A molecular machine inside your cells spins like a turbine to make the fuel of life
ATP synthase is a protein embedded in cell membranes that physically rotates, driven by a flow of protons, to mechanically crank out ATP, the molecule that powers nearly everything a cell does. Biochemist Paul Boyer proposed the rotating mechanism in the 1970s when it still sounded implausible; John Walker's X-ray crystal structures later confirmed it directly. The two shared half the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for proving a protein could work like a literal spinning motor.