Nature Physics · 16 October 2026 · From issue 53
The extraction of work from hidden degrees of freedom
A liquid's memory of a trapped bead let scientists pull out extra energy from it.
Lokesh Muruga, Felix Ginot et al.
A tiny glass bead sat in liquid, held by laser light. The liquid around it kept a kind of memory of how the bead had moved before. Scientists measured the bead twice, with a short wait between measurements. This let them pull out more useful energy than the bead's own motion seemed to hold.
Shown only for a single trapped bead in a liquid with memory effects, not a working engine.
One lab bead, single setup, no real engine built yet.
Integrity screen: passed (3 checks) Checked 30 October 2026. Retraction record: none. DOI resolves at doi.org. Metadata record found (Nature Physics). Read the source
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