Motor design flouts physical law

For centuries, optimistic inventors have proposed perpetual-motion machines. These would defy scientific law, of course, and none has ever worked as advertised. Now, a blueprint for a minuscule perpetual-motion machine has been found convincing enough by other scientists to get published in the October Foundations of Physics.

In the report, Daniel P. Sheehan of the University of San Diego and his colleagues describe their design: a square silicon doughnut about the size of a red blood cell.