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A wheel weighted with swinging mallets. A cylinder rotating in a sealed, water-filled container. A siphon that transfers liquid back and forth in a seemingly endless loop. These may sound like the ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. “Nature of Reality” blogger ) Frank Wilczek has gone public ...

Inventors have been coming up with designs for perpetual motion machines for centuries even though they’re completely impossible. Perpetual motion machines are impossible, right? They violate the laws ...

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 ...