when the device was spun in one direction and a weight gain when it was spun in the other, and discrete magnetic walls around the machine. The authors record that at the time of writing no one had validated them.Abstract, sentences 4 and 5
What to watch04The Energy Box found a similar phenomenon regarding the discrete magnetic walls, and saw both weight gain and weight loss, although not at the same magnitude as the earlier reports.Abstract, sentence 6
On the bench now05The numbers are given directly. Against a reported loss of as much as 35 percent of the weight of a 375-kilogram armature, the Energy Box in an early test lost only 2 to 5 pounds of its 190 pounds at steady state; during transient changes of rotation the weight change reached 20 to 40 pounds; and a last test series recorded a weight loss of 14 pounds, a 7.3 percent change, at steady state.Abstract, sentences 7 to 9
On the bench now06What to watch: the authors conclude that they saw phenomena similar to the earlier reports as well as a loss of weight, and that the device may represent an advanced propulsion scheme for space travel. The measurement that would settle it is an independent build weighed on a calibrated balance that carries the whole apparatus and its mount, with the thermal, buoyancy and magnetic-coupling paths to the scale characterised before the run and the rotation direction reversed within the same session.Abstract, final sentence
What to watch
Read it · abstract
Abstract
The Morningstar Energy Box is a derivative of both the Searl device and a variant of the Russian Scientists Godin and Roschin. Laminated rollers and a main ring with ferromagnetic fluid are used to enhance electrical and magnetic properties. The device is constrained by a mechanical cage to hold the rollers. An operational theory for the Energy Box uses rotating electromagnetic fields different from either Searl or the Russians. Moreover, the Russians made several serious claims that produced self-acceleration to generate electricity, created a large weight loss when spun in one direction and weight gain when spun in the opposite direction. They also claimed their device generated discrete magnetic walls. To date, no one has validated these outrageous Russian claims. However, the Energy Box found similar phenomenon regarding the discrete magnetic walls with both weight gain and loss, although not at the same magnitude. Where they claimed to lose as much as 35% of the weight of a 375 kg armature, the Energy Box in an early test only lost 2 to 5 pounds of its 190 pounds at steady-state. During transient rotation changes, the weight change dropped as much as 20 to 40 pounds. However, a last test series recorded a weight lost of 14 pounds with a 7.3% change during steady-state. We can state that we saw similar phenomena as the Russian claims as well as lost weight and the device may represent an advanced propulsion scheme for space travel.
Paul Murad, Morgan Boardman, John Brandenburg, Jonathan McCabe and Wayne Mitzen, The Morningstar Energy Box, AIAA 2012-0998, 50th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition, January 2012. The published paper is at doi.org/10.2514/6.2012-998.
(Abstract only — no other text of the paper is reproduced here; see the rights note above. On this site, Murad’s gravitational-wave generator filing is at /library/stm-190148c444, his survey of new frontiers in space propulsion sciences is at /library/stm-abb6f5d1d0, Brandenburg’s ball-lightning modelling is at /library/stm-523adea6ad, and the Dresden thrust-balance campaign that shows what a modern null-result-hardened weighing rig looks like is at /library/stm-92d585638d and /library/stm-fadc0313da.)
The way in
https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2012-998SOURCE NOT REACHED IN FULL. AIAA holds this conference paper closed. Unpaywall, OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar all report no open version and no repository copy on 2026-09-08, and a Wayback CDX sweep for a Morningstar-hosted copy returned nothing. So no text of the paper is reproduced here beyond the authors’ own abstract as deposited with the publisher and carried by OpenAlex, which is set out below. That indexed abstract runs on into the paper’s nomenclature list — magnetic field, electric field, current, Poynting vector, time — which is dropped here as page furniture; nothing else is altered. Every locator points to a sentence of the abstract or to the bibliographic record: AIAA 2012-0998, presented at the 50th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition, January 2012. A DEFECT IN THE UPSTREAM RECORD: OpenAlex attaches the affiliation ’Association for Symbolic Logic’ to Murad and Boardman, which is an indexing mismatch and not an affiliation of either author; no affiliation is asserted on this page for that reason.
How to cite it
Paul Murad, Morgan Boardman, John Brandenburg, Jonathan McCabe, Wayne Mitzen (2012) The Morningstar Energy Box. doi:10.2514/6.2012-998
Where it sits in the curriculum
Inertial mass reduction and transmedium craftGravity control and superconductors