During a visit to the doctor, you get the bad news. Various tests that have been performed on you have uncovered the fact that you have a cancer. It is a very aggressive, malignant form of cancer. The doctor gives you your options, which include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. He gives you your chances of survival, which are not good. Nevertheless, you submit to a treatment regime, which involves side effects such as nausea and pain. The progress of your cancer is slowed, but not stopped. Within a few short months of agony and rapidly deteriorating heath, you are dead.

Now imagine another visit to the doctor. He gives you the same bad news. However, he is able to give you an injection right there in the office. During a follow up visit about two weeks later, tests indicate that your cancer has been totally eradicated. You have many years of happy, productive life ahead of you.

How is the second scenario possible?

The answer lays in a new science known as nanotechnology.

What is Nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology concerns the development of machines and other devices on the molecular level. The term was developed to describe the vision of physicist Dr. Richard Feynman’s vision of using nanomachines, defined as having features less than a hundred nanometers across, to manufacture products, including other nanomachines. This idea was further developed by Dr. K. Eric Dexler in his book Engines of Creation. It would allow the manufacture of products with atomic precision, with superior materials and at much lower cost.

Nanotechnology has grown to be descriptive of other applications as well, including chemistry, materials science, microelectronics, and biotechnology. Some of the hoped for products that will come out of nanotechnology research include home computers with billions of processors, super strong, super light materials, such as carbon nanotubes, high power, high density motors and generators, and better techniques for destroying pathogens and cancer cells.