Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Gas guzzler? More like gas cleaner !

Scientists at Rice University have created a nanocar !

Some excerpts...
At just 169 atoms, it's the smallest motorized vehicle ever made. Better yet, it runs on ultraviolet light. And say goodbye to those endless searches for parking spaces. About 20,000 of these babies can fit side to side across the diameter of a human hair.
And the mechanical details...
the vehicle has four "wheels" that are cagelike structures of about 25 atoms each, mounted on "axles" that are freely rotating chemical bonds. The car is powered by a paddle-wheel-like device that turns in response to a specific wavelength of light
Wonder what miracles it can achieve for medicine...accurately transporting medicine to cells that require them, or even other nano structures that could help combat diseases/cancers, etc.!

And the best part...
And since a trillion trillion of them are made at a time in a series of chemical reactions, he added, they should be cheap enough to discard after one trip each.

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