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We've been hearing a lot about how the future of electronics will involve stretchy circuit boards, or circuits you can glue to your skin. In this video, you can see one crucial ingredient in bendy electronics — stretchable, electrically-conductive gold that can bend with the rubber it's printed on. University of Cambridge engineering researcher Ingrid Graz has been working on creating this type of gold, and here she shows us what this gold looks like on a microscopic level. It's both beautiful and fascinating. More »
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What do you get when you combine a fear of gray goo with a proclivity for Ted Kaczynski-style terrorism? Radicals shipping mail bombs to university professors, that's what. More »
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Viruses are obviously artificial creations, little pieces of technology designed to download evil software into your cells. This is definitely my favorite new conspiracy rant. The best part is when the narrator, known on YouTube as "adampants," starts acting out all the voices of the cells involved in immune response. "Hey, I'm a white blood cell!" This is a great, trippy video to watch during your afternoon tea. More »
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This strangely-named theorem has a rarefied theoretical background, arising from a perfectly round ball covered with perfectly fine hair. Despite that, it has real-world applications, including the ability to build gold nanowires — and finding the one spot on earth where there is no wind. More »
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Will the wonders of carbon nanotubes never cease? Engineers have now used everyone's favorite cylindrical übermolecules to create artificial muscles that can contract and twist, in a manner not unlike like the muscles found in elephant trunks and squid tentacles. The upshot? Researchers say these tiny little motors could soon be used to propel microscopic nanobots throughout your bloodstream. More »
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How will life on Earth end? International nuclear bombardment? Another asteroid? Enslavement by aliens? The devouring of all of our resources by a Skynet-esque batch of self-replicating microscopic robots? You laugh, but a lot of people (including a batch of anti-science terrorists) believe our demise will come in the form of self-replicating nanobots. So let's take a look at whether such a thing could happen, and what we could do to stop it. More »
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A group of self-identified terrorists has sent several mail bombs to nanotechnology labs and researchers in Latin America, injuring two people earlier this month in the engineering department at the Monterrey Institute of Technology outside Mexico City. In an online manifesto, the group calls itself Individualists With Savage Tendencies (this a translation from the Spanish Individualidades tendiendo a lo salvaje, or ITS), and writes about how they are trying to stop a "gray goo" scenario where self-replicating nanobots destroy the world. More »
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Scientists have discovered how to make polyhedral cages that are so tiny they can capture ions and molecules, and cut them off from reacting. These self-assembling supramolecular cage are crystal lattices, and they're so tiny, the internal volume only makes up 2,200 cubic anstroms. More »
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Scientists have begun to use DNA as a building material to make shapes. Usually those shapes are simple, but recently they managed to make a 3D vase out of human DNA. More »
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Not only is graphene cheap, easy-to-make, and compact, it also manages to cool itself down when it's part of a transistor. More »
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By creating a new coating for plastic out of clay, scientists have found a way to keep our food fresh, longer. More »
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Researchers have fabricated a lattice out of gold and virus fragments. It could make your computer much faster. And turn it into a biological machine. More »
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Scientists at Berkeley have created a laser that's a fraction of the size of a hair. This ultra-tiny laser is so precise that its beam can detect individual molecules. More »
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Using focused ion beams, nanoscientists wrote the entire periodic table of elements onto a single human hair, and filmed the whole thing for your edification. As a bonus, watch them etch a Christmas greeting onto a snowflake! More »
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Although they can't stick the thermometer any of the usual places, researchers have found a way to take the temperature of a single molecule. How? A ray of light. More »
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The key to nanotechnology may not be making tiny structures out of individual molecules. It may be forcing those structures to build themselves. And scientists appear to have found a way to make that happen. More »
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This week researchers announced they'd used a microscopic "carbon cage" to hold a single water molecule. How did they do it? More »
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Proving that our childhood years spent with crayola firmly in hand haven't gone to waste, new research from University of Wisconsin-Madison uses a scanning probe microscope to draw and erase conducting nanowires. The researchers put three-atom-thick layers of lanthanum-aluminum-oxide on top of strontium-titanium-oxide, which then forms an "electron gas" between the layers. The tip of the microscope is then used to turn the gas layer conductive, allowing the team to draw, and erase, nanowire lines in order to create delicate nano-scale circuits. More »
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The mid-1990s was the heyday of Vertigo Comics, DC's trippy, grown-up imprint. But one of the best Vertigo-esque comics appeared instead, almost unnoticed, on DC's Milestone Imprint. And after 14 years, the unsettling supernatural nanotechnology tale XOMBI is coming back. More »
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Möbius strips are special loops that only have one continuous side. Now we've built the smallest Möbius strips ever - out of DNA. Here you can see the nanometer-sized DNA loops, folded like origami. More »
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The micronium is a musical instrument with strings a millionth of an inch thick, and thanks to some nifty engineering it's the tiniest instrument ever producing audible notes. This really is the world's tiniest violin, but it's playing for everybody. More »
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Microprocessors are getting so tiny that they're actually small enough for quantum mechanics to start affecting their performance. That's bad news for traditional computing, but it's led to a breakthrough in spintronics, getting us a step closer to quantum computers. More »
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Even the most efficient engine wastes a lot of the energy it produces in the form of excess heat. But thanks to a little quantum trickery, we can reclaim that heat...and maybe help save the ozone layer in the process. More »
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Though science fiction often mangles scientific truths, it is nevertheless a genre that is highly influenced by the latest trends in scientific thought and research. Here are some of the scientific (and semi-scientific) ideas that have influenced SF the most. More »
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Nanoparticles are tiny objects inserted into the body and used to deliver drugs to sick cells. They could revolutionize medicine - as long as we can prevent these untested particles from becoming accidentally toxic. More »
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A new "tea bag" uses nano-fibers to suck contaminants and bacteria out of water, providing a desperately-needed, cheap solution for the billions of people without clean drinking water. More »
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In order to achieve levels of nanotechnology depicted in science fiction, we need to build machines one atom at a time. We're not there yet, but now we've got a powerful, indirect way to manipulate individual atoms. More »
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We are one very big step closer to sending robots into our body for long-term, complex missions. New nano-generators can turn mechanical energy - like that of flowing blood - into electricity needed to power nanobots. More »
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What you see here is one of the 128 groups of "feet" that allow a centipede-like microrobot to move around. Made from an old microchip, this robot can carry a record-breaking seven times its own weight and has unprecedented mobility. More »
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A new dental therapy could repair damaged nerves inside teeth, making root canals a thing of the past. And it's all done with an ultrathin layer of nanofilm. More »
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In the following essay, Jennifer Ouellette explores what happens when otherwise normal science documentaries attempt to give their topics dramatic flourish...and fail hard. More »
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Many diabetics endure daily finger pricks to test their blood sugar levels. But advances in nanotechnology could soon mean that diabetics need endure the needle only once: to get a glucose-tracking tattoo. More »
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It may look like some diagrams and a few blobs, but what you're seeing here is nothing short of a nanotech revolution. Four nanorobots made of DNA are interacting on an "assembly line" in order to build a tiny device. More »
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Ever wonder what it would mean to upgrade your power outlets? I'm not talking about green energy. These two technologies will fundamentally change what we mean by "electricity." More »
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The behavior of just a few molecules of hydrogen peroxide in your cells could give you cancer. But scientists have difficulty tracking individual molecules emerging from your body. That changed last weekend, and could transform cancer treatments. More »
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Scientists may be able to explode individual cancer cells — by implanting nanoparticles into the cells and then hitting them with lasers to create "nanobubbles," which can grow until they burst the cells. More »
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For several years, we've had nanomachines with buckyball wheels, able to traverse a gold surface. But these nanocars are tricky to control. Now scientists are staging nanocar races to figure how to make the tiny machines go really, really fast. More »
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While it may look like some sort of metallic snowstorm, this is actually an assortment of tiny photovoltaic cells, each less than a millimeter across. And these minuscule cells could be the versatile, flexible future of solar power. More »
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For diabetics, finger pricking could be a thing of the past. A biochemical engineer has developed contact lenses embedded with nanoparticles that react with the glucose in tears. As glucose levels change, so does the color of the lens. [PopSci] More »
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The "killer app" of current nanotechnology is the carbon nanotube, which could revolutionize circuit boards and other technologies. But these nanoscopic tubes also cause a new kind of industrial disease that could scar your lungs and give you cancer. More »
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