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By tracking the particle's motion using a video camera and then using image-analysis software to identify when the particle had rotated against the field, the researchers were able to raise the metaphorical barrier behind it by inverting the field's phase. In this way they could gradually raise the potential of the particle even though they had not imparted any energy to it directly.

"Nobody thinks of using bits to boil water," he says, "but that would in principle be possible at nanometre scales." And he speculates that molecular processes occurring in nature might already be converting information to energy in some way. "The message is that processes taking place on the nanoscale are completely different from those we are familiar with, and that information is part of that picture."