Improving Our Standard of Living (Wattpad Edition)

Chapter 49: Shrinking Machines

In 1997, researchers at Cornell University built musical instruments the size of red blood cells [1]. A few years later, scientists made an electric motor that was 200 nanometers in diameter [2]. At the University of Vermont, engineers made a wrench that was 1.7 nanometers wide [3]. In 2011, chemists at Tufts University created an electric motor that was one nanometer across [4].

Slightly larger machines, but with greater complexity, have also been constructed. In 2014, researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering built the world's smallest, fastest, and longest-running synthetic motor under one micrometer in size [5]. It's 500 times smaller than a grain of salt and can operate for 15 hours at a speed of 18,000 RPMs. It powers itself by converting electrical energy into mechanical motion. At such a small scale, the device doesn't require much energy.

Basically, we can already build small, complex machines the size of cells and viruses.

We're not yet able to create computerized machines that small because transistors are relatively large (14 nanometers or so). It takes dozens at minimum to do anything substantial.

Transistors need to be one or two nanometers in diameter before we can pack a sufficient number of them into nano-sized machines.

The size of transistors shrinks by roughly half every two years according to Moore's law, so we should be able to build computerized nanobots by the mid-2020s. However, it may take another five or ten years before the prototype phase ends and this technology enters the market.

In 2016, a team led by Ali Javey at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory built a one nanometer transistor composed of carbon nanotubes and molybdenum disulfide.

Though encouraging, it will take a few years or longer to mass produce this technology. Fortunately, several companies are working on it.

Alternatively, by 2030, we may have already moved beyond traditional transistors. So when I say that we will need transistors of one or two nanometers for nanorobotics, I'm referring to the computational equivalent of such.

One of the biggest benefits to building nanomachines is medicine. These bots could, for instance, remove plaques from the heart and brain that cause heart disease, stroke, and dementia. They could locate and kill cancer cells, or destroy cells that have broken down, allowing youthful stem cells to take their place. They could repair faulty genes, or even the cells themselves, restoring them to a youthful state.

Nanomachines are so small, they would have no problem entering cells and doing their work. That's what viruses do, but they work against us.

Genetically modified viruses have already been used for medical purposes in lab experiments. There's no reason artificial nanomachines couldn't do the same, but better. No laws of physics are violated; otherwise, viruses wouldn't exist. Viruses are nanomachines. They're not classified as living organisms.

In 2015, researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK were able to genetically reprogram a herpes virus to target skin cancer cells in several patients, doubling their life expectancy compared to traditional treatments [6]. The virus was given new genes, telling it to infect cells that emitted chemical signatures unique to cancer. Healthy cells were left alone. Some of the patients were completely cured.

Human-made nanobots haven't been built yet. For now, we're piggybacking on viruses. But this gives us an idea of the potential.

Once we're able to build nanomachines, there will be several ways to power them. For medical nanobots, energy sources include body heat or electrolytes in the blood [7].