Within a few decades we will use these nanomachines to manufacture consumer goods at the molecular level, piecing together one atom or molecule at a time to make baseballs, telephones and cars.
This is the goal of nanotechnology. As televisions, airplanes and computers revolutionised the world in the last century, scientists claim that nanotechnology will have an even more profound effect this century.
Nanotechnology is an umbrella term that covers many areas of research dealing with objects that are measured in nanometers. A nanometer (nm) is a billionth of a metre, or a millionth of a millimetre.
Nanotechnology is a hybrid science combining engineering and chemistry. Atoms and molecules stick together because they have complementary shapes that lock together, or charges that attract.
Just like with magnets, a positively charged atom will stick to a negatively charged atom.
As millions of these atoms are pieced together by nanomachines, a specific product will begin to take shape.
The goal of nanotechnology is to manipulate atoms individually and place them in a pattern to produce a desired structure. There are three steps to achieving nanotechnology-produced goods.
ONE: scientists must be able to manipulate individual atoms.
TWO: they must develop nanoscopic machines called assemblers, that can be programmed to manipulate atoms and molecules at will.
It will take thousands of years for a single assembler to produce any kind of material one atom at a time.
Trillions of assemblers will be needed to -develop products in a viable timeframe.
THREE: in order to create enough assemblers to build consumer goods, some nanomachines, called replicators, will be programmed to build more assemblers.
Trillions of assemblers and replicators will fill an area smaller than a cubic millimetre, and still be too small for us to see with the naked eye.
Assemblers and replicators will work together like hands to automatically construct products, and will eventually replace all traditional labour methods.
This will vastly decrease manufacturing costs, thereby making consumer goods plentiful, cheaper and stronger.
Much of the research will take more than 20 years to complete but the process itself could touch off a new industrial revolution.
The potential effects of nanotechnology include among others, the ability to construct stronger fibres, replicate anything, including water and food.
In the computer industry, the ability to shrink the size of transistors on silicon microprocessors will soon reach its limits.
Nanotechnology will be needed to create a new generation of computer components. Molecular computers could contain storage devices capable of storing trillions of bytes of information in a structure the size of a sugar cube.
Nanotechnology will have its biggest impact on the medical industry. Patients will drink fluids containing nanorobots programmed to attack and reconstruct the molecular structure of cancer cells and viruses to make them harmless.
Other applications include increasing life expectancy, performing delicate surgery and altering your physical appearance.
Nanotechnology has the potential to have a positive impact on the environment. Also our dependence on non-renewable resources would diminish.
Many resources could be constructed by nanomachines. Cutting down trees, mining coal or drilling for oil may no longer be necessary.
If nanotechnology is, in fact, realised, it might be the human race's greatest scientific achievement yet, completely changing every aspect of the way we live.