For a long time, alchemists fawned over the idea of turning lead into gold. It took our best scientists thousands of years to achieve this feat. In May 2025, the CERN laboratory launched two high-speed lead nuclei at each other. The resulting near-miss scattered lead protons, briefly turning some into gold.
Every civilisation has one of these fabled discoveries, e.g. the font of eternal life for medieval people. One of the most famous from our own society is the perpetual motion machine, a device that can move indefinitely with only an initial ‘push’.
Source: Pexels.
An early example involves the work of 17th-century mathematician Blaise Pascal, who reportedly stumbled on an entirely different idea – the game of roulette – while trying to build a perpetual motion machine. This story is frequently told in online roulette circles. It took just a few years for Pascal’s roulette wheel to become popular in French casinos.
Thermodynamics
Of course, the scholar didn’t succeed with his perpetual motion machine, and nobody ever has. The idea generally focuses on creating an inexhaustible energy source. Once the machine has started, its movements can be used to turn a turbine, for instance. Unfortunately, the laws of thermodynamics don’t allow this.
Let’s summarise: the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can’t be created from nothing, meaning a perpetual motion machine needs more than an initial shove – especially if the intention is to use its work to make energy.
The second violated law involves entropy and is the easiest to understand. Movements create friction, hindering motion. A push will always run out of energy eventually, as it’s wasted turning the wheel(s) of the machine.
Perpetual motion is perhaps a more impossible feat than turning lead into gold, which is more about moving molecules around than upending the laws of physics. In fact, even the font of eternal life makes more sense. The jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii can reset its biological clock.
Hidden Power Source
All that hasn’t stopped people from trying to create perpetual motion. Before Blaise Pascal’s roulette wheel, master inventor Leonardo da Vinci decried “ye seekers after perpetual motion” as alchemists, planting them in the same camp as the lead-into-golders.
An article on the Hackaday website elaborates on the more insidious side of perpetual motion machines, noting that Connecticut machinist E.P. Willis earned money from such a device in the late 19th century, while MIT grad Harry Perrigo demoed one to Congress. Both used a hidden power source.
What’s interesting is that the idea of perpetual motion machines hasn’t gone away with better education and technology. Once Kickstarter launched, it gave armchair inventors carte blanche to pitch anything they liked. Such generators are now a common find on the crowdfunding site. It’s probably not the strangest thing that’s ever asked for money on Kickstarter.
Whether it’s lead into gold or an infinitely spinning wheel, impossible machines are one of society’s favourite fantasies. It’s just a shame that a perpetual motion machine requires undoing the universe.