minuscule motor

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first imagined an atom-size device dubbed Maxwell’s Demon in 1867. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have made it a
reality. “We have a new motor mechanism for a nanomachine,” said David Leigh, a professor of chemistry at the University.A nanomachine is an incredibly tiny device whose parts consist of single molecules. Nature uses nanomachines for everything from photosynthesis to moving muscles in the body and transferring information through cells.As Maxwell had predicted long ago, it does not use energy other than light. “While light has previously been used to energise tiny particles directly, this is the first time that a system has been devised to trap molecules as they move in a certain direction under their natural motion,” said Leigh who reported the findings in the journal Nature. In an earlier study, he and his team showed that a nanomachine could move a drop up water uphill by using molecular force.