"Practical" applications still years away for perpetual motion

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, in conjunction with the
University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute, created a short-lived
"proof of concept" of perpetual motion. Using an exotic type of matter known
as a Bose Einstein condensate, or BEC, the team demonstrated true perpetual
motion. Though the state persisted only ten seconds, team members say it
will one day lead to real-world applications.

The so-called "fifth state of matter," Bose Einstein condensates were
predicted as early as 1925, but it took 70 years to demonstrate them in a
laboratory setting. They form when matter is cooled to the point that the
atoms collapse to the lowest energy state, allowing quantum effects to
manifest on a macroscopic scale. BECs, also known as "superfluids," have a
number of strange properties, such as a total lack of any form of friction
and the ability to spontaneously flow out of an open container.