Responsible Nanotechnology

Was CRN Wrong?

From the start, CRN's message has been pretty simple:

1. Nanotechnology will lead to a manufacturing breakthrough (molecular manufacturing, or MM).
2. MM will be revolutionary, disruptive, probably destructive in several ways.
3. Therefore, wise policy needs to be made in advance.

Molecular manufacturing is potentially very powerful - I remain convinced that we were right about that.

I still think MM has strong potential to be revolutionary, disruptive, and even destructive. (As well as providing many potential benefits.)

But I'm becoming less and less sure that this should, or even can, be dealt with by making wise policy in advance. It's too hard to predict what will happen. It's hard enough to predict what shape the technology will take - and much harder to predict how that will interact with politics.

If one-third of CRN's message were to disappear, what would CRN's proper role be, going forward?

Chris Phoenix

Chem Prof Teaches Bad Physics

Why does it matter whether atoms are moved by quantum effects?

A few days ago, I received an email from a student who was interested in molecular manufacturing. He had asked a chemistry professor whether molecular manufacturing could work.

The professor said no: quantum uncertainty would mean that the atoms could be in two places at once, so they couldn't be picked up by machines or used to make gears.

It is a crying shame that in 2010, some university professors are 1) so uninformed about the physics of atoms and 2) so willing to talk beyond their knowledge.

Richard Feynman, who won his Nobel Prize for his work in quantum physics, believed that mechanical-style molecular manufacturing would work just fine.

Single atoms have been imaged using scanning probe microscopes, even at room temperature.

I hesitate to make blunt statements that other people are wrong. It's not good politics, and it's not good debating tactics. But I don't know what else to say in this case. Dozens of experiments, plus Richard Feynman, say that the chemistry professor is simply wrong.

Why does it matter? First, it's shameful to teach students incorrect scientific information. And second, if we don't know what can be done with nanotechnology, we cannot prepare for the problems nanotechnology will create, and we cannot benefit from the potential advantages.

Chris Phoenix

Electron Microscope Images, Free

An electron microscope company, Aspex, is advertising that they'll scan a sample you send in, for free, and post the image on their website for you.

Here's the page with the signup form: "Send Us Your Sample." 

While browsing their site, I notice that they have a desktop SEM (scanning electron microscope), about the size of a laser printer. It only goes down to 100 nanometers (several hundred times the size of an atom) but still, that's small enough to count as nanotech.

Chris Phoenix