in december nineteen fifty-nine five
years before he was to get his nobel
prize
Richard Feynman gave a talk at Caltech entitled
there's plenty of room at the bottom
the talk is often cited as the
beginnings of nanoscience
the study and manipulation of matter at
the scale of nanometers
one billionth of a meter
or one hundred thousand times less than
the thickness of the human hair
or as Feynman put it
staggeringly small world that is down
below
he was especially fascinated by biology
years before the insight into cellular
mechanisms that we have today
cells can do all sorts of marvelous
things all of a very small scale he said
consider the possibility that we too
can make a thing very small which does
what we want
today it's almost commonplace to view the cell as a miniature factory containing a
large number of dedicated molecular
machines
and the idea that we can learn from
these machines drives the burgeoning
field of bionano science and
technology the cell's motors are
especially intriguing
whether they are linear motors walking
along the cells internal pathways while
hauling freight, or rotary motors like those
spin a bacterium flagella
at speeds of up to one hundred rpm
the promises from man-made bio-motors with
yet unimagined applications in
medicine, sensors, electronics or
engineering
biology and medical research have already benefited hugely from near
nano-scale technologies as in gene chips
able to rapidly scan genomes
micro-arrays identifying new drug candidate
these technologies are constantly being
made yet smaller, faster and more efficient
and they're being joined by new truly
nanoscale devices such as those that are
able to manipulate the flow of minute
drops of fluids
shown in these video slowed down some two
thousand times
through what are in essence liquid
circuit boards for use in medical
research
and speaking of circuit boards Feynman
lived in an era as he put it himself when
computing machines fill rooms
speculating on what computers could do
if they could be made much more
complicated he asked
why can't we make them very small
make them a little wires little elements
and by little
i mean little
we've been making them littler ever
since of course and so far computer
chips have shrunk on schedule with
moore's law
the prediction of Intel founder Gordon Moore
that the number of transistors
on a chip with double every two years
Intel's recent announcement of transistors
just forty-five nanometers across
small enough that thirty thousand would
fit on the head of pin means that the
law remains secure through the next
few years
but beyond that new technologies are
going to be needed and they are a major
focus of nanotechnology
many researchers are pinning their hopes
and carbon nanotubes
sheets of carbon atoms rolled up like
straws, these tubes are ideal for
building tiny circuits because
they can be made to be either conductors or 
semiconductors
a little over a nanometer in diameter
they make structures on conventional
chips look huge
the nanotubes can be manipulated to create
junctions and even formed into transistors
another innovative approach employs a
molecular switch that's like a ring
sliding on the barbel 
its two positions corresponding to the
zeros and ones used to store data on the
computer
combined with a dense array of nanowires
the switch has been used to build an
experimental memory chip
with some one hundred billion bits of
information crammed into one square
centimeter
enough to satisfy Moore's law through
the year twenty twenty
beyond that
well again Richard Feynman pointed ahead suggesting in nineteen eighty-two
that one day computers could exploit
quantum mechanics
replacing the bits used by today's
computers
with quantum bits or qubits to create
machines with computational powers we
can't even imagine today
it would have appealed to Feynman to
hear that the spin of the single
electron was recently turned into an
active qubit
back in his original nineteen fifty nine
talk Feynman also envisions tiny
machines asking
why can't we drill holes, cut things, and solder things, stamp things out, mold
different shapes of all in an infinitesimal level
today such infinitesimal machines exist
for now they're being used mainly to
give demonstrations fairground rides to
tiny insects bur these nanomachines might
someday be assembled or even assemble
themselves into nanorobots
Feynam himself, quoting a doctor friend said
it would be interesting in surgery if
you could swallow the surgeon
anticipating the notion of nanorobots that cruise the body cleaning up
arterial plaque or rewiring brain cells
as they go
as Feynman said it was a very wild idea
and it remains only a very wild idea
today
but as he also said at the outset of his talk
i would like to describe a field in
which an enormous amount can be done
and with an enormous number of technical
applications
almost fifty years after they were
spoken
those words are truer than ever
