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The World's Smallest Car

starexplorer writes "Start your Nano-engines? LiveScience.com is reporting that researchers at Rice University have designed the world's smallest car that is no more than 4 nanometers across. It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The wheels are buckyballs. Why do it? The team wants to build a fleet of nanotrucks to carry atoms and molecules around minature factories." So it's not exactly self-powered, but it rolls. It's a start!

10 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Good idea, too small for me by the-amazing-blob · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry I'm late coming home, honey. I lost the car again.

  2. Only 4 nanometers across... by d3ac0n · · Score: 5, Funny

    And yet it still holds 10 clowns! Go figure.

    --
    Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
  3. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    is this a perfect solution for men that have really large reproductive organs?

  4. A great day... by Aenema · · Score: 5, Funny

    for the small people that helped make such a thing possible

  5. Uh huh by connah0047 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can see the science team going to the board of directors:

    BoD: What's the problem?
    Scientists: Well, we need to be able to move atoms and molecules around in precise ways.
    BoD: How can we help?
    Scientists: We need some funding to build little, tiny trucks to carry them around in.
    [long pause]
    BoD: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No really guys, what did you need?

  6. Re:I feel humbled by forkazoo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hell, no. I feel like a giant super man that can pick up a million cars with his bare hands, and knock over thousands of cars with a breath. How the hell is that humbling?

  7. Pic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's a pic:

              .

    I hope they don't make the same mistake Ford made, and only offer it in black.

    -AC

  8. Re:I feel humbled by Dr+Caleb · · Score: 5, Funny
    Try changing the tire, super man. ;)

    --
    "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
  9. Better Link by sapgau · · Score: 5, Informative

    With less cookies and better pictures at Nanotechnology Now

  10. Re:It's perfect! by Muttley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is a nano-toxin? How does it differ from a toxin? In what way does the creation of a small macromolecule in the shape of a car contribute to toxicity?

    This is phobia and panic, started in the realm of GE food, and spreading, through ignorance, into the world of nanotech. Nanotech is ill defined, and literally means anything over the nano-scale. Scaremongers try to use new scary words (hence their profession), like nano-toxin, and site that nanoparticles are in things like sunscreen, aerosols...etc. Of course they are, for without TiO4 in sunscreen, it wouldn't block ultraviolet rays, and it wouldn't work. I fail to see the difference between a nano-toxin and a toxin, but regardless of what I fail to see, this kind of irrational skepticism and 'but it could be NANO-toxic!' are unhelpful, and only serve to further the divide between scientists and society. Likewise, scientists dismissing the concerns of the public also furthers this divide.

    Inform yourself, ask questions of the scientists, but don't say sarcastic unhelpful things like 'it's perfect for producing nano-toxins', without explaining how this might occur.

    --
    M.