Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer!

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Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer!

Posted by timothy on Monday September 22, 2008 @11:18PM from the can't-use-your-hands dept.

DeviceGuru writes "For the past few years, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has been sponsoring nanosoccer — a new team sport for universities with programs in micro-electro-mechanical systems. The soccer nanobots, operated by human players via remote-controlled magnetic fields and electrical signals, slide tiny discs around on a 30mm x 30mm playing field. Two demonstration competitions have already been held, and a third one is slated to take place next summer in Austria at RoboCup 2009."

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Should that be millisoccer ? by mbone · 2008-09-22 23:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

3 x 3 cm (or 1 x 1 inch) playing field ? Doesn't sound like nanosoccer to me. Not even microsoccer. Maybe millisoccer.
Let me know when they have a 30 x 30 micron playing field. That will be nanosoccer.
1. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by jacquesm · 2008-09-22 23:26 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  it really is pretty impressive (FTFA):
  Sixteen nanosoccer playing fields are built onto a single silicon chip (photo above-left) thatâ(TM)s roughly the size of a quarter. The the playing-field chip is mounted on a small circuit board assembly, along with interface connectors .
  Each nanosoccer âoeballâ (photo at right) consists of a silicon dioxide disk approximately the size of a red blood cell, NIST says. Each disk has a T-shaped marking, to help the human players locate it on the playing field. The three small circles correspond to a set of tiny bumps on the bottom of the disk; these reduce friction, making it easier for the disks to slide across the playing field.
  
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2. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by jeremyp · 2008-09-22 23:33 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I think the article is wrong. The football field is described as "the size of a grain of rice". A 3cm x 3cm x whatever cm grain of rice would be considered pretty big for a grain of rice. However, there is a picture of the chip with 16 playing areas on it compared to a US quarter. I've no idea howe big a US quarter is - 3cm diameter still sounds like a pretty big coin - but maybe the 3cm refers to the dimensions of the chip with 16 playing fields on it.
  BTW they justify the term nano- by saying that the mass of the playing robots is of the order of a few nanograms.
  
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3. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by mbone · 2008-09-22 23:35 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It may be impressive, but it's not nano : "Generally nanotechnology deals with structures 100 nanometers or smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size."
  From FTA : "The tiny nanobots ... measure from a few tens of micrometers to a few hundred micrometers, NIST says."
  So, that's 3 orders of magnitude off. Microsoccer. But not nanosoccer. And the physics is rather different on those scales.
4. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by skoaldipper · 2008-09-22 23:51 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Let me know when they have a 30 x 30 micron playing field. That will be nanosoccer.
  Programming of the new Arena begins in 2009. My user Alan assures me he will do everything he can to save my register from being bitdozed by an old MCP Eminent Domain program.
  
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5. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by mbone · 2008-09-23 00:00 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I've no idea howe big a US quarter is
  Supposed to be one inch or exactly 2.54 cm (25.4 mm).
  So, the playing field is just a little bigger than a US quarter.
6. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by donscarletti · 2008-09-23 00:11 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The movie from NIST was linked to uses "microrobotics" i.e. on a micrometer scale.
  The yokels at "DeviceGuru" just stuffed it up.
  
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7. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 00:13 · Score: 0
  
  Here here!
  MEMS != Nanotechnology.
8. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by jlf278 · 2008-09-23 00:20 · Score: 1
  
  >> I've no idea howe big a US quarter is
  >>Supposed to be one inch or exactly 2.54 cm (25.4 mm).
  >>So, the playing field is just a little bigger than a US quarter.
  Actually a quater has a ~24.26mm or ~0.955 inch diameter.
9. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 00:24 · Score: 0
  
  That's the most ridiculous justification I've heard today. That's like saying 1ms is nano-, because you measure stuff in fortnights.
10. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by timelorde · 2008-09-23 00:30 · Score: 1
  
  They couldn't use Microsoccer; that's already been trademarked by the Evil Empire.
  Then again, hasn't Apple trademarked every conceivable word that begins with "nano"... ?
11. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 00:41 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Next you'll be saying that the iPod Nano is too big!
12. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by the_fat_kid · 2008-09-23 00:47 · Score: 1
  
  shouldn't that be Milihockey?
  sliding a disk around a playing field.
  all I need is a good milifight.
  
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13. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 00:51 · Score: 0
  
  Hmmm....
  An average football field is...
  110m x 70m = 1 soccer ...which is 77 x 10^6 cm^2.
  This "nanofield" is 3cm x 3cm thus 9 cm^2 or...
  1.17 x 10^-7 soccer or...
  117 nanosoccer!
  Mmmmm... close but not a true nanosoccer!
14. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Slyswede · 2008-09-23 01:21 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Someone made a conversion error. The diagram shows a 1,5x2,5mm playing field, with goals 0.5x0.9mm. Maybe nanosoccer will force the US to finally adopt the metric system? :)
15. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 01:35 · Score: 0
  
  Damnit, the crazies are everywhere! It's HEAR, HEAR! As in, "listen to this".
  Here here == only remotely justifiable misquote due to unfortunate homonyms in the English language
16. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by lilomar · 2008-09-23 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  There! they're!
  
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17. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Feanturi · 2008-09-23 02:26 · Score: 1
  
  TFA says 2.5mm x 2.5mm playing field, so I'm not sure what kind of crack the summary writer was smoking, that's not even decimal misplacement!
18. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by s4m7 · 2008-09-23 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  Naw, we'll just play american nanofootball on 100-nanoyard fields.
  
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19. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 02:51 · Score: 0
  
  "nanos" is a Greek word meaning "dwarf", so this is certainly appropriate.
20. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by lysergic.acid · 2008-09-23 04:10 · Score: 1
  
  the NIST public relations video actually calls it Nanosoccer too. it's meant to spur the development of nanorobotics and that's what the competition's been doing. i see nothing wrong with the name.
  from Wikipedia:
  
  Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the microscopic scale of a nanometres (10-9 metres). More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the still largely hypothetical nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots. Nanorobots (nanobots, nanoids or nanites) would be typically devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometers and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. As no artificial non-biological nanorobots have yet been created, they remain a hypothetical concept.
  
  they seem to be made a lot of headway towards realizing true nanorobots at the ideal scale. just because they haven't achieve their goal yet doesn't mean that the research they're sponsoring isn't related nanorobotics. just like many so-called robot "soccer" leagues don't actually involve robots playing soccer yet. that is the end goal they want to achieve, but there is still a lot of work to be done before they reach that goal, and that's what these leagues are focusing on right now.
21. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by EvilGrin5000 · 2008-09-23 04:13 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know if the original article got updated, but it says that the field is 2.5mm X 2.5mm.
  Quite a bit smaller than what the summary says (30mmX30mm). Also, for those of you that were wondering about how big a US Quarter is, here's something from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_(United_States_coin) :
  
  ...diameter 0.955 inches (24.26 mm)...
  
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22. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Krabbs · 2008-09-23 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  Real nano would be cool. To be in a state where you have both scored and not scored at the same time.
23. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 06:56 · Score: 0
  
  From a link in TFA:
  "Although the bots are a few tens of micrometers to a few hundred micrometers long, they are considered âoenanoscaleâ because their masses range from a few nanograms to a few hundred nanograms."
24. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by camperdave · 2008-09-23 06:58 · Score: 1
  
  We're sneaking it in on them. Back in the 50s we switched their measurement standards to metric (ie an inch is defined to be a certain number of metres, the pound is defined as a certain number of kilograms, etc. Already they have lost touch with the imperial units for electrical measurements. Many of their guns are measured in mm (eg. 9mm). Their army, because they are forced to cooperate with NATO and UN forces, uses metric. Drugs (both legal and non) are bought and sold in metric. Soda-pop is sold in metric, as is wine. The Mars Climate Orbiter SNAFU should have showed them the cost of maintaining their out of date system, yet as I look at all the 8.5 by 11 inch paper in my office, I realize there's a long, long way to go.
  
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25. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by nip1024 · 2008-09-23 08:37 · Score: 1
  
  A regulation soccer field is 100x70 yards or 91440x64008mm. That's a total of 5852891520mm^2. The soccer fields FTA are 4.65mm^2 (including the goals, they aren't rectangular). They are 1/1,258,686,348 the size of a regular soccer field. Nano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-) means 1 billionth. These soccer fields are slightly less than 1 billionth the size of a normal soccer field and are therefore "Nano-Soccer Fields".
26. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Myrddin+Wyllt · 2008-09-23 11:22 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know what 'regulation' you are referring to, but :
  
  the field of play must be rectangular. The length of the touch line must be greater than the length of the goal line.
  Length: minimum 90m (100yds), maximum 120m (130yds)
  Width: minimum 45m (50yds), maximum 90m (100yds)
  (From FIFA laws; International matches have a closer tolerance: 100m - 110m x 64m - 75m)
  
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27. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 13:22 · Score: 0
  
  The post is wrong, as anybody who read the linked article would be aware of. I'm sure they meant a 3x3mm playing field, since its actually 2.5 x 2.5
  A simple order of 10 out, luckily its of little significance in this case (unlike a similar mistake made by a developer in an x-ray medical machine where the exponential mistake resulted in cancer & death for a number of patients!)
  Fun and games, bring on the nano soccer :)
28. Re:Should that be millisoccer ? by adavies42 · 2008-09-23 14:20 · Score: 1
  
  Soda is only sometimes metric--common sizes are 8oz, 12oz, 20oz, and 1, 2, and 3 liters. The global "cheap-ass 12oz" 330ml standard has yet to take hold, thank god, except for a few foreign products like Red Bull. (The Red Bull sizes are bizarre BTW--250ml, 12oz, 500ml, and something else--maybe 24oz?)
  
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I, for one... by adpsimpson · 2008-09-22 23:23 · Score: 1, Funny

... welcome our new nanobot overlords.
Now, where did I put my coffee cup?

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1. Re:I, for one... by adpsimpson · 2008-09-22 23:28 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  As a ps, there are 16 'fields' built into a chip which measures under 30mm x 30mm - each field is significantly smaller than the summary gives the impression of, at about 2.5mm across (although the article's not exactly clear either).
  
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hatchooo! by jacquesm · 2008-09-22 23:23 · Score: 4, Funny

sorry ;)

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Can we really afford this? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-22 23:25 · Score: -1, Flamebait

In a time when we are bailing out our greatest financial institutions with $700 billion just to get them to give out mortgages to millions of low-paid workers again, is this really the time to be investing in "science" and "technology"? Projects like the LHC, human genome project and nanorobotics are all well and good when we are all a-prosper, but surely this is the time to be prudent and cut back on these rather hopeful initiatives which seem to rely more on a wing and a prayer than the cold light of day.
On a day when we have to oppose the Dem congress trying to pander to their special interests and socialist agenda by forcing executives to take radical paycuts and taking equity in their hardearned companies just because they were trying to house the lower classes, and denying the wisdom of the great Paulson, science must surely take a backseat role. This applies especially to frivolous European pursuits like soccer - why not get the nanobots to play baseball instead?
1. Re:Can we really afford this? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-22 23:32 · Score: 0
  
  Error ID10T: Troll detected.
2. Re:Can we really afford this? by Siener · 2008-09-22 23:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  In a time when we are bailing out our greatest financial institutions with $700 billion just to get them to give out mortgages to millions of low-paid workers again, is this really the time to be investing in "science" and "technology"?
  Short answer: Yes
  Long answer:
  The LHC, which is the most expensive science experiment ever cost about $10 billion. I.e. a drop in the bucket compared to things like the proposed bailout or the Iraq war.
  On the long term science and tech have consequences that can benefit the whole human race. Apart from the main and direct benefits there are also often other unforeseen benefits that you get for free. E.g. The World Wide Web that you are using right now was developed as a side project CERN.
  To butcher an old saying: The NYSE bailout is the equivalent of giving someone enough food to survive another day. Money invested in science and technology might teach you how to fish, farm, build, cure ... hell, just about every single thing that keeps you alive on a day to day basis.
  
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3. Re:Can we really afford this? by Jrabbit05 · 2008-09-23 00:00 · Score: 0
  
  A socialist here, the Democrats are not socialist. thanks for playing come again!
4. Re:Can we really afford this? by splutty · 2008-09-23 00:24 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  As the old saying goes:
  Give a man a fire, and he will be warm for the rest of the night.
  Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
  
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5. Re:Can we really afford this? by lilomar · 2008-09-23 01:58 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you.
  
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6. Re:Can we really afford this? by Bragador · 2008-09-23 03:01 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I'm going to feed this troller to death.
  The 2009 US military budget is 651,2 Bil. and $79.6 Bil. of that goes to military research and testing. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/defense.pdf [gpoaccess.gov]
  On the other hand, only $6.9 billion went for the National Science Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget#Total_spending [wikipedia.org]
  Now, to be fair, the NSF doesn't include medical research so we'd have to consider that but where do you think you'd have to cut first?
  *walks away*
7. Re:Can we really afford this? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 03:57 · Score: 0
  
  Glad to see you got modded into oblivion, wingnut.
  It takes HUGE balls to be anyone but you deregulationists (or you can call 'em neocons, republicans, wingnuts... tomato, to-mah-to) for this. Hell, it takes cojones just to be politicizing what your party has done here.
  Then again, it took huge balls to deregulate and destroy the world's largest economy, write 45 trillion in credit swaps, then beg for handouts.
  Fuck y'all. Ain't anyone getting gravy off this, and you're just gonna have to eat yer macaroni hard.
  Priceless captcha for this story: Cynical!
8. Re:Can we really afford this? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 04:08 · Score: 0
  
  Second sentence: to blame anyone but you, not to 'be'.
9. Re:Can we really afford this? by PlatyPaul · 2008-09-23 05:44 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I disagree.
  
  He'll be warm for at least a few hours after he's dead, too.
  
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Hah! by rts008 · 2008-09-22 23:36 · Score: 4, Funny

Real Men play nanosoccer with buckyballs!

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1. Re:Hah! by barometz · 2008-09-23 00:14 · Score: 1
  
  That's exactly what I was hoping for when I saw the title :(
  
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Oh.. by 4D6963 · 2008-09-22 23:41 · Score: 4, Funny

At first when I read the title I thought it would involve stick figures a few hundreds of carbon atoms high playing soccer with a molecule of Buckminsterfullerene. Then I started picturing how cool it would be if we could make video games that used atoms of carbon instead of pixels, and an electronic microscope for us to see the result, and what the nanoscopic versions of Pong, Space Invaders or Pac-Man would play like.
Then I read the summary.. :-(

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1. Re:Oh.. by jacquesm · 2008-09-22 23:45 · Score: 1
  
  read the article instead of the summary, it's really quite neat if not exactly nano scale.
  But give them a couple of iterations on this and it very well could become nano scale. 3 orders of magnitude to go.
  
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Not nanosoccer, microsoccer! by renoX · 2008-09-22 23:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm really fed up with the nano hype, from the article "the players [cut] measure from a few tens of micrometers to a few hundred micrometers", so this should be named micro-soccer, not nano-soccer!
*yawn* by Daetrin · 2008-09-22 23:50 · Score: 1

Nanosoccer? Let me know when they're actually playing Quantum Soccer!

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1. Re:*yawn* by paniq · 2008-09-23 00:13 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Quantum Soccer will be boring. All matches end 1:1.
  
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2. Re:*yawn* by Kickersny.com · 2008-09-23 00:13 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Bender: Checkmate!
  Fry: No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
3. Re:*yawn* by mbone · 2008-09-23 00:16 · Score: 1
  
  Let me know when they're actually playing Quantum Soccer!
  That will be more like picosoccer. On that scale, it's all quantum, all the time.
4. Re:*yawn* by dissolved · 2008-09-23 00:36 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps we're already seeing Quantum theory in "soccer"... http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_1/7614022.stm
5. Re:*yawn* by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 00:49 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Hey, no peeking!
6. Re:*yawn* by Oktober+Sunset · 2008-09-23 00:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  What? That was Dr Farnsworth when his horse lost in a quantum finish.
  
  http://www.clipstr.com/videos/FuturamaAQuantumFinish/
  
  It doesn't even make sense for a chess game.
  
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7. Re:*yawn* by Rob+T+Firefly · 2008-09-23 01:25 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I hate Quantum Soccer. Every time I start to play, some know-it-all from the future takes over my body and scores all my goals for me.
  
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8. Re:*yawn* by WeeLad · 2008-09-23 01:26 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Not a problem. A soccer game in the US stands a very good chance of remaining unobserved.
  
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9. Re:*yawn* by Kickersny.com · 2008-09-23 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, I haven't seen the episode in a long time. Where do I go to hand in my geek card?
Wrong player by paiute · 2008-09-22 23:55 · Score: 2, Funny

On the nanoscale (not this one), it will not be Bend it like Beckham. It will be Kick it like Casimir.

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Soccer weenies... by Notquitecajun · 2008-09-23 00:05 · Score: 1

So, are the Euro microbots gonna flop and fake injuries like in real life?
1. Re:Soccer weenies... by g4b · 2008-09-23 00:15 · Score: 1
  
  and will italian nanobots might have to visit acting school for that, too?
2. Re:Soccer weenies... by raddan · 2008-09-23 00:40 · Score: 1
  
  European microbots play nanofutbol. Different game.
3. Re:Soccer weenies... by Oktober+Sunset · 2008-09-23 01:04 · Score: 1
  
  As Opposed to the American football nanobots which wear so much padding to play they are no longer nanoscale.
  
  We need nano rugby, get these bots in a scrum, punching each other in the quarks when the ref isn't looking, that's a real test of the hardest nanobot.
  
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4. Re:Soccer weenies... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 02:09 · Score: 0
  
  ...And even that depends on which European country you're in.
In Other News: by paniq · 2008-09-23 00:08 · Score: 1

The FIFA board was quick to denounce the new sport, calling it a "kick in the balls" for professional soccer.

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TFA is effing messed up by mbone · 2008-09-23 00:08 · Score: 1

From the article the playing field is 30 x 30 mm. From the image with the article, the playing field is 1.5 x 2.5 mm. From the NIST PR, " These abilities are tested in three events: a two-millimeter dash in which each nanobot seeks the best time for a goal-to-goal sprint across the playing field; a slalom drill where the path between goals is blocked by "defenders" (polymer posts) and a ball handling drill that requires robots to âoedribbleâ as many âoenanoballsâ (microdisks with the diameter of a human hair) as possible into the goal within a 3-minute period."
A "2 mm sprint" indicates that the picture is correct, and the text in the article is messed up.
1. Re:TFA is effing messed up by mbone · 2008-09-23 00:13 · Score: 1
  
  By the way, the US Quarter is 1.75 mm thick, which is a little larger than the width of the playing field.
2. Re:TFA is effing messed up by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 02:35 · Score: 0
  
  please start using universal standards for us imperialists please... a quarter is around 1256 human hair widths..
3. Re:TFA is effing messed up by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 06:55 · Score: 0
  
  So how many playing fields can fit into the library of congress?
Duh! by Yeti.SSM · 2008-09-23 00:11 · Score: 1

Misread the title as Nanosorcerer.

Now this would be cool...

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I wonder what happens... by inode_buddha · 2008-09-23 00:25 · Score: 1

I wonder what happens if one of the nano-players gets kicked in the nano-nads. Is there a referee?

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C|N>K
Nano(arbitrary unit) by AlpineR · 2008-09-23 00:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

That's funny. Your objection makes me realize how arbitrary the label "nano" is. Our base units (meter, second, kilogram) are all entirely manmade and chosen for historical reasons that could just as easily have led to different base units. It's an accident of history that we're now working at length scales one-billionth of the base chosen 130 years ago. And it's entirely coincidence if we happen to be also working at one-billionth of our time and mass units.
Maybe we should just arbitrarily agree that "nano" means "based on meter, second, kilogram base units" and nothing magical happens in the nano range that doesn't happen in the micro and pico ranges.
1. Re:Nano(arbitrary unit) by jacquesm · 2008-09-23 01:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  From what I understand the engineering challenges of the 'true' nano domain are quite different from those encountered at the micrometer scale. None of these are 'trivial' or 'intuitive', it takes a great deal of ingenuity to overcome the hurdles on the way to true nano scale mechanics.
  Forces that you can ignore or fairly simply overcome at other scales start to dominate. Friction? no lubrication possible. Energy source? Contamination and so on, all of these pose serious difficulties.
  It's stuff like this that makes you truly appreciate the beauty of the machinery of life, such as a ribosome.
  
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2. Re:Nano(arbitrary unit) by SpiderClan · 2008-09-23 02:02 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Something magical* does happen in the nano range that doesn't happen in the micro and pico range, where nano range is 10 to 100 nanometers, as it is generally agreed to be. That is that, at least in terms of materials being made, there is a very high ratio of surface area or grain boundary to volume, depending on if we're dealing with nano-structured materials or nano-sized powders. This leads to different energy profiles through the material and a host of unique properties as compared to materials with larger grain sizes. In micro-sized materials, this doesn't happen, and lower than about 10 nanometers is too small to create grains.
  For the record; my spell-checker is underlining nano. Apparently Firefox is behind the times.
  *for scientifically valid values of magical.
3. Re:Nano(arbitrary unit) by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-24 05:17 · Score: 0
  
  Our base units are remarkable for being human in scale. In another history we could have used cubitss, stones and minutes, but we'd be unlikely to end up with light years, carat and microseconds..
nanosoccer by nimbius · 2008-09-23 01:00 · Score: 1

demands nano-clubs, nano trading scandals, and rampant nano fan racism. but dont worry, to make the racism known, we'll turn the scanning electron microscope from colour to black and white.

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This comic HAS to go in here by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 01:15 · Score: 1, Funny

Wulff/Morgenthaler
So the next David Bechham... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 01:30 · Score: 1, Funny

will be 200 pounds, wearing a lab coat, and dating a super model molecule ???
Patriotism by Nerdposeur · 2008-09-23 02:02 · Score: 1

Aw yeah, super-expensive, tiny, scientific soccer.
Let's see the Iraqi team beat us in that.
Boo haa haa by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 02:08 · Score: 0

Fear us Anynymous Cowards! First we'll take over this...'nano'soccer, then japan, then we'll just leave everyone else alone untill our empire can hold no more.
-One of many,
Anonymous Coward.
Almost perfect by Greg_D · 2008-09-23 02:15 · Score: 2, Funny

Soccer is boring enough. Making it so small that you can't see it with the naked eye?
Brilliant!
Can we get Ronaldo and Beckham on the fast track to miniaturization, please?
And someone do some research on pico-curling, while you're at it!
That explains it.. by moxley · 2008-09-23 02:40 · Score: 2, Funny

This explains the "nano football hooligans" who are constantly harrassing my cat.
I thought he had been hitting the catnip a bit hard lately until I noticed about 100 nano empty Foster's lager cans falling out of the brush after his nightly brushing and the distinct smell of eurotrash permeating his fur.
DAMN YOU NIST!
Nanolympics by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 03:22 · Score: 0

I wonder what Nanolymics disciplines would be, anyone have a idea?
P.S. Except for 100nm race of course!!!
Dimensions typo by __aajbyc7391 · 2008-09-23 03:50 · Score: 1

30 x 30 mm was an error. That's the size of the chip -- which contains 16 playing fields -- not the playing field, which is actually 2.5 x 2.5 mm. See diagram: http://www.deviceguru.com/files/nanosoccer_field_diagram-sm.jpg
Geometry? by damn_registrars · 2008-09-23 05:14 · Score: 1

The summary said

on a 30mm x 30mm playing field
Granted, I'm not a soccer fan myself, but I don't recall ever seeing it played on a square field before...

--
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
1. Re:Geometry? by Myrddin+Wyllt · 2008-09-23 11:46 · Score: 1
  
  The laws are pretty loose regarding the actual length (90m - 120m) and width (45m - 90m) of the field, and state that the touch line must be longer than the goal line, but not by how much. An exactly square pitch is therefore prohibited, but one measuring 90.00m x 89.99m would be allowed.(International pitches have closer tolerances, 100m x 75m is as square as they get.)
  
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  [ ]Half Empty [ ]Half Full [x]Twice as big as it needs to be
It's called football! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 07:52 · Score: 0

Because you kick the ball with your feet and don't carry it along, you know.
Futurama by aaron+alderman · 2008-09-23 08:22 · Score: 1

Announcer: [on loudspeaker] And it's a dead heat! They're checking the electron microscope. And the winner is ... [A man holds up a "3" in a window.] ... number 3, in a quantum finish.
Farnsworth: No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it.
Damn Yankees by Anonymous Coward · 2008-09-23 09:19 · Score: 0

It's football you gits. The ball is primarily kicked with the foot, hence, f-o-o-t b-a-l-l. The abomination that you Yanks call football should be called rugby for wusses or fumble-ball.
1. Re:Damn Yankees by adavies42 · 2008-09-23 14:21 · Score: 1
  
  It's football you gits. The ball is primarily kicked with the foot, hence, f-o-o-t b-a-l-l. The abomination that you Yanks call football should be called rugby for wusses or fumble-ball.
  Historically, "football" referred to the fact that the players were on foot--the contrast was with aristocrats' games such as polo, which required horses.
  
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  Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
  -kfg