Tiny Techs

Science Fridays

      I was going to write about globular clusters today, particularly the largest, most compact one known to astronomers.  This one is called Omega Centauri, and is in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud.  However, the tech reports for this week are too good to pass up.  Omega Centauri will have to wait a week.  No problem, because this is freaking amazing.

      We are talking about nanotechnology.  About fifteen or so years ago (maybe longer) we got introduced to futuristic nanotechnology in science fiction programs such as the Twilight Zone.  Nano-robots were injected into a man and they began to direct the molecules of his body in order to transform it according to what the little computers (working as a collective) perceived as a need for the man's survival.  The first thing they did was attack the man's cancer cells and rebuild them right.  He eventually had gills so he could swim better, and all kinds of other weird and creepy things.
      Then a few years later nanobots were a semi-regular recurring cast member on Stargate SG1.  The Goa'uld Nirrti was using them all the time.  She was injecting them into humans, trying to improve on the design, and create a better host for the race of "snake heads," As Col. O'Neil would say.  The nanobots were used in one episode to speed up human development so that their entire life span was 100 days.  Nirrti used them to create a deadly disease that wiped out an entire planet, to turn a little girl into a human bomb, and to create a bunch of ugly mutants with telekinetic powers who finally turned on her and killed her with the powers her nanobots gave them.  And then of course there were the replicators.  The ones in the Asgards' galaxy that moved into the Milky Way were actually kind of huge, but the ones in the Pegasus Galaxy were the size of a cell.

                                 Nirrti, Long time user of Nanobots

      Well folks, that day has arrived.  Little computerized robots smaller than the size of a blood cell have been created already.  These real life nanobots can be injected into a person's body and directed to deliver medicine to a specific set of cells.  Using nanobots in this way means a person can get cell specific Chemotherapy without losing all their hair, their immune system, and most of what they eat.  Nanobots can also be used to intercept electrochemical signals from the brain to do everything from easing pain to preventing seizures.  I suppose that this application in the wrong hands could be used to actually control a person's actions against their will.  Maybe they already have.  I'm sure that the conspiracy theorists think so anyway.  Weirdos.
      The next tech story is even more amazing.  There are people who think that nanobots are so last month, too huge and bulky.  IBM is playing with single atoms.  Yes, you read that right.  To prove their point they made a movie using five thousand carbon monoxide molecules.  The animation is actually quite cheesy, and has the entertainment value of a quartet of a calliope, accordion, harmonica, and a didgeridoo (shudder).  But what would you expect?  This was created by geeks, very smart geeks, however.  Seriously, what kind of movie would you expect from people like the cast of the Big Bang Theory?  Nevertheless, I must be just geeky enough to think that just the fact that they did this is absolutely awesomely cool.  

                                  A still from the movie "A Boy and His Atom"

      In the picture above what you re seeing are actual, individual atoms.  In each pair, the larger dots are the oxygen atoms and the smaller ones are the carbon atoms (outer shell of six versus an outer shell of four).  The movie is called "A Boy and His Atom."  The boy is appropriately called Adam.  Adam and His Atom (this of course also increases the geek factor by a hundredfold).