I was reading a fairly recent Scientific American, (Feb or Mar '99) and
came across a fairly interesting blurb on nanotech.
Basically, the gist of the thing was that there are researchers that are
working on what are being called "Brownian motion motors". The main
concept is that a wheel and ratchet assembly are constructed on the
molecular level, such that random impact will turn the wheel (gear) and
the ratchet will only let it turn one way.
Unfortunately, the researchers have not had any staggering success, but
this line of inquiry seems to point to the possibility of machines
(albeit small ones) that would require no traditional power source in
order to operate in non-frozen enviornments.
Although I realize that using ambient, chaotic heat and motion is not
really true overunity, given that the establishment at large seems to
think that this "degenerated" energy is useless, I think that this is
fairly cool.
-Matt Goff