josh@cs.rutgers.edu (11/21/89)
(forwarded by Bill Schell) SPECK POWER -- ... Even under a bright light, it looks like nothing more than a speck of dust. But magnified 160 times in an electron microscope, the speck begins to take on shape and function: a tiny gear with teeth the size of blood cells. "You have to be careful when handling these things," warns Kaigham Gabriel, an engineer at AT&T Bell Labs. "I've accidentally inhaled a few right into my lungs." ... Welcome to the world of microtechnology, where machines the size of sand grains are harnessed to do useful work. ... Scientists at ... AT&T [and others] ... envision armies of gnat-sized robots exploring space, performing surgery inside human bodies or possibly building skyscrapers one atom at a time. ... Time, p. 108, 11/20. [Hmm, let's see. Gnat-sized is about a millimeter. Following Eric's arguments but with gnat numbers, a gnat could replicate by building another gnat at 1000 atoms ber second, taking 10^20 seconds to finish. A small skyscraper contains at least 10^13 cubic mm of material; this requires 43 generations of gnats, or 140 trillion years. The SeaBees were right: the impossible does take a little longer. Time science reporters are innumerate. --JoSH]