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Nanocar Wins Top Science Award

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the more-than-meets-the-eye dept.

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."

7 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Oh hell no!! by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh hell no, please.

    My wife has enough trouble finding the regular sized car when she has been shopping.

    How the hell will she find a nano-car?

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    liqbase :: faster than paper
  2. Everything is IP by Xerolooper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
  3. Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    THE car for the man with an incredibly long penis.

  4. lots of small things working together by cats-paw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought the most important point in the FA was the shift in thinking which this kind of technology could one day produce:

    But in the future, things will be built not from the top down, but the bottom up -- as in nature.

    Nature has always pushed it's own tech forward via lots of small things working together. Lots of small things working together also creates redundancy.

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    Absolute statements are never true
  5. Re:No Cup Holders? by internetcommie · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't really think anybody wants to show off the fact that they have nano-nuts...

  6. To put that in layman's terms... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    4 nanometers is 1/3,657,600,000 of a Volkswagen.

  7. Re:Does this mean by sentientbeing · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah nanotechnology. The next big thing.

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    beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master