Nano-Scale Robot Arm Moves Atoms With 100% Accuracy

destinyland writes "A New York professor has built a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them. The nano-scopic device is just 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size — over a million could fit inside a single red blood cell. But because of its size, it's able to build nanoscale structures and machines — including a nanoscale walking biped and even sequence-dependent molecular switch arrays!"

Comments

Exponential Growth

[elzurawka]

So, the first one builds a friend, then each builds a friend, and each of those builds a friend. Soon enough there will be millions, and they will be able to invade your blood cells!

I for one welcome our nano sized robot overlords

Re:Exponential Growth

[g0bshiTe]

I for one welcome our nano sized robot overlords

Because they are nano sized would that not make them under lords?

Re:Exponential Growth

[rhsanborn]

Inner lords, I think, they being inside our blood cells and all.

Re:Exponential Growth

[sentientbeing]

Ah nanotechnology.

Its the next big thing.

Did we just break heisenberg's principle?

[Shadow of Eternity]

If it can move and place particles with 100% accuracy then at least at some point we know both where it is and how fast it's moving...

Re:Did we just break heisenberg's principle?

[Dr. Spork]

You're right, so clearly they could not have meant that. I assumed they meant that the arm will place an atom so that it bonds in just the way you want. There is a tolerance in that, sort of like with throwing a basketball through a hoop. Many initial trajectories will result in a basket.

Re:Did we just break heisenberg's principle?

[ShakaUVM]

>>Isn't that only for sub atomic particles? This is moving the atoms themselves.

No, the uncertainty principle applies to particles as well. All matter exhibits wave-particle duality (the De Broglie wavelength). Even relatively large molecules like C60 fullerenes have been shown to diffract through a slit.

Re:Did we just break heisenberg's principle?

[martas]

i don't know why this is rated funny, but it's true. even your table has wave-like properties, and theoretically it could be passed through a diffraction grid, and you'd get cool positive/negative interference of the table with itself if you put a wall on the other side of the grid. the only problem is that the table would have to move very slowly...

Re:Did we just break heisenberg's principle?

[SwordsmanLuke]

He's not certain.

Re:Did we just break heisenberg's principle?

[xmousex]

i don't know why this is rated funny,

beavis only saw "diffract through a slit"

DNA

[mxh83]

does this mean someone can artificially alter their DNA using the nanobots?

Exactly

[dreamchaser]

Exactly. Moving individual atoms and placing them where we want them is about as fine grained as we can get before we run into the Uncertainty Principle.

"Success Rate" not "Accuracy"

[michaelmalak]

"100% Accuracy" implies a positional error of zero meters (to infinite decimal places), which is obviously not what they're talking about. Amazingly, this mistake is not just in the Slashdot summary, but in the cached FA as well.

If we go to the referenced Nature article abstract we see that the development "yields programmed targets in all cases."

The correct terminology then would be "100% Success Rate" not "100% Accuracy".

P.S. Presumably "success" is defined by something like "90% Accuracy", to put an ironic spin on it. But it makes no sense to speak of accuracy in terms of percentage without a reference, such as "a single atom". So the criteria was probably something like X nanometers accuracy.

Just a thought.....

[cbiltcliffe]

I don't know a heck of a lot about nanorobots and such, so I don't know whether it's possible or not, but if placing atoms with 100% accuracy is possible, shouldn't it also be possible to _remove_ atoms with 100% accuracy?

In that case, would it be possible to build something that disassembles atmospheric carbon dioxide, and build pencil lead and release oxygen in the process?

Of course, then you get into the problem of the energy stored in chemical bonds, and the energy required to overcome that. I have no idea if/how that applies to nanoscale robots, since they're mechanically working on individual atoms, rather than a bulk chemical reaction.

Re:Just a thought.....

[MozeeToby]

It's still a chemical reaction, it's just a very precisly controlled one. You would still have to add energy to break the bond in a molecule of CO2. I suspect that if someone goes through all the trouble to do that, they'll have it produce diamonds instead of pencil lead, since at least then you can sell the result and maybe make a bit of profit off of it (though not for long, what with economies of scale and everything. If this is really possible in large scale diamond will be cheaper than glass someday).

Re:Question:

[blincoln]

Can they make gold?

This device manipulates atoms and molecules, not individual protons and neutrons within the nucleus of an atom. So no, it can't make gold out of another element. You can do that with nuclear reactions if you want to live the alchemists' dream.
It's still really amazing. I wish Feynman had lived to see it.

To paraphrase an old chestnut..

[goldaryn]

a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them

yes, but where the scientists want them and where the scientists have told its programs to put them are two different things!

Re:Question:

[nospam007]

Can they make gold?

Gold?

Can they make HP ink?

Re:Question:

[martas]

no, they can't make gold, because they don't move elementary particles, they move atoms. gold is an atom, hence they'd need gold to make gold, which isn't a very impressive feat. what would be cool is if they could take simple graphite (pencil lead), and assemble it into diamonds, and make the whole process significantly cheaper than diamonds are today. it could be a real game-changer, and i'd really enjoy seeing diamonds that now cost millions of dollars lose almost all their value, thus screwing over anyone who has made large investments into diamond jewelery. something like this happened with aluminium - it used to be a very expensive metal, because it was difficult to extract it from the ore, so there was a lot of aluminium jewelery. then some guy came up with a new way to extract it, and it became the cheap-ass metal we all know and love today.

Re:There's a positive side

[Roberticus]

Just be sure to consult your molecular biologist if you experience a nanotechnological enhancement lasting more than four hours.

Re:Typo: I wrote the inequality backwards

[Gerafix]

Do you happen to work at NASA?