Nanotech is the engineering of matter so tiny, it's measured in nanometres. That's one-billionth of a metre - or about the distance your fingernail grows every second. But over the last decade, tinkering with tiny things has become seriously big business.
We start with a bang in the year 2000, when the US government gave three billion dollars to the nanotech industry. Nine years later, and nanotech has helped produce more than one thousand new products, with four released every week.
Today nanotech can be found everywhere - your socks can contain silver, to prevent bacteria and smelly feet. Sunscreens now come out clear, thanks to nanoparticles of titanium dioxide. And chocolate milkshakes can have fine clusters of nano-cocoa. It's also making drugs, microchips, lights, and batteries more efficient.
But as nanotech products become more common, it's wise to be cautious. We don't fully understand if such small materials are safe for our health, or if we might create nano-robots that run free and reprogram our brains, and turn our world into a mass of grey goo.
What does the next ten years hold? We're not sure yet, but we do know that this really small stuff is changing our world in a really big way.
- Producer: Daniel Keogh
- Camera: Daniel Keogh
- Editor: NARRATION: Daniel Keogh
Comments for this story are closed. No new comments can be added.
08 Sep 2011 9:42:11pm-
on anengineeringscale nanotechnologyis import ondiscoveryofnew materiallike light weight and strongstuffused foraerospace tobuild stonger fuselage and wing,etc