Features
Nanohorror
Just six months after the Johannesburg Summit, another much-less-publicised meeting took place in London. Organised by the Royal Institute for International Affairs and Jane's Defence Weekly, it was a conference on future security trends and threats. At this meeting, Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, introduced a report that had been prepared by the MoD's Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre. In it, they singled out the three areas of technology most likely to threaten Western society and military superiority: biotechnology, communications and IT and nanotechnology.
Now, it's not often that two such different bodies as the MoD and an environmentalist anti-globalisation pressure group find something to agree on. When they do, however, perhaps it's time to pay attention.
How big is a nanometre?
• A billionth of a metre.
• About ten hydrogen atoms.
• About five silicon atoms.
• The distance that a fingernail grows in one second.
• One hundredth the diameter of a typical bacterium.
• One tenth the thickness of the metallised layer on a crisp packet.
• One 80,000th the thickness of a human hair.
**NEXT**
A short history of the very small
1946 John von Neumann proves mathematically that a self-replicating machine is possible. Though he's certainly not thinking small.
1959 Richard Feynman invents the concept of nanotechnology, which he explains in a lecture to the American Physical Society. The idea is way ahead of its time and is mostly ignored.
1966 Fantastic Voyage. Hollywood does nanotechnology, but not very well.
1981 IBM researchers Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer invent the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope. For the first time, this allows scientists to see and manipulate individual atoms.
1985 Researchers from the University of Sussex and Rice University, Texas create buckminsterfullerene, the first of a new group of molecules that may result in nanoelectronics.
1986 Eric Drexler coins the word nanotechnology and propels it into the public consciousness with his book Engines of Creation. In this book he also introduces the phrase 'grey goo'.
1990 In the first ever demonstration of nanofabrication, IBM researchers position 35 individual xenon atoms to spell the letters 'IBM' on a nickel substrate.
1994 Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico create the world's first microscopic steam engine just 6 x 2 microns in size. Why? Because they can.
2000 Bill Joy kicks off the nanoethics debate with his article 'Why the future doesn't need us' in Wired magazine.
2002 Michael 'Jurassic Park' Crichton publishes his nanoterror thriller Prey. The book is such bad PR for nanotechnology that it prompts a US Congressional debate.
