The nano world, it is all around us. We are finding out that small is very useful and the smaller the better in some cases. We all know that certain things have to be a certain size. Could you imagine trying to get into a tiny car or trying to look at a tiny television. It just isn't practical. On the other hand, think of a lab that could detect poison gases instantly and give you enough time to get out of the area. The lab could be the size of a dime and guess what, we already have it. It is able to do all sorts of chemical analysis using minute samples. There is another big advantage to some of these things and that is the power source required to power them is so small that you don't even notice it. We are headed toward a nano world and there is no stopping the momentum. Doctors are already talking about using nano sized robots to inject into our bodies that would repair any problems that they find. Our bodies will become the host for hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of these miniature robots. This is truly the stuff of science fiction come to life.

If anyone out there is a fan of Stargate, they must remember the Replicators. They were essentially a group of nanoites that were able to finally form into a human image and function like humans, could this ever happen in real life? It's funny, things that I used to immediately say no to I can no longer say that to anymore. A few years ago this concept would have seemed so ridiculous that I would have laughed at it. Today this is no longer the case. It is just like someone telling me a few years ago that there would be cars that could run on air. I would have doubled over laughing. I certainly can't do that anymore. As a matter of fact, cars that run on air are due in the US in 2009 and are being manufactured by an Indian auto maker. When they were first announced, it was said that they had a range of about 100 miles on a tank of compressed air. Now they are saying that they have found a way to treat the air and get a lot more mileage out of it. The company is saying that if 8 gallons of ethanol is added somehow, they can get up to 1,000 miles range and if it is not, the range will still be increased and the car will be able to hold 6 adults and travel up to 95 miles per hour. This applies only to cars right now, but there are plenty of other things that need engines that will benefit from this French invention.

Unfortunately very tiny things lead paranoid states to decide to use these things on the population in the form of spy devices. We now have nano sized tracking devices that look like grains of dirt and they are cheap to make. They are so cheap that you could buy them by the pound, which would probably account for about 100,000 or more of these things. If they were sprinkled on you, or you stepped through a field or any area that had them in it, some would stick to your shoes and you could then be tracked. The temptation for governments to do this to us, is just too great. With each step that is gained in stealth technology, a step backwards in our individual rights is taken. Just compare where we are today with where we were before Sputnik. We can now have all our correspondence read, our telephone conversations monitored, overhead photos taken of our homes, street cameras watch our every move and our right to Habeas Corpus blocked in some cases. I ask you, is this truly progress? Some people will say yes, these are obviously people that either work for the government or are so deluded that they don't realize what is truly going on. They usually say, "if you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about". As you can see, they miss the point completely, that is what people in the old Soviet Union were told

Looking at the world of nano technology, we begin to notice that something else is shrinking that we might not have given much thought to. That is the microprocessor. These processors are the hearts of our computers. As we shrink their size, not only do they become smaller and smaller, but their power requirements diminish. It has been possible for the last few years, to put an entire computer on a chip. Think of the ramifications of this. You might be able to have an entire computer in your wrist watch for example, allowing you to do all sorts of things, maybe even more than you can do on your home computer now. There is already clothing on the market that conducts radio signals and incorporates computer parts into it, thus allowing you to even get onto the internet.

Remember those nanobots that we talked about that would travel through your body repairing things? Well there has been advances made in tiny robot arms and things that could be attached to them. This would allow them to be able to move things or maybe even cut away cancerous cells and such. The arms have been tested and it has been found that they can lift and rotate things that are about 30,000 times their weight. Unfortunately they have a limited lifetime before they come apart, but this is being worked on and it almost surely will improve. Tiny valves and pumps have been created and they are so cheap that they can be thrown away when not needed anymore. They also have an incredible life span. One valve was tested that was able to open and close over 4,000,000 times before it wore out and the scientists stated that it was as good at the end of it's life cycle before it wore out, as it was at the beginning.

Dartmouth researchers have created what is being billed as the world's smallest untethered controllable robot. It is said to be as wide as a strand of human hair and half as long as the period at the end of this sentence. They go on to say that if you took about 200 of these robots they could stand side by side on top of an M & M candy. They explained the word controllable by stating that you can steer these robots anywhere you want to on a flat surface, they crawl making many thousands of 10 nanometer steps every second. When they go to make a turn, it is done by skidding around corners. The machines were made without wheels because the scientists didn't want them to stick to things. They move more like a caterpillar. At this size they are very useful for repairing electronic devices or working in contaminated areas, but these bots may seem huge some day, if the trend to shrink things continues.

I think it is interesting to note that just a few years before, Popular Mechanics was talking about the world's smallest robot. The machine was bout the size of a one inch square and had tank treads. In five years we have reduced this size to the point that the robots are almost invisible. If this trend continues, the robots may only be built on the atomic scale some day, making them not only invisible to us, but able to operate inside our bodies at a cellular level.

As I said, you wouldn't want some things to be smaller. You might want all the electronics in a car to fit into a cube less than one inch square. If anything went wrong with the electrical system you could just pull out the cube much as you do with a fuse, throw it away and purchase another inexpensive one and plug it in. There would be no more reason to have to get one of those expensive electrical repairs. Maybe the cube would even work on every model of car, eliminating the problem of trying to find the right part.

Some electrical devices may appear that we never thought about. They may derive their power by linking thousand, hundred of thousands or even millions of tiny machines together, so that they work as one. Maybe a personal shield could be developed for the individual soldier that would be far more efficient than the bullet proof vests that they now use. This may also allow the use of hand held laser type weapons, or communication devices that are so powerful that they can't be jammed. Devices are already being produced that can stop cars by knocking out their electrical system. Perhaps these tiny devices could supply a far more powerful wave and knock out things like planes, tanks and such?

Everything around us is shrinking. Where this process will finally lead us, is anyone's guess. It just might turn out that these tiny machines when linked together will be able to supply far more power than we ever imagined.