Nanotechnology is probably the most stupendous and mind-blowing discoveries of man, yet! What is about to follow might just seem as unbelievable to you, as a far-fetched fragment of some peoples` wild imagination, as the eccentricity of the genius, perhaps. Not everything that the discovery claims to be has been proven as yet, but the results are positive and the researchers are hopeful. So don’t dismiss this text as junk. Read it, (try) to understand and accept it. You might just be reading something that could change the entire history of mankind....

Okay. You have got me curious. What is Nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology is molecular manufacturing or, more simply, building things one atom at a time. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. The trick is to manipulate atoms individually and place them exactly where you need to produce the desired structure.

I tried (to understand) and failed. What is Nanotechnology?

The main concept is that if you can build something with a bigger "building block", why not a miniature working replica of the same thing with the fundamental building blocks - atoms. Bingo!! That is exactly what Nanotechnology does. The principle lies behind the fact that an atom is the fundamental unit of any structure and hence the main structure can be reproduced with help of a few manipulations of this basic atomic unit. Electronics is fueled by miniaturization. The smaller the device, the better. Because of the small size of the microchip you have laptops and even palmtops. Nanotechnology will allow you to have computers that are smaller than your watch and even more powerful than your present day computer, or supercomputers the size of a palmtop.

Thus what is being thought of, is a device that can manipulate or in other words, dealwith atoms and develop larger units from these atoms by actually physically using each atom for its specific property or use.

Fantastic dream, I’ll admit. Now get real! What does this mean for me if it does happen ?

Humanity will be faced with a powerful, accelerated social revolution as a result of Nanotechnology. Within a few short years, and five billion trillion nano-robots later, virtually all present industrial processes will be obsolete as well as our contemporary concept of labor. Consumer goods will become plentiful, inexpensive, smart, and durable. Working at the atomic level will enable the ultimate in miniaturization and performance. By starting with cheap, abundant components--molecules--and processing them with small, high-frequency, high-productivity machines, it will make products inexpensive. Design computers that execute more instructions per second than all of the semiconductor CPUs in the world combined.

Developments you said, please elaborate!!

The goal of early Nanotechnology is to produce the first nano-sized robot arm capable of manipulating atoms and molecules into a useful product or copies of itself. Soon you have trillions of assemblers controlled by nano super computers working in parallel assembling objects quickly. And what would one build? Allow me to leave you with a small list to ponder.

How about self-assembling consumer goods, Computers billions of times faster and billion times smaller, controlling machines that patrol our bodies as artificial immune systems. Machines that can repair cells on a molecular scale, that perhaps through manipulating DNA, could stop or reverse the aging process.

As far as definite indications are concerned, we actually really have an assembler that can produce pizzas from the atoms and what’s more it can even duplicate the machines that produced the pizzas in the first place.

Now I am thoroughly hooked. This is like WOW! (if it takes off, that is). It probably might be the most stupendous and mind-blowing discoveries of man -yet......

Mayur Venkateswaran, Ganesh Pai