Nano Tech, Is It Possible?

[birudagmawi 0]

When people hear about nanotechnology or nanorobotics, they think of futuristic movies and concepts like the new NBC show "Bionic Woman". But how far off are we to achieving true nanotechnology? Such advances could be put to use in hospitals, where tiny bots could go into hard to reach organs and preform non invasive microsurgery. The military could use small army of surveillance bots to track and spy on high profile suspects. Scientist now are able to sculpt tiny circuit boards in a molecular level. The ideas are endless.

[csp4.0 1]

scientists are already making nano discoveries like that tiny guitar? and ones use in quatum mechanics. We are not far from becoming 'Jake 2.0's and certainly n aren't far from finding a cure to cancer and aids using nanobots

[abminara 0]

I was always fascinated by people talking about the things they have absolutely 0 idea about with such great confidence.

 

Let's start from the beginning. What the heck is nanotechnology? As most scientific terms it can be broken into two parts: nano (very tiny, anything*10^(-9)) and technology, with the meaning of the latter, I suppose, you all are familiar since you are using it right now.

 

Now, let's continue, shall we? Building on molecular level is IMPOSSIBLE as the molecules are not even visible in the electronic microscope - I'd even not say anything about the ordinary laboratory light microscope. The highest possible magnification that people ever got was with the electronic microscope, they were actually able to see DNA (One of the nucleic acids, transfers information, is copied when cells are divided, situated in the very centre of the nucleus of any eucaryotic cell). DNA is a macromolecule. Now, macro in this case does not mean that it is a "big molecule", but rather that it is composed of smaller molecules - actually - groups of molecules - Sugars, Phosphates, Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, Thymine, which are, respectively, divided into smaller molecules made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen.

 

How the heck can we see all those tiny things?

 

Well, the thing is, that we acually cannot see anything smaller than DNA double helix itself, as the electronic microscope sends a beam of high-energy electrons that happens to pass through the material magnified. When there is empty space on the print there is a blank, where there is matter - it is darker. But a bad thing is that that beam of electrons is deadly and as soon as it hits any living thing (cell) - it dies, so we cannot really see all the processes inside the cell, we can just make "photographs", and then arrange them as frames in a movie, killing several million cells in the meantime. Well, who cares - you have three trillions of those inside you:))

 

In that case, if we cannot even see what is really happening there, how can we build anything that small?

 

Well, the thing is, that we cannot. All we can do is to create long strong strands of carbon atoms. Each Carbon has 4 bonds that it can attach to anything, including another carbon. So, imagine a strand made completely out of carbon atoms, let's say, 20 atoms wide and 500 long (actually, they are much longer, that's just an example). Now, connect the ends alongside the width - you'll get a hollow cylinder 500 carbon atoms long. As the matter of fact, carbon to carbon bonds are one of the strongest in nature. One tiny "pipe" made of carbon can hold a HUGE (yes, I mean to caps it) weight. Today such nets are used to be wrapped around the cables that hold skyscrappers on the land without letting them fall down, or shake with the smallest breeze.

 

Unfortunately, that is the farthest that we ever got in nanotechnology, but I strongly believe that it will get it's hall of fame as a new revolutionary branch of Physics very soon, we just need better technology and optical devices that would not be so deadly to living things to better understand the microworld around us.