The Washington Post
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The next big thing to come out of this birthplace of high tech could be small:
Think tiny molecular delivery devices for medicines.
Or "smart" dust that can monitor people without being detected.
Maybe supercomputers the size of grains of salt.
The mind-bending ideas seem straight out of works of science fiction, but some out here think they may be possible in the near future as interest grows in something called nanotechnology.
Literally the manipulation of atoms or molecules, nanotechnology is a sort of "superscience" that encompasses everything from computing and materials science to health care. Its goal is to figure out a way to reconfigure the tiny particles to create things Mother Nature never imagined.
Just a few years ago, nanotechnology was on the fringe of respected science, and skeptics still abound. But venture capital bigwigs are beginning to bet on the science, and real research is underway at the NASA Ames Research Center here. Even Washington is beginning to take notice after a series of breakthroughs.
"The debate has shifted from ‘Will it happen?’ to ‘When will it happen?’ " said Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute, a research institute dedicated to nanotechnology.
Indeed, the prestigious journal Science noted that the demonstration of a nanoscale computer circuit by industry and academic researchers was 2001’s "breakthrough of the year," surpassing even the completion of the mapping of the human genome.
Major high-tech corporations including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Raytheon have launched nanotechnology initiatives, but these giants by no means have a monopoly on the research.
Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, said his firm has invested $40 million over the past two years in 12 upstart nanotechnology and related ventures. Much of the funding has gone to those working on shrinking electronics, but he’s personally interested in companies that research mechanical-biological hybrids, such as those using a hemoglobin-like substance to make dense computer chips.
"All the great unknowns of science revolve around nanotech in many ways," Jurvetson said.
The Bush administration has become so interested in its potential that it earmarked $604 million this year for nanotechnology research and development, up 43 percent from the 2001 budget. In one of the government’s biggest public displays of its faith in the technology, the Pentagon recently announced it would spend $50 million over the next five years to create a new laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to focus on creating nanotech gear for soldiers.
The research is increasingly important here in the heart of the high-tech world because companies are reaching the limit of how small they can make silicon chips. Without miniaturization, some say, the technology revolution could be stalled, and next-generation devices such as "chemistry labs on chips" — capable of instantly analyzing soil samples or rocks on other planets — would never be built.
For NASA, making things smaller and lighter is important because of how much it costs to carry stuff into space.
Meyya Meyyappan, who oversees about 60 scientists on NASA’s nanotech team at the Ames Research Center, said his ultimate goal is to build a "thinking spacecraft," with enough computing power aboard to "make autonomous decisions so we don’t need to control everything from Houston."
That’s critical for a successful manned mission to Mars. It costs $100,000 per pound to get something there, meaning that carrying a Cray computer is out of the question. And it’s impractical to try to relay computations from Earth to Mars because it takes the signal 20 minutes to get from one point to another, and 20 minutes to get a response back.
"If we don’t make things smaller," Meyyappan said, "we won’t be able to go on any new missions."
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