I have already written a post regarding misconception of nanomedicine. And here I will say a couple of comments about nanorobots or more simple – nanobots . Before I start to write my thoughts I have to confess that I am scientist and I believe in science and in the progress in general, however I firmly believe in real medicine and science but not in trendy commercially biased fancy fantasy. I like sci-fi but we have to feel the line which separates sci-fi and reality. Sometimes this line is almost invisible, sometimes it is completely absent but very often it is sharp and obvious, at least for a real scientist. Let start with nanobots – an apotheosis of the nanomedicine mess!
And we start again with Wikipedia (I have already apologized for the bad taste!):
From 2012-03-13: “Nanorobotics is the emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or close to the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters).[1][2][3] More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots, with devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometers and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components.[4][5] The names nanobots, nanoids, nanites, nanomachines or nanomites have also been used to describe these devices currently under research and development.[6][7]”
Well, 0.1-10 micrometers is 100-10000 nm, so already here in the terms determination we have some forgery. The more correct it should be called microrobotics instead of nanorobotics. And again, nano implies on the scale of the objects and nothing is told on the application of quantum properties of the matter. So basically we are talking just about another step of miniaturization… But probably there are optimists out there who would argue – “next generation of nanobots will be manufactured in real nanoscale, we see only beginning of the era!” Well, let’s assume that it is right and the next generation of nanorobots will be in a scale 10-100. But this is scale of viruses! What type of materials will be used for nano-propellers, nano-wheels, nano-arms, nano-whatever? The robots (nano- or micro- or milli- WHICHEVER!) supposed to accomplish some physical actions and have to possess some kind of intelligence. Viruses are the smallest natural machines (exactly in nanoscale!), nanomachines par excellence, and it took for the Nature billions of years to develop them. Should we in this field challenge the Nature? Sure, we can, but what is our chances for success?..
And finally, I have found a nice collection of nanorobots on youtube (nice music too):
My favorite design on starting from sec 40: I guess this nanorobot is pumping cytostatic drug to the cancer cell through nanohose. Nice job!
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