| | Two Weeks of Nanotechnology | Nanotechnology is available, today, to anyone with a laboratory and imagination. You can create custom nanomachines with commercially available kits and reagents. You can design and build nanoscale assemblers that synthesize interesting molecules. You can construct tiny machines that seek out cancer cells and kill them. You can build molecule-size sensors for detecting light, acidity, or trace amounts of poisonous metals. Nanotechnology is a reality today, and nanotechnology is accessible with remarkably modest resources. What is nanotechnology? Nanotechnology is the ability to build and shape matter one atom at a time. The idea of nanotechnology was first presented by physicist Richard Feynman. In a lecture entitled “Room at the Bottom,” he unveiled the possibilities available in the molecular world. Because ordinary matter is built of so many atoms, he showed that there is a remarkable amount of space within which to build. Feynman’s vision spawned the discipline of nanotechnology, and we are now amassing the tools to make his dream a reality. But atoms are almost unbelievably small; a million times smaller than objects in our familiar world. Their properties are utterly foreign, so our natural intuition and knowledge of the meter-scale world is useless at best and misleading at worst. How can we approach the problem of engineering at the atomic scale? When men and women first restructured matter to fit their needs, an approach opposite from nanotechnology was taken. Instead of building an object from the bottom up, atom-by-atom, early craftsmen invented a top-down approach. They used tools to shape and transform existing matter. Clay, plant fibers, and metals were shaped, pounded, and carved into vessels, clothing, and weapons. With some added sophistication, this approach still accounts for the bulk of all products created by mankind. We still take raw materials from the earth and physically shape them into functional products. …We are now in the midst of… [a] major revolution… Now, scientists are attempting to modify matter one atom at a time. Some envision a nanotechnology closely modeled after our own macroscopic technology. This new field has been dubbed molecular nanotechnology for its focus on creating molecules individually atom-by-atom. K. Eric Drexler has proposed methods of constructing molecules by forcibly pressing atoms together into the desired molecular shapes, in a process dubbed “mechanosynthesis” for its parallels with macroscopic machinery and engineering. With simple raw materials, he envisions building objects in an assembly-line manner by directly bonding individual atoms. The idea is compelling. The engineer retains direct control over the synthesis, through a physical connection between the atomic realm and our macroscopic world. Central to the idea of mechanosynthesis is the construction of an assembler. This is a nanometer-scale machine that assembles objects atom-by-atom according to defined instructions. Nanotechnology aficionados have speculated that the creation of just a single working assembler would lead immediately to the “Two-Week Revolution.” They tell us that as soon as a single assembler is built, all of the dreams of nanotechnology would be realized within days. Researchers could immediately direct this first assembler to build additional new assemblers. These assemblers would immediately allow construction of large-scale factories, filled with level upon level of assemblers for building macroscale objects. Nanotechnology would explode to fill every need and utterly change our way of life. Unfortunately, assemblers based on mechanosynthesis currently remain only an evocative idea. | David S. Goodsell, Bionanotechnology: Lessons from Nature | Indexes/08 |
1 comments:
Now, scientists are trying to revise the individual atoms in a matter of time. Some idea of nano-technology closely imitate our own macro technology.
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