Nanocar Wins Top Science Award

Lucas123 writes "A researcher who built a car slightly larger than a strand of DNA won the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for experimental nanotechnology. James Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice Univ. built a car only 4 nanometers in width in order to demonstrate that nanovehicles could be controlled enough to deliver payloads to build larger objects, such as memory chips and, someday, even buildings, like a self-assembling machine. Tour and a team of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers constructed a car with chassis, working suspension, wheels and a motor. 'You shine light on it and the motor spins in one direction and pushes the car like a paddle wheel on the surface,' Tour said. The team also built a truck that can carry a payload."

Comments

Sci-Fi meets Science

[olddotter]

I think we are nearing some sort of "singularity" as the number of stories about real science invading what was until recently only Science fiction becomes common place. (http://inttech.blogspot.com/2008/11/sci-fi-and-real-science-collide.html)

Read this article, listen to the Futures in Biotech (http://twit.tv/FIB) podcast, we are progressing technology at a fantastic rate. It feels me with equal parts hope and dread.

Re:Sci-Fi meets Science

[SpeedyDX]

I don't know about that. There are, I think, definitely things that we haven't even begun to imagine. I mean, a couple of centuries ago, they could've only imagined "horseless carriages". I don't think they could even grasp the concept of a nanocar back then, or nano-anything for that matter.

It's pretty pessimistic to think that all that we can achieve is only what we can imagine at the moment. There will probably be more out there for us to discover. Don't worry.

Everything is IP

[Xerolooper]

I for one look forward to the day when the physical world is reduced to being as fluid as intellectual Property is today.
Have a Nano factory in your garage(call it a replicator for you Star Trek fans) where you can download the latest gadget and it is produced before your eyes.

Re:Everything is IP

[smoker2]

And there will be no intellectual property problems. It will come down to the fact that the only thing that producers produce is energy. If you want their design, you purchase their energy to construct the device. Even if you can reproduce the design, it won't matter. The money is made in the energy you paid for. Every time.

Tron/Fantastic Voyage/Flintstones

[bar-agent]

You could make a movie where some guy is shrunk down to nano-size and has to navigate nano-mechanical environment. Among the hazards would be cars running everywhere, moving carpets, big switching molecules hanging down from above, assembly factories, photon trigger streams...it'd be pretty sweet, actually.