Rotational Brownian motion (astronomy) supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. Perturbations from passing stars can alter the orbital plane of such a binary, which in turn alters the direction of the spin axis of the single black hole that forms when the two coalesce. Rotational Brownian motion is often observed in N-body simulations of galaxies containing binary black holes. The massive binary sinks to the center of the galaxy via dynamical friction where it interacts with passing stars. The same gravitational perturbations that induce a random walk in the orientation of the binary, also cause the binary to shrink, via the gravitational
Brownian ratchet for example lifting a weight ("m") against gravity. The energy necessary to do this work apparently would come from the heat bath, without any heat gradient. Were such a machine to work successfully, its operation would violate the second law of thermodynamics, one form of which states: "It is impossible for any device that operates on a cycle to receive heat from a single reservoir and produce a net amount of work." Although at first sight the Brownian ratchet seems to extract useful work from Brownian motion, Feynman demonstrated that if the entire device is at the same temperature, the