Longing for a juicy steak, but you haven’t been to the supermarket? You needn’t worry about taming that between-meals appetite in the kitchen of the future. Simply place basic matter in the nano-oven and within a few minutes you can enjoy your favourite dish.
It’s no coincidence that science fiction has taken an interest in this new realm of technology. But what sounds more like an invention of Jules Verne, the father of modern science fiction, could well become reality through nanotechnology – at least in the minds of some scientists. Someday, they hope, we will be able to produce any object we choose by piecing it together, atom by atom. This would bring about a revolution in new materials and machines.
Robert Freitas, an American biochemist, dreams about nanomedicine, a world in which miniature robots voyage through the human body seeking out and destroying pathogens or cancer cells and even repairing chromosomes.
These visions are not (yet) anchored in reality. The scanning tunnelling electron microscope has only just begun to make it possible today to move individual atoms and molecules. And the tiniest robot components are currently several microns in size. Tiny yes, but still about a thousand times too big for nanotechnology applications.
It seems that we will have to wait a while longer for the brave new nanoworld to arrive. In the meantime, better call your favourite pizza service. wic
