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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hi there, everybody,
welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollett. I'm
an editor here at how Stuff Works, and with me
as usual is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, So
(00:23):
I got a little topic I want to talk about today,
very little, tiny. In fact, you might call it nano. Yes,
in fact, we would, because that's the topic technology. Everybody.
Everybody's doing nano. Yeah, everyone is, and depending on who
you talked to, it's either gonna destroy the world or
rescue it. Yeah. So, um, what's the big deal? So
(00:44):
to speak? The big deal is that it's a very
very little deal. In fact, one billionth of a deal,
or a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. And uh,
to give you an idea of how tiny this is,
the average human hair is one hundred micrometers in diameter. Now,
(01:06):
a micrometer is a thousand nanometers, so that means that
the average human hair is one hundred thousand nanometers in diameter.
I should point out that that's average. I've seen a
number of numbers. Yeah, it is usually between sixty and one.
That's normally that's the average I normally see, but one hundred,
it's fair enough to say. So, yeah, some people have
very fine hair. But we're kind of splitting hairs now,
(01:28):
aren't we. You've walked right into that one. So we're
talking about things on this tiny, tiny scale. Now, we're
not talking about the atomic scale, because that's actually smaller
than the nano scale. Yeah, because an atom is about
an atom. When you take the entire atom into account,
the average atom is about point one nanometers in diameter.
(01:49):
That's pretty teeny. So it's one tenth of a of
a nanometer. That's the atomic scale. We're getting pretty close
to the atomic scale. Yeah. Yeah, Now if you want
to talk about the nucleus of an atom, do you
want to how big that is? I mean, yes, how many?
Of course you want to know how big it is?
It Tollett Cheese, I thought I had you. It is
point zero zero zero zero one nanometers wide. That's just
(02:14):
the nucleus. So when you when you strip away the
electron shell, it's tiny indeed, But anyway, nanoscale, we're talking
about things on this really tiny scale. Building machines that
are on this scale. Usually people say between one and
one d nanometers is kind of within the nanoscale range.
Um building not just machines, but but really specific machines
(02:37):
that can actually potentially change the world. And um, it's
it's pretty phenomenal to think of building anything on that
smaller scale. You can't even look at these things with
a light microscope because they're so tiny because the the
wavelength for visible light on the small scale of it
over on the violet spectrum, that's about four hundred nanometers
(02:59):
for a wave length. So we're talking about having to
use things like scanning telling microscopes to look at the
nano scale. Now, these are special microscopes that emit a
small charge electric charge, and then it interprets the data,
sends it to a computer, and you look at an
image on a computer screen. So you're not even really
looking at the physical thing. You're looking at a computer
(03:22):
image representation of that thing. Right, if if nanotechnology is
that small, how do you make it? Because you know,
there are a lot of people who talk about things
on the nano scale, like, uh, you know, computer processor
chips using nanotechnology, Uh, nano robots, which I'm told you
(03:42):
might know something about a little bit. You know, you
know all kinds of things. How are you building these tiny,
tiny things if you can't even really see them, if
you're depending on a machine to do it for you
to be able to look at them, that's a tricky question.
I'll there are two different ways, right. There's the top
down approach, which is where you actually drop stuff on
(04:04):
it from above, not quite, but you you build each
component and you then put everything together. It's it's kind
of like the classic way you build anything, right, Like
you would use a top down approach to build say
a car. You know, you build the frame and then
you attach various things to the frame. I'm talking like
I know anything about cars. Um. So it's a different
(04:24):
podcasts and Scott is way better at it than I am.
So the other way is the bottom up approach. This
is interesting. This is where you're actually building things kind
of um like you're growing them almost like you're growing machines. Um.
And you're doing it adam by adam, molecule by molecule,
(04:44):
and uh, I'm not really sure which way it's gonna go.
This is an early early silent science, even though it's
been around for a couple of decades. We're still, you know,
just barely in the beginning of it. So we'll see
which method ends up being the the prevalent one. Um,
but there are people working on it on either end,
so to speak, and to give you an idea of
(05:06):
how possible this is. In so we're talking about almost
twenty years ago. Uh, there was an IBM scientist named
Don Eidler who led a team who demonstrated that they
can manipulate individual atoms and they used a scanning tunneling
microscope to move atoms to spell I B M, I
(05:31):
AM so not shock. Yeah. So you can actually there
are pictures of this on the internet if you google
you know IBM scanning tunneling microscope. Uh, you can find
pictures of this where you see the image where each
dot represents a separate atom. So they actually use the
atoms to spell the word. Well. And in two thousand four,
(05:53):
again IBM scientists are kind of leading the research in this. Uh.
They were in Zurich and they they show that they
were able to change the charge state of individual atoms
by adding or removing electrons from an individual atom. Yeah.
So again they used a scanning telling microscope, and they
(06:14):
had a charged point on the tip of that microscope
which comes to such an incredibly fine point that it
can do these things that can remove an electron from
one atom and and put it onto another. So we
have the technology to manipulate individual atoms. Now we have
to get to the point where we can build molecular
(06:35):
structures that work as tiny machines, all right, and there
are a couple different ways we can look into that.
One of the really popular things that people have been
talking about recently are carbon nanotubes. Have you heard of these? Yeah,
it's the stuff that's supposed to, you know, do everything
everything you've ever heard of. Essentially, carbon danotubes can apparently
(06:56):
do well. There there's such a versatile structure, yeah, and
you know, very resilient yep. Yeah. It actually all depends
on how you how you roll the yeah, how you
roll the tube. So carbon nanotubes, the way you create
a carbon nanotube in general them I'm way oversimplifying here,
but you take a sheet of carbon atoms, all right,
(07:18):
they form molecular structure where it looks very like it
looks like a series of hexagons, and what you then
do is you roll this into a tube. You roll
the sheet into a tube, and depending on the angle
you use when you roll it into a tube, that
dictates the the the properties the carbon nanotube will have.
(07:39):
So you know that. Of course graphite is composed of carbon,
as are diamonds, but these two materials are have very
different properties. Graphites very soft, it's opaque, uh, diamonds not
so soft, usually pretty clear. But the reason why they're
different is because of the way these molecules are arranged.
(08:01):
The same thing with carbon nanotubes. So if you arrange
them as specific way by rolling the sheet in a
specific direction, you can create a material that's hundreds of
times stronger than steel and six times is light. Well
what could what could possibly be a problem with Well, yeah,
the problem, as you pointed out, is it's very expensive.
(08:21):
It's there's no easy way to do it. It's no easy,
efficient way right now that we can do it on
a mass scale. So we can be done. It's just
gonna be done in very small amounts, like on the
nano scale amounts, and it's being done in laboratories and
it's gonna take several years for that to move from
the laboratory to the production room. And um, when it does,
(08:43):
then we're gonna start seeing lots and lots of stuff
with carbon nanotubes and it we we see some already.
There's some products that use carbon nanotube technology already, but
it's not on the scale that the you know, the
future of nanotechnology kind of promises us. But I've seen
things like everything from a Spider Man type suit made
out of carbon nanotubes because if you roll them a
(09:04):
certain way, they work very like a Gecks skin. You
could climb walls and things with this stuff, which pretty neat. Yeah. Yeah,
I've got one on back order. So anyway, Um, so
that's kind of giving you the lowdown on on where
we are now and and you can find technology that
does incorporate things on the nano scale. In fact, you're
probably using one right now to listen to us. Yeah,
(09:29):
because if you're using any sort of device that has
a microchip, chances are you've got a transistors on that
microchip that are on somewhere in the nanoscale. I mean,
if you have a recent computer, then it's definite, you know,
as long as it's not I guess a netbook. You know,
if you have one that has a powerful microprocessor. You're
talking about transistors that are only a few dozen nanometers wide.
(09:56):
So for example, Intel's uh I CORPS seven I believe,
are what forty wide? I think, yes, except it's Core
I seven. Just remember, yeah, I show have said nehalem.
I wrote about it as the nehalem. But yes, uh,
those are um, those are like like forty five nanometers wide.
(10:17):
I mean, you're talking about stuff that's already out on
the market that's at this scale. I was looking at
applications of nanotechnology and I found an article on on
c net that in which they were talking about using
your voice to charge your cell phone. And uh, apparently
in order to do this they use they would they
(10:38):
would use they should say, would they would use barry
Um Tighten eight crystals, which are twenty three nanometers wide,
And to do that, it actually creates piezo electricity. It
transfers transfers, it transfers of physical energy into electrical energy. Yes, exactly, Karma. Yeah,
(10:59):
so you know, that's that's pretty neat to imagine that.
You know, these crystals that are are you know, in
the teens are not teens, but in the dual digit
nanometers size. You know that's wow, so um so piazzo
electric that that essentially means that you're converting kinetic energy
into electricity or vice versa. And then oh no, I
(11:23):
was just gonna say, this is the same sort of
stuff you you've have in things like microphones and speakers,
that kind of thing where it's converting uh, one form
of energy into another. And crystal there's certain crystals that
can do this, like quartz that that have this property
innately di lithium, tillium anyway. Um. And then they're the
(11:43):
nano robots, which are great for you know everything. Read
this article written by you know this Jonathan Strickling guy
and vaguely remember writing that it's been it's been more
than a year now. Yeah, but yeah, so nano robots
um all kinds of metal cool applications for those. Yeah,
here's the here's the interesting thing about nano robots. UM,
(12:07):
they don't exist. Well, yeah, we're pretty much in the
micro stage right now to be to be really fair,
but assuming that we ever get down to the nano
size and are able to build nano sized robots, the
applications are pretty amazing from the medical standpoint. Um. For example,
let's say that you have a disease that's affecting a
(12:29):
very specific part of your body. And let's say the
normal way to treat this disease would be that you
would have you would take you know, medication. Well I'm
thinking medication really, but we can get the surgery to
in a minute. Um, So let's say that it would
normally be that you would either get a shot or
take some medicine orally or whatever. You would have to
wait for that medicine to make its way through your system,
(12:51):
uh and to eventually affect the infected area. Right, Okay,
so the medicine is already getting diluted through bloodstream, it's
taking time for it to reach the infected area, takes
time for it to to uh take effect at the area,
and so the whole recovery rate is slower than it
(13:12):
would ideally be. Now with a nano robot, theoretically you
could direct it, or if you could find a way
of making it autonomous, it can direct itself to the
infected area and deliver a much smaller payload of medication
directly to the infected area. So, for one thing, you're
not gonna have the side effects that you might have
(13:33):
experienced through a larger dose of medication because the dose
is much much smaller. For another, the application is immediate
to the infected area, so you're talking about it being
much more efficient and having a smaller impact on the
patient's overall health. So that's that's an ideal situation now
(13:54):
for surgery. As you were pointing out, that's also a
possibility you could create nano robots that would have things
like laser cutters that would essentially act like a little scalpel,
but they would be the incredibly precise, far more precise
than any human would be with a scalpel, because they're
on the nano scale. You're talking about something so small
(14:15):
that it's you know, blood cells are dwarfing it. So
but it could be an incredibly precise tool. And granted,
do you think, well, with a device that's small, how
could it really be useful? A lot of these future
projections suggests that you would not have just one of
these little nano robots working. They would there would be thousands,
(14:37):
perhaps millions of them working together at the same time,
and uh, then you don't have to find a way
of getting them out, or potentially you would have nano
robots in you all the time, and they could even
act as a preventive measure and keep you healthy and
head off any problems before they could really start even
uh bringing up symptoms. Yeah, you were saying in the
(15:01):
article that they could be used to do things like
breakup blood clots or you know, kidney stones. Oh man,
And they say breaking up is hard to do. You
know someone who has suffered from kidney stones. I gotta
tell you, I would love to have had some robots. Yeah,
if nothing else, then just to start have someone specific
I could scream at UM instead of just the the
(15:24):
the directionless screaming that I did while I actually had
them UM. But yeah, yeah, there are lots of different
cool applications. Now, there's some big problems that we have
to overcome. First, we have to be able to create
UM power systems on that scale something to power these robots.
So we're talking about batteries and capacitors that are have
(15:45):
to be incredibly tiny UM and that's that's a big challenge. Now,
some doctors have engineers have got around that by creating
robots that that propelled themselves, or actually they don't really
propel themselves. They are propelled externally. UM. There's one that
used m r I machine and you would use the
(16:07):
magnets in the m R I really to direct the robot,
so you could actually you know, you're kind of the
robot really was more passive, but you could direct it
to specific spot within an artery system. Now I should
point out that the scientists who did this did it
with a pig. Um. They were not doing human testing,
but it worked, went through the pig's arteries, so you know,
(16:32):
that's a it's nothing to sneeze at. Actually, I was
reading about a completely different application of nanotechnology. There was
sort of fascinating. UM. Jennifer Lowell was blogging about it
for for Seen It and she was talking about the
possibility that you could use nanotech to alter food on
the microscopic scale. UM. She actually was quoting Steve Bogan
(16:56):
and the Guardian. UM. They were talking about essentially how
you could if you had a food that to which
you were allergic, Uh, you could maybe make alterations to
it so that it would pass from your body without
being a problem. Trick is you know you could uh
you could have problems with people who don't particularly genetically
(17:17):
modified food, you know, so a lot of people that
are kind of creeped out by the frank and food. Um,
and you're talking about messing with things down again on
a very very tiny level. Uh So that's pretty that's
pretty significant. Um. But Bogan also mentioned the possibility that
packaging could be made um to where the nanotechnology inside
the food packaging could sniff out when you know, the
(17:40):
food started to give off gassing as it was decomposing,
it would change color to go, oh, well, you know
this thing, it's started to turn brown. We need to
toss it out without even you know, sniffing it or
you know, sticking your finger on it and going, I know,
it feels kind of weird. Yeah, that would have prevented
many many memorable nights that I've had in my past. Yeah,
I'm sure anyway, So uh and and to talk a
(18:02):
little bit more about building these robots, one of the
one of the things that scientists are working on is
to try and create specific kinds of nano robots called assemblers. Yeah. Now,
assemblers do what you would think they do. They assemble
other nano machines. So they could assemble other assemblers, so
then you have a self replicating nano robot. Do you
(18:25):
see where there might be a problem with this? I
feel its edging gradually towards the singularity. Right, So we're
talking about the potential for nano robots to replicate themselves
at such an incredible rate. And remember as soon as
one gets replicated, it can start replicating, and then the
ones that replicates can start replicating. So it's exponential growth. Right. Um,
(18:46):
there's a scenario called gray Goo. Gray Goo is this
this doomsday scenario where nano robots in order to build
more nano robots, they have to create it out of something.
You know, they're not building it out of nothing. So
what they're doing is they're they're in this scenario anyway,
it's taking carbon out of the environment and then building
robots with them that were of carbon. Right, Well, everything
(19:10):
a lot of stuff is made out of carbon on
on our planet, turns out, So the idea here would
be that the robots would start to consume all the
carbon in an effort to build more robots. And of course,
since it's exponential, it gets faster and faster every passing second.
So this Tudnsday scenario has the entire world just turning
into this writhing mass of gray goo as nano robots
(19:31):
take over everything. I'm totally singing The Sorcerer's Apprentice in
my head. Sleep well tonight. Yeah, I'm glad that we
were able to take such a rosy idea and go
there with it. Well, I mean, it's it's obviously a
worst case scenario, but there are a lot of First
of all, we're decades away from getting there. Second of all,
(19:55):
there's no guarantee that that's what would happen if we
even were able to create the nanotech simblars. So I
think we don't have to worry just yet. When the
singularity comes, then we'll start worrying. All right, So we
got about twenty years. You got anything to add to nanotechnology? No,
just get your living in while it's good? Okay, well
you know what do you know what's also good? Yeah?
(20:19):
This is not good. It's listener mail. Seriously, where's the
volume that element? So anyway, Rory writes in, Hi, Rory,
Rory writes in and says, have either of you guys
ever used Linux or bs D? Os ten does not
count as BSD in this case, then does a little
(20:39):
uh smiley emoticon that has its tongue sticking out at you. Also,
do either of you program, even on just a hobby level.
Excuse the questions. I'm just curious that we fit exercise
room sounds awesome. Thank you, It is awesome. So let's
let's tackle these questions. Have you ever used Linux or
BSD and remember O S ten doesn't count. Yes, actually have, UM,
(21:01):
although admittedly on sort of a as you know, you
might put it hobby scale. UM, I've dabbled with trying
to install UM. I'm build of a bunch of on
my old beat up PC at home and uh, probably
should not have because it did not like it very much.
Although I have a spare hard drive and um I'm
(21:21):
thinking about trying it again, so maybe I can report
back on that later. But UM, I've I've used a
boot disc and uh, you know, just dabbled with it
that way, and I really like it. I've used it
on friends machines. I do not have a Linux machine
other than my HTCG one which runs on Android, which
has a Linux kernel that it's very core. Well, I
(21:42):
do have a t VO, so technically yes, we have
used it, though not as a chief operating system um uh.
And it's not like we have a bias against Linux
at all, or BSD for that matter. It's really part
of it's just the fact that all of our computers here,
pretty much most of our computers here, I should say,
(22:03):
run on Windows, so it's just easier to stay on
the same operating system. And in case you want to
work on anything, that's true. Now, I do have an
Intel powered Mac at home, and you know, I could
partition the hard drive and install Linux on it, but
you know, and I really haven't. I'd really rather try
it on something else first, especially since the problem I
did have on it was partitioning the hard drive. Yeah,
(22:25):
let's let me get a little bit more comfortable with
that before I started. Sounds good. And uh so the
question do you program? Do you program? Um? Not anymore? Yeah,
I used to program using a Mega Basic. Yeah, I
used to program. So, yeah, we programmed back when, uh
(22:47):
back when personal computers were pretty new. We were not
now granted we were not. Uh we're not going to
give you any of the harder stories of programming for
a computer using punch cards. That's a little before our time. Um,
although I, uh my older brother went to a punch
card class. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, And you know, I realized
that h GML is not technically programming, but you know
(23:09):
it is a little coding. Yeah. I used to do
it's us, you know, just to mess with the back end,
not even you know, no wisywig editors end. Okay, I
think I'm done now. Okay, So anyway, yeah, I've done
some h MIL coding as well. Back when the web
was was pretty much new, I did. I built websites.
And that was back in the day when you would
(23:30):
you would code in HTML, save it, open up a browser.
Look at what you did. Say, Oh my god, that
looks terrible. Close the browser, open up the editor, makes
some changes. Close it, you know, save it, close it,
you know, rents and repeat. It's so much easier now.
The blink tag yeah, and the marquee tag and they
and the the looping uh midi file in the background. Anyway,
(23:57):
So well, thank you very much, Rory. I hope we
answer your question. Roy's laughing at us right now, and well,
right well we should. If any of you have any questions, comments, suggestions, corrections,
please right in to tech stuff at how stuff works
dot com. And remember we have a brand new blog
up l at blogs dot How Stuff Works dot Com.
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