Feynman's Nano, Now - 1

    In this series of post, I try to think and analyze from where 'we' stand today and explain the points delivered by Dr. Feynman in his famous lecture of 1959, . I am not one among the Nanotechnology or Nanoscience research community. I am a common man having a little bit of interest and very little understanding of science. I am explaining this, because readers should not misunderstand the meaning of 'we' in 'where we stand today'. This 'we' refers to the entire human community. That is where, I can be considered one among those who a pushing the limits down that smaller world foreseen by Feynman and that is how I can feel proud and happy.

    Remember the year as the series continues. Excerpt and his thoughts are 50 years ahead from now.

Feynman's Nano, Now - 1
    Excerpt from Feynman's lecture below,

    "They tell me about electric motors that are the size of the nail on your small finger. And there is a device on the market, they tell me, by which you can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. But that's nothing; that's the most primitive, halting step in the direction I intend to discuss. It is a staggeringly small world that is below. In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction.

    Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britanica on the head of a pin?"

    I do not know if anybody really wondered that way. Rather, people should have thanked Feynman for being someone who at least thought of such possibility in 1960. Otherwise, we would not be approaching this smaller world so fast and still be running between rooms to operate a computer. I think Feynman had estimated every one and everything would work the way he was and was quite optimistic while mentioning the year 2000. Ten years from then, we have not written any encyclopedia on the head of a pin. But the growth we have had so far, certainly make us think that this is not a mere fantasy.

    There had been a lot of development until now, in the small scale (Nano) biological world like Human genome project, work on DNA sequencing and lot of pharmaceutical developments. Though biological science is pushing the limits faster, other fields are not just spectators. Like in electrical sciences, the limits of the circuits are already getting pushed below 32nm with lot of challenges. In material sciences, carbon nanotubes are openings up lot of possibilities.

    As an end note of the post, last week, while I was spending my Christmas vacation in a very calm and quiet place far from the buzzling metro I live in, I received a mail from one of my friends, whose team, though not encyclopedia, had put a world map on to an optical chip. Please note 'optical chip'. This is not the same integrated circuits we had been working and talking for the past 40 to 50 years. It's quite different, again approaching the nano scale. You can read more here.