4 of 10

Write now Article Tools

One of the recurrent themes in the "classic" science fiction from the so-called Golden Age of the 1950s is miniaturization - shrinking a machine so small that it and its occupants experience the sub-microscopic universe as if it were another universe like ours, but at a different scale.

A good example is Isaac Asimov's "Fantastic Voyage." In this novelization of Jerome Bixby's original story that was adapted for film by David Duncan, Asimov's heroes and their small submarine are shrunk until they can be injected into a human patient where they cruise around, encountering the body's defense mechanisms that perceive the miniaturized sub and its passengers as an invading organism, and finally save the patient's life.

Richard Matheson's "Incredible Shrinking Man" is another fine example from this genre. Hero Scott Carey discovers that he is shrinking (for reasons that don't matter here), encountering perils on his smallward journey. Finally, he emerges into another ultraminiature universe that mirrors our own.

It's great stuff, and "Fantastic Voyage" and "Incredible Shrinking Man" made exciting movies, but they and all their kind have a fundamental flaw:

Quantum physics.

That's right - Max Planck and his buddies discovered back in the 1920s that the universe contains absolute limits. Planck wasn't very happy with the results, but they determined that the very concept of predictability disappears at the very very small end of the spectrum. For example, you can determine the precise location of a very small object (such as an electron), but you have no idea when it was at that spot. Your best bet is to find a compromise that gives you a reasonably close approximation of its location within a time window that works for you.

Planck didn't like this at all, and Albert Einstein commented about the uncertainty contained in the new physics that "The Old One [God] doesn't roll dice."

Things continued much the same until - in 1977 - an MIT undergrad named K. Eric Drexler burst into scientific consciousness. He envisioned a swarm of very tiny robots that could build essentially anything at all, atom by atom or molecule by molecule. Fill a black box with these "molecular assemblers," add a supply of inexpensive chemicals, and out would come gasoline, rubies, space ships, floor waxwithout significant cost or labor. In the human body (shades of Asimov), nanomachines could repair bone and tissue and cure disease. Released into the environment, nanomachines could clean the Planet's air

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Nanotechnology explained?
We want to hear your view. Write now!