Have you ever heard about nanotechnologies? For much of human history, advancement was always thought to go hand in hand with being “bigger”. We can see this in small farming communities which grew into cities, in wooden rafts that swelled to become 97,000-ton aircraft carriers. Even “Think Big, Dream Big” has become the motto and life philosophy of many generations.
What if I told you, the future doesn’t lie in “bigger stuff”. Current trends suggest that small is the new big. From quantum mechanics to nanobots, science is exploring a realm where tiny things like atoms and molecules will have a huge impact on the way we live life.
What is Nanotechnology?
Before I begin, let’s learn a few things about nanotechnology. Nanotechnology helps improve and revolutionize products in various technological sectors such as information technology, homeland, security, medicine, and transportation among many others. Using nanotechnology, products are made more effective, lighter, more durable, and more reactive. Today, we’ll be exploring the magical world of nanotechnologies through 5 emerging tech that is sure to make us rethink whether bigger is better.
Nanobots
Surely — they’re not quite the giant robots like Gundam, Voltron, or the Gypsy Danger — but there are a lot of reasons why nanobots are the future. Giant mechs
are too heavy, and would require a powerful energy source to run? Furthermore, giant mechs would be difficult to retrofit and adapt to brand new situations.
Nanobots are a different story. They’re small, lightweight, easy to replicate (theoretically), and most importantly, adaptable. Proposed designs for nanobots have modularity in mind. Nanobots can come together to make various shapes and forms, being multipurpose in function. Repairing them would be easy too — all you’d need to do is make more nanobots, and program them to replace the broken ones.
We’ve already seen concepts of nanobots in movies such as Big Hero 6, Star Trek, GI Joe, and many others. And in many of these movies, these nanobots have had varied applications. From being used in construction, for medical purposes, and as weapons — the modularity of the nanobots makes the possibilities limitless.
Though I hope when we do make nanobots, they aren’t out here to kill us. Given their ability to reform and remodel themselves at will, they can potentially be the perfect killing machine. If you’re interested in imagining a nightmare scenario for nanobots, read up Michael Crichton’s Prey. After reading his Sci-fi thriller you might become paranoid and start carrying a magnet with you.
Why a magnet? Well, you’ll see.
Wormhole Travel
There’s a problem with exploring space — there’s too much damn space. Even if we’re traveling at lightspeed, it can take several millennia to travel to distant stars and galaxies. Building bigger engines and rocket ships isn’t the solution to getting around. Getting around the cosmos might involve particles called quarks.
If you’re unfamiliar, quarks are the smaller particles that compose atoms. The interesting thing about quarks is that they exist in a state of “entanglement”. In entanglement, two quarks occupy the same state: for instance, both quarks rotate clockwise and counterclockwise simultaneously. Now the quarks only choose one state when they’ve been “observed”. Once one quark is observed, that quark chooses only one state and so does the other quark
How quarks can “communicate” so quickly as to choose states is unknown. Physicists theorize they do this through wormholes. Soon enough perhaps, our best physicists might find a way to exploit quarks and use them for wormhole travel!
If you’d ever like to delve into physics, I highly recommend Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”. It covers everything in astrophysics from black holes, the Big Bag, and even quarks! Go get a copy of it on Amazon, or even better, listen to it on the bus as an Audiobook!
Metamaterials
Want to wear an invisible cloak? Or would you like to protect yourself from bullets with armor as thin as paper? Then metamaterials are the things you’re looking for.
The prefix “Meta-” in metamaterial is Greek meaning “beyond”. These metamaterials are “beyond” normal materials due to the way their atoms are organized, which can only be synthesized and never found naturally. Making these metamaterials requires one to painstakingly know how to manipulate these atoms into the desired arrangements.
Depending on the crystalline arrangement of atoms, chemists have been able to create metamaterial with different types of properties. Some metamaterials are incredibly strong — such as the metamaterial graphene. Graphenes repeating hexagonal lattice confer graphene a tensile strength of 19,000,000psi, compared to steel’s 60,900.
Strength is just one of the many possible properties. Cloaking and invisibility suits is another wonky use for metamaterials. The crystalline lattice of some metamaterials alters the movement of light, making objects invisible. Your sense of sight relies on objects reflecting light on your retina. Thus, if there’s no light being reflected, it can’t be seen.
Cloaking metamaterials’ electromagnetic properties force light to go around the material. With the light going around the metamaterial, tadah, we have invisibility!
There’s so much beautiful science behind the chemistry and physics of metamaterials. If you’d like to learn more about material design and applications, better head on over to MIT’s OpenCourseWare website. You can check their Materials and Applied Sciences courses for absolutely free!
Gene Editing
“Nature vs Nurture” is one of the greatest debates amongst behavioral psychologists. Which of the two plays a bigger influence on a person’s development? Is it the intrinsic traits given by one’s genetics, or are the environment and the people the person exposes themselves to?
Though we can certainly control nurture, controlling nature has been something that’s been deemed impossible until now. Gene editing has now become one of the most funded frontiers in Biology for its practical potential. We have made gene-edited crops such as Bt corn to be resistant to pests, and we’ve even made glowing rabbits.
We can edit organisms to have the most desirable traits. So the next question is, what about gene editing for humans? Just imagine — you could prevent diseases, addictions, and any other afflictions brought about genetics. But why stop there? We could go a step forward and create stronger, smarter, and much wiser people. Of course, there will be interesting dilemmas and ethics questions that’ll arise from human gene editing — but that’s a story for another time.
If you want to learn more about what the future holds for human gene editing, I highly recommend “The Gene: An Intimate History”. It’s a wonderful book that aims to educate you on genetics. The authors take you through the history of genetics and map the huge influence our genetics has on our lives. You can get a copy of the book or audiobook on Amazon.
Particle Accelerators
It’s hilarious imagining scientists using magnets to accelerate particles 186,000 miles per second. Why on Earth would you want to be shooting particles that fast? Well, it turns out particle accelerators might just be the key to transmuting lead into gold. Well more like bismuth into gold.
You see by shooting neon and carbon nuclei particles at bismuth foil, the particles collide and displace neutrons. Part of the foil becomes a bismuth isotope, while the other parts become gold.
With particle accelerators, we now hold the power to transform the elements interchangeably. Tired of wearing a gold watch? Just run the particle accelerator and you can now have a silver one! We don’t quite have the precision just yet to do that. But eventually, we won’t have to imagine a world where gold will be just as common as dirt.
If you’re still lost on particles, isotopes, and all the physics jargon, you might as well rectify that by educating yourself! You can head on over to Coursera and enroll in their free Particle Physics course! It’ll get you up to speed on the science and the latest research in particle physics!
Conclusion
So it turns out, big things do come in small packages! Nanotechnologies encompass a variety of sciences and applications. The 5 technologies we mentioned here only scratch the surface of what could be a vast expanse for such tiny tech. There are other technological developments that focus on lifestyle, medicine, business, and many more.
What other applications can we have for nanotech? What other nano-dreams do scientists have cooking up in their labs? What big problems can nanotech solve? Comment your thoughts below!
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