Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And today we're going
Speaker 1: to look at a classic episode of tech Stuff and
Speaker 1: originally published on May two, thirteen, and it is titled
Speaker 1: The Big Deal About Little Generators. This is all about
Speaker 1: a hypothetical sort of technology, nano generators. Uh. Nanotechnology is
Speaker 1: a fascinating one. It's also pretty complicated to talk about,
Speaker 1: but Lauren Voge Obama and I try to break it
Speaker 1: down in this classic episode, So enjoy. So I got
Speaker 1: a little topic I want to talk about today, very little, tiny.
Speaker 1: In fact, you might call it nano. Yes, in fact,
Speaker 1: we would, because that's the topic technology. Everybody. Everybody's doing nano. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone is, and depending on who you talk to, it's
Speaker 1: either gonna destroy the world or rescue it. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal, so to speak, A small thing?
Speaker 1: The big deal is that it's a very very little deal.
Speaker 1: In fact, one billionth of a deal or a nanometer
Speaker 1: is one billionth of a meter and uh, to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of how tiny this is the average
Speaker 1: human hair is one hundred micrometers in diameter. Now, a
Speaker 1: micrometer is a thousand nanometers, so that means that the
Speaker 1: average human hair is one hundred thousand nanometers in diameter.
Speaker 1: I should point out that that's average. I've seen a
Speaker 1: number of numbers. Yeah, it's usually between sixty and one twenty.
Speaker 1: That's normally, that's the average I normally see. But one hundred,
Speaker 1: it's fair enough to say. So, yes, some people have
Speaker 1: very fine hair. But we're kind of splitting hairs now,
Speaker 1: aren't we. You've walked right into that one. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about things on the tiny, tiny scale. Now, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about the atomic scale, because that's actually smaller
Speaker 1: than the nano scale. Yeah, because an atom is about
Speaker 1: an atom. When you take the entire atom into account,
Speaker 1: the average atom is about point one nanometers in diameter.
Speaker 1: That's pretty teeny. So it's one tenth of a of
Speaker 1: a nanometer. That's the atomic scale. We're getting pretty close
Speaker 1: to the atomic scale. Yeah. Yeah, Now, if you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the nucleus of an atom, do you
Speaker 1: want to how big that is? Yes? How big? Of course,
Speaker 1: you want to know how big it is? A pleat cheese.
Speaker 1: I thought I had you. It is point zero zero
Speaker 1: zero zero one nanometers wide. Good grief, that's just the nucleus.
Speaker 1: So when you when you strip away the electron shell,
Speaker 1: it's tiny indeed. But anyway, nanoscale, we're talking about things
Speaker 1: on this really tiny scale. Building machines that are on
Speaker 1: this scale. Usually people say between one and one nanometers
Speaker 1: is kind of within the nanoscale range. Um, building not
Speaker 1: just machines, but but really specific machines that can actually
Speaker 1: potentially change the world, and um, it's it's pretty phenomenal
Speaker 1: to think of building anything on that smaller scale. You
Speaker 1: can't even look at these things with a light microscope
Speaker 1: because they're so tiny because the the wavelength for visible
Speaker 1: light on the small scale of it over on the
Speaker 1: violet spectrum, that's about four hundred nanometers for a wavelength.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about having to use things like scanning
Speaker 1: telling microscopes to look at the nano scale. Now, these
Speaker 1: are special microscopes that emit a small charge electric charge
Speaker 1: and then it interprets the data, sends it to a computer,
Speaker 1: and you look at an image on a computer screen,
Speaker 1: so you're not even really looking at the physical thing.
Speaker 1: You're looking at a computer image representation of that thing. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if if nanotechnology is that small, how do you make it?
Speaker 1: Because you know, there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: talk about things on the nano scale, like, uh, you
Speaker 1: know computer processor chips using nanotechnology, Uh, nano robots, which
Speaker 1: I'm told you might know something about a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, you know all kinds of things. How are
Speaker 1: you building these tiny, tiny things if you can't even
Speaker 1: really see them, if you were depending on a machine
Speaker 1: to do it, for you to be able to look
Speaker 1: at them, that's a tricky question. I'll there are two
Speaker 1: different ways, right. There's the the top down approach, which
Speaker 1: is where you actually drop stuff on it from above.
Speaker 1: Not quite, but you build each component and you then
Speaker 1: put everything together. It's it's kind of like the classic
Speaker 1: way you build anything, right, Like you would use a
Speaker 1: top down approach to build say a car. You know,
Speaker 1: you build the frame and then you attach various things
Speaker 1: to the frame. I'm talking like I know anything about cars. Um,
Speaker 1: so different podcasts, different podcast Scott is way better at
Speaker 1: it than I am. So the other way is the
Speaker 1: bottom up approach. This is interesting, This is where you're
Speaker 1: actually building things kind kind of um, like you're growing
Speaker 1: them almost like you're growing machines UM, and you're doing
Speaker 1: it adom by atom, molecule by molecule, and uh, I'm
Speaker 1: not really sure which way it's gonna go. This is
Speaker 1: an early early silent science. Even though it's been around
Speaker 1: for a couple of decades, we're still, you know, just
Speaker 1: barely in the beginning of it. So we'll see which
Speaker 1: method ends up being the the prevalent one. UM. But
Speaker 1: there are people working on it on either end, so
Speaker 1: to speak, and to give you an idea of how
Speaker 1: possible this is. In so we're talking about almost twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. Uh, there was an IBM scientist named Don
Speaker 1: Eisler who led a team who demonstrated that they can
Speaker 1: manipulate individual atoms and they used a scanning tunneling microscope
Speaker 1: to move atoms to spell I B M, I am
Speaker 1: so not shot. Yeah, So you can actually there are
Speaker 1: pictures of this on the internet. If you google you
Speaker 1: know IBM scanning tunneling microscope. Uh, you can find pictures
Speaker 1: of this where you see the image where each dot
Speaker 1: represents a separate atom. So they actually use the atoms
Speaker 1: to spell the word. Well, and in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: again IBM scientists are kind of leading the research in this. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were in Zerich and they they showed that they
Speaker 1: were able to change the charge state of individual atoms
Speaker 1: by adding or removing electrons from an individual atom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again they used a scanning telling microscope and they
Speaker 1: had a charged point on the tip of that microscope,
Speaker 1: which comes to such an incredibly fine point that they
Speaker 1: can do these things that can remove an electron from
Speaker 1: one atom and and put it onto another. So we
Speaker 1: have the technology to manipulate individual atoms. Now we have
Speaker 1: to get to the point where we can build my
Speaker 1: lecular structures that work as tiny machines. All right, And
Speaker 1: there are a couple different ways we can look into that.
Speaker 1: One of the really popular things that people have been
Speaker 1: talking about recently are carbon nanotubes. Have you heard of these? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the stuff that's supposed to, you know, do everything
Speaker 1: everything you've ever heard of. Essentially, carbon nanotubes can apparently
Speaker 1: do well. There there's such a versatile structure. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm very resilient. Yep. Yeah. It actually all
Speaker 1: depends on how you how you roll the Yeah, how
Speaker 1: you roll the tube. So, carbon nanotubes, the way you
Speaker 1: create a carbon nanotube in general them I'm way oversimplifying here,
Speaker 1: but you take a sheet of carbon atoms, all right,
Speaker 1: they form molecular structure where it looks very like it
Speaker 1: looks like a series of hexagons. And what you then
Speaker 1: do is you roll this into a tube. You roll
Speaker 1: the sheet into a tube, and depending on the angle
Speaker 1: you use when you roll it into a tube, that
Speaker 1: dictates them the properties the carbon nanotube will have. So
Speaker 1: you know that, of course graphite is composed of carbon,
Speaker 1: as are diamonds. Yes, but these two materials are have
Speaker 1: very different properties. Graphites very soft, it's opaque. Uh, diamonds
Speaker 1: not so soft, usually pretty clear. But the reason why
Speaker 1: they're different is because of the way these molecules are arranged.
Speaker 1: The same thing with carbon nanotubes. So if you arrange
Speaker 1: them as specific way by rolling the sheet in a
Speaker 1: specific direction, you can create a material that's hundreds of
Speaker 1: times stronger than steel and six times is light. Well
Speaker 1: what could what could possibly be a problem with Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the problem, as you pointed out, as it's very expensive.
Speaker 1: It's there's no easy way to do it. It's no
Speaker 1: easy efficient way right now that we can do it
Speaker 1: on a mass scale. So it can be done. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna be done in very small amounts, like on
Speaker 1: the nano scale amounts, and it's being done in laboratories
Speaker 1: and it's gonna take several years for that to move
Speaker 1: from the laboratory to the production room. And um, when
Speaker 1: it does, then we're gonna start seeing lots and lots
Speaker 1: of stuff with carbon nanotubes and it we we see
Speaker 1: some already. There's some products that use carbon nanotube technology already,
Speaker 1: but it's not on the scale that the you know,
Speaker 1: the future of nanotechnology kind of promises us. But I've
Speaker 1: seen things like everything from a Spider Man type suit
Speaker 1: made out of carbon nanotubes because if you roll them
Speaker 1: a certain way, they work very like a Gecks skin.
Speaker 1: You could climb walls and things with this stuff, which
Speaker 1: is pretty neat. Yeah, yeah, I've got one on back order.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Um, so that's kind of giving you the
Speaker 1: lowdown on on where we are now and and you
Speaker 1: can find technology that does incorporate things on the nano scale.
Speaker 1: In fact, you're probably using one right now to listen
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, because if you're using any sort of
Speaker 1: device that has a microchip, chances are you've gotta transistors
Speaker 1: on that microchip that are on somewhere in the nano scale.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have a recent computer, then it's definite,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as it's not I guess a netbook.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have one that has a powerful microprocessor,
Speaker 1: you're talking about transistors that are only a few dozen
Speaker 1: nanometers wide. So for example, Intel's uh I cors seven
Speaker 1: I believe are what fortnomes wide? I think, yes, except
Speaker 1: it's Core I seven. Thank Yeah, I should have said
Speaker 1: to Haleem, I wrote about it as the Nehalem. But yes,
Speaker 1: uh those are um, those are like like forty five
Speaker 1: nanometers wide. I mean you're talking about stuff that's already
Speaker 1: out on the market that's at this scale. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: before we continue this discussion about nanotechnology, let's take a
Speaker 1: tiny little break to thank our sponsors. It was looking
Speaker 1: at applications of nanotechnology and I found an article on
Speaker 1: on c net that in which they were talking about
Speaker 1: using your voice to charge your cell phone. And uh,
Speaker 1: apparently in order to do this they use they would
Speaker 1: they would use they should say, would they would use?
Speaker 1: Barry Um tight nate crystals which are twenty three nanometers wide,
Speaker 1: and to do that, it actually creates piezo electricity. It transfers, transfers,
Speaker 1: it transfers of physical energy into electrical energy. Yes, exactly, Karma. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know that's that's pretty neat to imagine that.
Speaker 1: You know, these crystals that are are you know, in
Speaker 1: the teens are not teens, but in the dual digit
Speaker 1: nanometers size. You know, that's wow, so um so piezzo
Speaker 1: electric that that essentially means that you're converting kinetic energy
Speaker 1: into elect to see or vice versa. And then no,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, this is the same sort
Speaker 1: of stuff you you've have in things like microphones and speakers,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing where it's converting uh, one form
Speaker 1: of energy into another. And crystal there's certain crystals that
Speaker 1: can do this, like quartz that that have this property
Speaker 1: innately athium, tillium anyway. Um. And then they're the nano robots,
Speaker 1: which are great for you know everything. I read this
Speaker 1: article written by you know this Jonathan Strickling guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and vaguely remember writing that it's been it's been more
Speaker 1: than a year now. Yeah, but yeah, so nano robots, um,
Speaker 1: all kinds of medical applications for those. Yeah, here's the
Speaker 1: here's the interesting thing about nano robots. Um, they don't exist. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're pretty much in the micro stage right now to
Speaker 1: be to be really fair, But assuming that we ever
Speaker 1: get down to the nano size and are able to
Speaker 1: build nano size robots, the applications are pretty amazing from
Speaker 1: a medical standpoint. Um. For example, let's say that you
Speaker 1: have a disease that's affecting a very specific part of
Speaker 1: your body. And let's say the normal way to treat
Speaker 1: this disease would be that you would have you would
Speaker 1: take you know, medication. Well, I'm thinking medication really, but
Speaker 1: we can get to surgery to in a minute. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's say that it would normally do that you
Speaker 1: would either get a shot or take some medicine orally
Speaker 1: or whatever. You would have to wait for that medicine
Speaker 1: to make its way through your system, uh and to
Speaker 1: eventually affect the infected area. Okay, so the medicine is
Speaker 1: already getting diluted through your bloodstream, it's taking time for
Speaker 1: it to reach the infected area. Takes time for it
Speaker 1: to to uh take effect at the area and so
Speaker 1: the whole recovery rate is slower than it would ideally be.
Speaker 1: Now with a nano robot, theoretically you could direct it,
Speaker 1: or if you could find a way of making it autonomous,
Speaker 1: it could direct itself to the infected area and deliver
Speaker 1: a much smaller payload of medication directly to the infected area. So,
Speaker 1: for one thing, you're not going to have the side
Speaker 1: effects that you might have experienced through a larger dose
Speaker 1: of medication because the dose is much much smaller. For another,
Speaker 1: the application is immediate to the infected area, so you're
Speaker 1: talking about it being much more efficient and having a
Speaker 1: smaller impact on the patient's overall health. So that's that's
Speaker 1: an ideal situation. Now for surgery, as you were pointing out,
Speaker 1: that's also a possibility you could create nano robots that
Speaker 1: would have things like laser cutters that would essentially act
Speaker 1: like a little scalpel, but they would be the incredibly precise,
Speaker 1: far more precise than any human would be with a scalpel,
Speaker 1: because they're on the nanoscale. You're talking about something so
Speaker 1: small that it's blood cells are dwarfing it. So for
Speaker 1: the could be an incredibly precise tool. I'm granted. Do
Speaker 1: you think, well, with advice that's small, how could it
Speaker 1: really be useful? A lot of these future projections suggests
Speaker 1: that you would not have just one of these little
Speaker 1: nano robots working. They would there'd be thousands, perhaps millions
Speaker 1: of them working together at the same time, and uh,
Speaker 1: then you don't have to find a way of getting
Speaker 1: them out. Or potentially you would have nano robots in
Speaker 1: you all the time, and they could even act as
Speaker 1: a preventive measure and keep you healthy and head off
Speaker 1: any problems before they could really start, even uh bringing
Speaker 1: up symptoms. Yeah, you were saying in the article that
Speaker 1: they can be used to do things like break up
Speaker 1: blood clots or you know, kidney stones. Oh man, and
Speaker 1: they say breaking up is hard to do. You know
Speaker 1: someone who has suffered from kidney stones. I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you I would love to have had some. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: nothing else then just to start have someone specific I
Speaker 1: could scream at um instead of just the the the
Speaker 1: directionless screaming that I did while I actually had them.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with some more big ideas about
Speaker 1: tiny technology in just a moment after this quick break.
Speaker 1: Now there's some big problems that we have to overcome. First,
Speaker 1: we have to be able to create UM power systems
Speaker 1: on that scale, something to power these robots. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about batteries and capacitors that are have to be
Speaker 1: incredibly tiny UM and that's that's a big challenge. Now,
Speaker 1: some doctors have and engineers have got around that by
Speaker 1: creating robots that that propelled themselves, or actually they don't
Speaker 1: really propel themselves, they are propelled externally. UM. There's one
Speaker 1: that used m r I machine and you would use
Speaker 1: the magnets in the m R I really to act
Speaker 1: the robot, so you could actually, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the robot really was more passive, but you could direct
Speaker 1: it to specific spot within an artery system. Now, I
Speaker 1: should point out that the scientists who did this did
Speaker 1: it with a pig. Um they were not doing human testing,
Speaker 1: but it worked went through the pig's arteries, so you know,
Speaker 1: that's ah, it's nothing to sneeze at. Actually, I was
Speaker 1: reading about a completely different application of nanotechnology. There was
Speaker 1: sort of fascinating UM. Jennifer Lowell was blogging about it
Speaker 1: for uh for seen it, and she was talking about
Speaker 1: the possibility that you could use nanotech to alter food
Speaker 1: on the microscopic scale. UM. She actually was quoting Steve
Speaker 1: Bogan and the Guardian. UM. They were talking about essentially
Speaker 1: how you could if you had a food that to
Speaker 1: which you were allergic, you could maybe make alterations to
Speaker 1: it so that it would pass from your body without
Speaker 1: being a problem. That would be interesting trick is you
Speaker 1: know you could, uh, you could have problems with people
Speaker 1: who don't particularly genetically modified food. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that are kind of creeped out by
Speaker 1: the frank and food. UM. And you're talking about messing
Speaker 1: with things down again on a very very tiny level.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty that's pretty significant. Um. But Bogan also
Speaker 1: mentioned the possibility that packaging could be made um to
Speaker 1: where the nanotechnology inside the food packaging could sniff out
Speaker 1: when you know, the food started to give off gassing
Speaker 1: as it was decomposing and would change color to go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know this thing, it's started to turn brown. We
Speaker 1: need to toss it out without even you know, sniffing
Speaker 1: it or you know, sticking your finger on it and
Speaker 1: going it feels kind of weird. Yeah, that would have
Speaker 1: prevented many, many memorable nights that I've had in my past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure anyway, So, uh and and to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about building these robots. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the things that scientists are working on is
Speaker 1: to try and create specific can of nano robots called
Speaker 1: assemblers assemblers. Yet, now, assemblers do what you would think
Speaker 1: they do. They assemble other nano machines. So they could
Speaker 1: assemble other assemblers, So then you have a self replicating
Speaker 1: nano robot. Do you see where there might be a
Speaker 1: problem with this? I feel its edging gradually towards the singularity. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the potential for nano robots to
Speaker 1: replicate themselves at such an incredible rate. And remember, as
Speaker 1: soon as one gets replicated, it can start replicating, and
Speaker 1: then the ones that replicates can start replicating, so it's
Speaker 1: exponential growth. Right. Um, there's a scenario called gray goo.
Speaker 1: Gray goo is this this doomsday scenario where nano robots
Speaker 1: in order to build more nano robots, they have to
Speaker 1: create it out of something. You know, they're not building
Speaker 1: it out of nothing. So what they're doing is they're
Speaker 1: they're in this scenario anyway, it is taking carbon out
Speaker 1: of the environment and then building robots with them, so
Speaker 1: that we're right. Everything a lot of stuff is made
Speaker 1: out of carbon on on our planet, turns out, So
Speaker 1: the idea here would be that the robots would start
Speaker 1: to consume all the carbon in an effort to build
Speaker 1: more robots. And of course, since it's exponential, it gets
Speaker 1: faster and faster every passing second. So this Tuesday scenario
Speaker 1: has the entire world just turning into this writhing mass
Speaker 1: of gray goo as nano robots take over everything. I'm
Speaker 1: totally seeing the Sorcerer's Apprentice in my head. Sleep well tonight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we were able to take such a
Speaker 1: rosy idea and go there with it. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's obviously a worst case scenario, but uh, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of First of all, we're decades away
Speaker 1: from getting there. Second of all, there's no guarantee that
Speaker 1: that's what would happen if we even were able to
Speaker 1: create the nanotech assemblers. So I think we don't have
Speaker 1: to worry just yet. When the Singularity comes, then we'll
Speaker 1: start worrying, all right, So we got about twenty years
Speaker 1: al right, guys, I hope you enjoyed this classic episode
Speaker 1: of text Stuff. It was a lot of fun to research.
Speaker 1: I always love the sort of science fiction ee kind
Speaker 1: of topics that we can look into. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future tech stuff topics, let me know.
Speaker 1: Reach out on Twitter or on Facebook. We use the
Speaker 1: handle text stuff HSW for both, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
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