[extropy-chat] Survey: Nanotechnology

Terry W. Colvin fortean1 at mindspring.com
Sat Jan 8 21:07:00 UTC 2005


[The Economist carried a series of articles on nanotechnology.

"Apply here
Where very small things can make a big difference. Page 5

"Fear and loathing
Some of the worries about nanotechnology are rational, some not. Page 7

"Downsizing
Companies both large and small hope to make big money from tiny particles.
Page 9

"Handle with care
Nanotechnology promises great benefits, but safeguards will be essential.
Page 11"

Terry


< http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3494722 >

SURVEY: NANOTECHNOLOGY

Small wonders

Dec 29th 2004 
>From The Economist print edition
 

Nanotechnology will give humans greater control of matter at tiny scales. That
is a good thing, says Natasha Loder (interviewed here) 

ATOMS are the fundamental building blocks of matter, which means they are very
small indeed. The world at the scale of atoms and molecules is difficult to
describe and hard to imagine. It is so odd that it even has its own special
branch of physics, called quantum mechanics, to explain the strange things that
happen there. If you were to throw a tennis ball against a brick wall, you might
be surprised if the ball passed cleanly through the wall and sailed out on the
other side. Yet this is the kind of thing that happens at the quantum scale. At
very small scales, the properties of a material, such as colour, magnetism and
the ability to conduct electricity, also change in unexpected ways. 
 
It is not possible to “see” the atomic world in the normal sense of the word,
because its features are smaller than the wavelength of visible light (see table
1). But back in 1981, researchers at IBM designed a probe called the scanning
tunnelling microscope (STM), named after a quantum-mechanical effect it employs.
Rather like the stylus on an old-fashioned record player, it could trace the
bumps and grooves of the nanoscale world. This allowed scientists to “see” atoms
and molecules for the first time. It revealed landscapes as beautiful and
complex as the ridges, troughs and valleys of a Peruvian mountainside, but at
the almost unimaginably small nanometre (nm) scale. 

A nanometre is a billionth of a metre, or roughly the length of ten hydrogen
atoms. Although scientists had thought about tinkering with things this small as
long ago as the late 1950s, they had to wait until the invention of the STM to
make it possible.

...more at URL...


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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