Perhaps the most persistent nonsense in physics: the perpetual motion machine. Bad ideas come and go in physics. But there’s one bit of nonsense that is perhaps more persistent than all others: the ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

My favorite shelf in the home library is where Raymond Roussel, the Comte de Lautréamont, E.T. A. Hoffmann, Leonora Carrington and other writers form a brilliant phalanx of eccentricity and marvel. I ...

Perpetual motion machines are impossible, right? They violate the laws of thermodynamics. And yet people have been trying to engineer one for centuries. YouTuber gzumwalt posted a video of what looks ...

On Sept. 20, 1913, rumors were running rampant around North Dakota that J. W. Kennedy, of Mandan, North Dakota, had invented just such a machine. A news clipping about J.W. Kennedy and his perpetual ...

A perpetual motion machine operates in a continual repetitive motion, indefinitely; without someone providing an energy source. Considering this concept, imagine a business operating with little to no ...

An Irish technology development company Steorn claims it can produce free, clean and constant energy without taking the energy from an external source. In effect, the company claims it has produced an ...

Let's start with a water wheel in still water with an electric generator hooked up to it. Let's say it has a ratchet wheel so it can only turn in one direction. I want to calculate the probability ...