SCIENCE GATHERING PREDICTS A BIG FUTURE FOR SMALL TECH (Nanotechnology)

smalltimes/AJC ^ | Feb. 15, 2002 | Mike Toner

[pa_dweller]

SCIENCE GATHERING PREDICTS
A BIG FUTURE FOR SMALL TECH

By Mike Toner
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

BOSTON, Feb. 15, 2002 – In the world of headline-grabbing scientific advances, the official "breakthrough of the year" hasn't exactly made the public pulse race.

The journal Science's coveted accolade for 2001 was bestowed on some little things – very little things. But in the small, small world of nanotechnology, reports that five laboratories in the United States and Europe last year built the first molecular-sized circuits loom as large as the harnessing of steam once did for the Industrial Revolution.

Researchers at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston predicted Thursday that the ability to build increasingly complex nanocircuits – devices whose dimensions are measured in billionths of a meter – are the harbingers of a new epoch.

This one, they say, might make it possible to develop a generation of nanorobots that could fight disease on a molecular level, biochemical sensors that could detect a single anthrax cell and computer storage devices that could pack the contents of the Library of Congress in the space of a sugar cube.

Revolutions often begin with the mundane. But amid the growing stream of reports about seemingly arcane devices such as carbon nanotubes, polymeric scaffolds and nano-onions, there is a growing sense of anticipation in scientific circles. One by one, researchers are marshalling the building blocks of a market the National Science Founda- tion estimated could grow to $1 trillion and employ 2 million people over the next 10 to 15 years.

"A year ago, I wasn't sure that the achievement of a complex integrated nanosystem was possible," says Harvard University chemist Charles Lieber. "Now I think it is a distinct possibility in the near future."

Lieber says last year's successful linkage, in five different laboratories, of microscopic arrays of wires and diodes and switches into the first rudimentary molecular-scale circuits marks a major step toward building a functioning computer like none the world has ever seen.

Today's state-of-the-art computers cram 40 million transistors onto a wafer of silicon the size of a postage stamp.

If the circuits now being developed can be fashioned into more complex systems, the same space could holds billions of transistor-like devices constructed from individual molecules and atoms.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, honorary chairman of the NanoBusiness Alliance, a group formed to promote commercialization of "tiny tech," says, "If you can move atoms, you affect everything we do."

Some applications of nanotechnology, such as microscopic injectable machines to scour clogged arteries, seem almost fanciful, but Lieber says the bounds of the possibilities are "limited only by your imagination."

By controlling the assembly of atoms themselves to fabricate new materials, for instance, it might be possible to build an airplane as large as a 747 that weighed only 2 percent of today's jumbo jet.

Miniature sensors the size of a single cell could be used to restore kidney function in patients who now must suffer through costly dialysis.

NASA is already studying ways in which sensors the size of dust particles could be rocketed into space to search for life and return some of the same kinds of information now gathered by billion-dollar space probes.

[Prodigal Son]

Whoo Hoo! Singularity here we come!

[pa_dweller]

From what I understand about this stuff, it could well become the Mark of the Beast before it becomes a singularity.