I've been reading information on nanotechnology since I first heard it mentioned in connection with Morgellons Disease (MgD) on a radio show October 24, 2006. Actually, I had received a document the week prior to give me a 'heads up' on what was about to be revealed. To be fair, I have no idea if nanotechnology is involved in MgD, mainly because I have seen no evidence to support that theory/hypothesis. Nor have I found any evidence to support the idea that these tiny little things have been, purposely or unwittingly, unleashed on mankind.
Fascinating subject, this nanotechnology, albeit fraught with more problems than there are actual advances. There are literally thousands of products which utilize nano particles in their make-up. Golf balls, cleaning products, stain resistant clothing, baseball bats, house paint, air purifiers, surfboards, odor-proof socks, cosmetics, computer chips, sunscreens, self-cleaning windows... and the list goes on and on. It should be pointed out that these products employ nanothechnology in what I will refer to as it's 'static form'. In these products, nano-tubes, nano-particles and/or nano-wires are blended in with the product's other elements to make the resulting product stronger, cleaner, more durable, longer lasting... literally "new and improved". But these are not nano-machines or even nano-devices.. they do not 'self-replicate', 'self-assemble' or contain 'artificial inteligence'. For the most part, they just stay put and do their job.
People are being led to believe that the other side of nano-land, those "nano-machines", have somehow become ubiquitous in society. These self-replicating, self-assembling mini-monsters are alegedly on the march and we're all doomed. I have found no evidence of this. In fact, I have found very little evidence of any working nano-machines. I feel that if we are under attack from these nano-nites, surely we would also have them working all over by now, doing many, many things and making our lives easier with each passing year. Along with all of that maybe we'd have heard a few newsworthy items, by now, about how nano 'whatevers' are actually being employed in real life scenarios.
In the definition of Nanotechnology from Wikipedia:
"In general it is not possible to assemble devices on the atomic scale, as all one has to position atoms are other atoms of comparable size and stickyness. ... the numerical challenges to nano-construction-- assembling just one mole's worth of nanodevices at the rate of a billion atoms per second would take 19 million years."
A little recent history of 'nano'
In September of 2001, George M. Whitesides, PhD, wrote:
"The charm of the assembler is illusory: it is more appealing as metaphor than as reality, and less the solution of a problem than the hope for a miracle."
"...we have a long path to travel before we can produce nanomechanical devices in quantity for any practical purpose." You can read the entire article here: The Once and Future Nanomachine
So let's examine what has transpired 'nano-wise' in the few years since then...
1. Tiny 'elevator' most complex nanomachine yet
NewScientist.com
19:00 18 March 2004
Celeste Biever
Nanoscale elevators made of two interlinking organic molecules have been built and operated by US and Italian scientists. ...The whole thing stands 2.5 nanometres tall and 3.5 nanometres wide.
"If and in which way such motor molecules will ever be useful, nobody knows at this moment," says Fred Brouwer of the University of Amsterdam, who built the first light-powered molecular motor in 2001. "The main reason for doing this kind of research is that it is a challenge."
2. World's Fastest Oscillating Nanomachine Holds Promise For Telecommunications, Quantum Computing
Source: Boston University
Date: February 17, 2005
Science Daily — Boston -- Nanotechnology leapt into the realm of quantum mechanics this past winter when an antenna-like sliver of silicon one-tenth the width of a human hair oscillated in a lab in a Boston University basement. With two sets of protrusions, much like the teeth from a two-sided comb or the paddles from a rowing shell, the antenna not only exhibits the first quantum nanomechanical motion but is also the world's fastest moving nanostructure.
The nanomechanical structure fabricated by the Mohanty group at Boston University consists of a central silicon beam, 10.7 microns long and 400 nm wide, that bears a "paddle" array 500 nm long and 200 nm wide along each side. This antenna-like structure oscillated at 1.49 gigahertz or 1.49 billion times per second, making it the fastest moving nanostructure yet created. (Copyright Pritiraj Mohanty, Boston University)
3. Molecular motors push liquid uphill
18:00 28 August 2005
NewScientist.com
Duncan Graham-Rowe
...what is new here, says David Leigh at the University of Edinburgh, is the use of molecular motors to achieve it: “This is the first time you can use molecular-level motion to move a macroscopic object. OK, so it’s only a tiny droplet – but it’s a start.”
...it is possible to manipulate an oily drop of liquid, says Leigh, and even push it up an incline of 12°.
4. Nano Machine Switches Between Biological And Silicon Worlds
Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry News
Article Date: 27 Apr 2006 - 4:00 PDT
"Frankly, some researchers didn't think what we were attempting was possible," says Dr Keith Firman, at Portsmouth University ...."However, we got our molecular switch to work."
"I could see it providing an interface between muscle and external devices, through its use of ATP, in human implants. Such an application is still 20 or 30 years away," says Firman.
5. Scientists build nanomachine
February 01 2007 at 05:41PM
By Patricia Reaney
London - Nearly 150 years ago it was no more than a concept by a visionary scientist, but researchers have now created a minuscule motor that could lead to the creation of microscopic nanomachines.
"Molecular machines allow life itself to occur at a molecular level. Our new motor mechanism is a small step towards doing that sort of thing with artificial molecular machines," Leigh told Reuters.
Leigh believes nanoscale science and engineering could have a huge impact on society - comparable to the impact of electricity, the steam engine and the Internet.
But quite how, is difficult to predict.
"It a bit like when stone-age man made his wheel asking him to predict the motorway," he said.
It would appear that we have an elevator, an oscillating comb, a molecular motor that can push a drop of water up a slight incline, a 'medical' nano-switch and a 'motor' that could lead to many things. And so you see that referring to these devices as 'machines' is perhaps a bit of a stretch. Where are those self-replicating assemblers that I am supposed to be fearful of..? Based on what I have found, non-existent.
If this technology is so advanced that it has now 'run amok' and is unleashing hell on earth's inhabitants, don't you think we would have seen just a few more 'mainstream' advances in the news..?
Perspective - Turns out, size really does matter
(you really have to do the math)
One nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or about 80,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair.
The link below will start you out with a simple straight pin, zooms in on the head (which has a hair laying across it) and then things get really small... Beneath the screen click on Start the Animation.. then use the arrows on each side of the word Magnification to zoom in or out on the pin's head. A bar scale is displayed at various magnification levels for size reference.
Now that you've got an idea of how small a nano-device can be... consider this...
The hostile environment of the poor little nano
In doing my research and getting a reality grip on the extremely small size of all this, I remember a fiber of Cindy's I was examining which was maybe 30 microns wide. While placing it on the staging platform of the microscope I sneezed. I have never seen that fiber since. My point is, how could these even tinier 'nano-devices' (thousands of times smaller) exist in the real world..? It's rather like the old saying, "about as much chance as fart in whirlwind." Then I found a post by a Chemical Engineer which gave me an even deeper perspective. Note that this is just last February.
by cdlavalle on 2/02/07
I'm a chemical engineer, thank you very much. I am actually professionally very interested in self-assembly and nano tech but my rant was more about the orgasms the media has over this stuff. There are some extremely hairy problems that these systems have e.g. heat shaking these things apart, air molecules reacting with any exposed surface and a million others. Imagine your car operating in a category 5 tornado that just hit a cannonball factory during a 10 point earthquake and you'll start to get close to the extremely hostile environment these machines will have to survive and function in. Are there limited very controlled areas these things can be made of use? Maybe but they are having a hard time finding them. Can redundancy help? Maybe. It's just every time I read a pop sci article on this stuff they really let their imaginations go. Bad science journalism hurts science. I apologize to my brothers toiling away in labs. I know grant money is hard to come by and I didn't mean to pick on you. Mostly the wanna be scientists that go into journalism and make ridiculous predictions based on very little is who I am ranting to. More info less hyperbole, please.
The link to this blog is here:
Scifi.com
- Charles E. Holman, GED
P.S. Something I found for Russell Altman
(recently quoted as saying that the fibers were actually nano-cameras):
Nanocamera
A nanodevice that often appears in science fiction is a nanocamera. This is used to view the inside of the body or in other confined spaces where an ordinary camera would not fit. Unfortunately, it is not possible to make such a camera using conventional far field optics. Light sources and light detectors can be made very small; a single molecule is large enough to serve as a simple light source or light detector. However, the amplitude of a light wave does not change over a distance much shorter than the wavelength of the light. This means that if detectors are placed together spaced more closely than a wavelength, they will all measure the same light intensity and no image will be formed. The wavelength of visible light is about one half micron so the detectors that make up a camera should be spaced at least this far apart. For an image consisting of 1000 × 1000 pixels, the camera would have to be about one half a millimeter on a side. This is small but clearly visible to the naked eye. It is too large to pass through the smallest blood vessels in the body which have a diameter of 2-3 microns.
Using a camera of any size it is not possible to view something with the dimensions of a few nanometers using visible light. Since the amplitude of the light cannot change on a scale shorter than the wavelength, any nanoscale object viewed with visible light will be no more than a shadowy blur. One way to get around this problem is to use shorter wavelengths. X-rays have short enough wavelengths but are difficult to focus. An electron microscope can have a resolution of a few nanometers. However, there are no nanoversions of imaging systems that use these short wavelengths and x-ray photon or energetic electrons have enough energy to damage a nanoscale structure. Building a nanoscale camera that uses short wavelengths does not seem feasible.