Comment by lisper

You're not that far off. The particles aren't really moving, i.e. they are not going from one spatial location to another. What is happening is that they are changing quantum spin states, and the spin states are changing in such a way that it appears that a circular arrangement of atoms is rotating. This is a reflection of the fact that an atom isn't really a thing (there are no "things", i.e. there are no particles) it's just a quantum state, so if you have a quantum system A in state 1 and system B in state 2, and system A transitions to state 2 and system B transitions to state 1 then this end result is indistinguishable from the two systems having swapped locations. We call this "moving" because classical motion is the only mechanism we're familiar with in everyday life that allows two systems to swap locations. But that kind of moving is not what is happening here.