motor

The principle of a motor states that a conductor with a current flowing through it and moving through a magnetic field will turn perpendicular to the direction of current flow Well we have one hell of good conductor, the Earth, its got current flowing through it (witness the north and south...

In Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged, the hero is a scientist who invents an electric motor that gets its power by tapping into the static electricity in the atmosphere, providing a source of virtually limitless energy. My initial reaction was to dismiss it as being a perpetual motion fantasy, just...