Nanoseconds and Nanoscience

A nanosecond is a measurement of time. It's common used today is in measuring the amount of time in which computer files can read or write. The word nano is derived from the Greek, nanos literally means dwarf or very small. In the metric system, it means "billionth," so, a nanosecond is one billionth (10-9) of a second. Measuring that out, that equates to 1,000,000,000 nanoseconds in one second.

If you are doing something like laser technology, that would take too long so you would have to measure time in femtoseconds, or if you are measuring photons you might use attoseconds, but the CD’s and hard disks ion your collection only use milliseconds to determine just exactly how long they take to send chunks of information to your drives.

Besides measurements of time, there are measurements of length, width and height in our new human technologies. In fact there is a whole minuscule industry emerging in the scientific community called "nanotech."This technology in the “nanosphere,”“nanotechnology,” is the science of building microscopic machines, structures and materials with molecules and it's the wave of the future.

Nanotech structures and gizmos are measurable only in nanometers. They are also completely invisible to the naked human eye, but they can be viewed with high-powered electronic and atomic microscopes. The April 29, 2004 issue of Nature, published an article saying that there are teeny-tiny molecular machines at work in places like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (LBNL) The latest news was that scientists at LBNL transformed carbon nanotubes into conveyor belts capable of transporting atom-sized indium particles from one point to another, a technological concept that is believed to have great potential for the future and in giving us more products like stain resistant and wrinkle free clothing, non stick cooking surfaces, sunscreen, and even drug delivery systems.

Scientists would like us to fund their projects and therefore, they urge us to believe that with an ever-increasing knowledge of the physical interactions of molecules and atoms, the day will arrive where all our problems of life on earth are forever solved. In fact these "nano" scientists believe that the day will come when factories on a nanoscale will become a material reality. As you probably guessed already though, while some members of the scientific community are excited about the grandiose possibilities of it all, not everyone is so excited. Some dare to speculate about the possible dangers of having "nano" factories because they "nano" pollute.

Nanotechnology is a new frontier; it’s a whole realm of unexplored territory, and researchers talk about something called “grey goo” associated with nanotech industry. The question people like to ask is, “Are there overall environmental effects or nanotoxicity of materials (like ‘gray goo’) that we need be concerned with?” But such concerns remain speculation and theory because of the newness of this technology and because of its unseeable smallness.

Some scientists warn that there is potential for “nano weapons” of mass destruction to be made, warning that such weapons could be of the “selective” type. You can almost bet there is a whole new world that would emerge from that, a world of nano politics and nano ethics and nano business practices too. Even with all the little concerns being vocalized, many physicists and chemical engineers are very excited about the prospective potential uses of nanotechnologies and envision future molecular manufacturing, where companies would be using nano sized batteries, motors, gears and elevators to help cure diseases like cancer, clean pollution from air and water or even to extract photons from the atmosphere for use as alternative fuel. Speculation is that the whole of society can change with the advancement of the new field of nanotechnology.

Nanoscience has the potential to unleash whole fields of study and jobs to support new economics. Nanobarcodes would be used to label and track products, scientists could microscopically create self assembling living tissue for medical purposes and we could possibly use nano-innovations to process or package food for worldwide distribution. But no matter the hype, or the hope, the truth is that the much of the concepts of manipulating atoms into factories and creating self replicating consumer goods, is still in its primordial stage. In fact, you cannot even see them "naked eye." It's a big dream, the business of nanotechnology, but then all big things do start rather small.

Currently these "operational" nano-motors mankind has created out of molecules and atoms only exist in petri dishes in science laboratories. You need a microscope to seem them and they are stuck operating at random in solution. They may be quite interesting to watch anf think about particularly to the scientifically minded, and they may have a lot of potential in the future for all mankind, but such things cannot even begin to compare with the amazingly miraculous intricacy of a single living cell, created out of nothing, by Almighty God.

And to think it may have only taken him a nanosecond... "Bang!" and it was there!

Wow.