MINIATURE REVOLUTION

Nanotechnology is the trendiest area of modern science. It is a form of molecular technology, which can combine biotechnology with atomic electronics. Put simply it is the technology of building very, very small things.

Making things' as small as a nonometre — one thousand millionth of a metre — might sound impossible, but today's scientists are building tiny machines and structures from components as small as single atoms.

But why would anyone want to go to the trouble of moving single atoms around with highly sophisticated machinery?

"Nanotechnology makes it possible to take all the atoms in your body and reassemble them. If you're just about to die of some nasty disease, we could send nanotechnology robots into your body and undo that damage and repair all of the cells," says a British scientist. "Nanotechnology can also undo your age. It can make a 90-year old man a young man of twenty-one again."

The possibilities of nanotechnology are enormous.

Nanotechnology is a fairly new area of research, and most of the work going on is to develop tools and techniques rather than practical inventions. But just as the space race gave us spin-offs like digital watches and ever-smaller computers, so nanotechnologists are already finding that their skills have a surprising range of uses.

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