Micronautics? Maybe you have heard this word before, but as I typed it in my word processor the spell-checker highlighted it right away. So it is not in the dictionary yet. It will be there one day. How soon this will happen? I guess it depends on our techno progress, but I am sure: we need it.
The subject of micronautics was explored in sci-fi for a while. I remember one short story about a guy who carried a friendly nano-robot inside his body. The robot was scouting his blood vessels and cleaning them from all possible contaminants. Sometimes it entertained the fellow with insightful talks, until one day the host almost choked on a clam and good robot pushed the thing out of his airways. Sadly, the robot was too small, so it was lost in a spit.
"Being lost in a spit" is a pretty graphic descriptor of dimensions for a nano-vehicle. Comparing to our cars (trailer trucks for safer assumption) measured in meters, nano-vehicle would have similar dimensions in microns. Million times smaller in length than a car: what else could be worth an effort of such a fine contrivance if not a micro-space of a human body? When micronautics, i.e. capacity to navigate and operate in microspace will be developed as much, as modern aeronautics, our benefits from it will be immense. It will be a revolution of medicine: our bodies can be guarded from the threats of deceases from atherosclerosis to everything caused by bacteria and viruses, including AIDS and if necessary operated from within.
Richard Feynman, great American physicist and Noble Prize winner once put the whole plot described above in a few words: "Swallow your doctor". He was quoting Albert Hibbs, Feynmans graduate student, who actually came up with the idea (R. Feynman, Theres Plenty of Room on the Bottom, 1959). Yes, the room seems just immense. What if nano-robots will evolve from blood janitors into something that can establish a direct communication with our brains? Plugging into axons, sending an info, giving orders Swallowing your doctor, tax accountant, Spanish teacher, parole officer, Big Brother the possibilities go from marvelous to scary. Perhaps, freedom of will will need a constitutional protection at some point. Hopefully, not too soon, we still have an ocean of fundamental problems to solve before this will become an issue.
How much time it will take to develop sophisticated micronautic vehicles? It took a century to produce excellent aeronautic machines of today, so, considering the acceleration of our techno progress, we may build working micronautic machinery pretty soon. One of the "easiest" parts will be the development of propulsion systems for nano-robots. However, even here is a problem. One cannot merely scale down to microns exiting engines, because when one is going down the scale from meters to microns, the physical properties of materials, as well as dominating physical processes, will change. In particular, the engine for a nano-vehicle must have very few moving parts. How then such engine would work?
Beamed-energy propulsion (BEP) is a right way for moving nano-vehicles. Majority of BEP applications are designed for space. The principle of the process is relatively simple: energy is beamed to the spacecraft from a separate and often remote source. In real life this likely will be a space-borne high-power laser. In order to get "beamed", the spacecraft collects and focuses the incident laser beam on some solid propellant. Under high focus, propellant instantaneously vaporizes into energetic, often ionized exhaust, which propels the vehicle by rocket principle. This is one of possible BEP scenarios, called ablative laser propulsion. There are other schemes, but when we are switching from "the space" to micro-space, the main question is: who would voluntarily agree to rocket launches inside his (her) veins and arteries?
Fortunately, at nano-scales there are alternative, soft ways to convert the beamed energy into mechanical motion. Aside from blood cells, our blood vessels are filled with plasma, a liquid with 90% water. Many bacteria are moving in our blood using so-called flagellum, a helical-shaped tale, which acts as a propeller. The same mechanics can be used for nano-robots. Our bodies are transparent to magnetic fields. The energy can be beamed in a form of electromagnetic (EM) waves of relatively low frequency (it can be also done with x-rays, but we dont need to go there). In the simplest case, the engine, essentially a conducting nano-loop or solenoid, can be made rotating or wiggling under one or several EM beams. With flagellum rigidly attached on a side of the loop or just as continuation of a solenoid, the nano-vehicle will move in the same fashion, as a spirochete or spermatozoon, with direction of motion set by driving EM beam.
50 years ago Richard Feynman had predicted that nano-robots will be driven by electric motors feed from external electromagnetic fields. Yet, there are some alternative ways to propel nano-vehicles. For example, professors Shiho and Yabe from Tokyo Tech University worked on a micro-craft driven by x-rays. Today micronautics moves from the realm of sci-fi to the real science, becoming a subject of study by physicists and engineers. International Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion (ISBEP) is expected to continue the discussion of micronautics opened there by Shiho and Yabe in 2002. ISBEP 6 will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona in November 2009.
The subject of micronautics was explored in sci-fi for a while. I remember one short story about a guy who carried a friendly nano-robot inside his body. The robot was scouting his blood vessels and cleaning them from all possible contaminants. Sometimes it entertained the fellow with insightful talks, until one day the host almost choked on a clam and good robot pushed the thing out of his airways. Sadly, the robot was too small, so it was lost in a spit.
"Being lost in a spit" is a pretty graphic descriptor of dimensions for a nano-vehicle. Comparing to our cars (trailer trucks for safer assumption) measured in meters, nano-vehicle would have similar dimensions in microns. Million times smaller in length than a car: what else could be worth an effort of such a fine contrivance if not a micro-space of a human body? When micronautics, i.e. capacity to navigate and operate in microspace will be developed as much, as modern aeronautics, our benefits from it will be immense. It will be a revolution of medicine: our bodies can be guarded from the threats of deceases from atherosclerosis to everything caused by bacteria and viruses, including AIDS and if necessary operated from within.
Richard Feynman, great American physicist and Noble Prize winner once put the whole plot described above in a few words: "Swallow your doctor". He was quoting Albert Hibbs, Feynmans graduate student, who actually came up with the idea (R. Feynman, Theres Plenty of Room on the Bottom, 1959). Yes, the room seems just immense. What if nano-robots will evolve from blood janitors into something that can establish a direct communication with our brains? Plugging into axons, sending an info, giving orders Swallowing your doctor, tax accountant, Spanish teacher, parole officer, Big Brother the possibilities go from marvelous to scary. Perhaps, freedom of will will need a constitutional protection at some point. Hopefully, not too soon, we still have an ocean of fundamental problems to solve before this will become an issue.
How much time it will take to develop sophisticated micronautic vehicles? It took a century to produce excellent aeronautic machines of today, so, considering the acceleration of our techno progress, we may build working micronautic machinery pretty soon. One of the "easiest" parts will be the development of propulsion systems for nano-robots. However, even here is a problem. One cannot merely scale down to microns exiting engines, because when one is going down the scale from meters to microns, the physical properties of materials, as well as dominating physical processes, will change. In particular, the engine for a nano-vehicle must have very few moving parts. How then such engine would work?
Beamed-energy propulsion (BEP) is a right way for moving nano-vehicles. Majority of BEP applications are designed for space. The principle of the process is relatively simple: energy is beamed to the spacecraft from a separate and often remote source. In real life this likely will be a space-borne high-power laser. In order to get "beamed", the spacecraft collects and focuses the incident laser beam on some solid propellant. Under high focus, propellant instantaneously vaporizes into energetic, often ionized exhaust, which propels the vehicle by rocket principle. This is one of possible BEP scenarios, called ablative laser propulsion. There are other schemes, but when we are switching from "the space" to micro-space, the main question is: who would voluntarily agree to rocket launches inside his (her) veins and arteries?
Fortunately, at nano-scales there are alternative, soft ways to convert the beamed energy into mechanical motion. Aside from blood cells, our blood vessels are filled with plasma, a liquid with 90% water. Many bacteria are moving in our blood using so-called flagellum, a helical-shaped tale, which acts as a propeller. The same mechanics can be used for nano-robots. Our bodies are transparent to magnetic fields. The energy can be beamed in a form of electromagnetic (EM) waves of relatively low frequency (it can be also done with x-rays, but we dont need to go there). In the simplest case, the engine, essentially a conducting nano-loop or solenoid, can be made rotating or wiggling under one or several EM beams. With flagellum rigidly attached on a side of the loop or just as continuation of a solenoid, the nano-vehicle will move in the same fashion, as a spirochete or spermatozoon, with direction of motion set by driving EM beam.
50 years ago Richard Feynman had predicted that nano-robots will be driven by electric motors feed from external electromagnetic fields. Yet, there are some alternative ways to propel nano-vehicles. For example, professors Shiho and Yabe from Tokyo Tech University worked on a micro-craft driven by x-rays. Today micronautics moves from the realm of sci-fi to the real science, becoming a subject of study by physicists and engineers. International Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion (ISBEP) is expected to continue the discussion of micronautics opened there by Shiho and Yabe in 2002. ISBEP 6 will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona in November 2009.
About the Author:
Andrew Pakhomov is founder and president of American Institute of Beamed Energy Propulsion, a nonprofit scientific organization serving to development and popularization of this technology of the future AIBEP He is also associate professor of physics at University of Alabama in Huntsville. To discover more about emerging field of beamed-energy propulsion and related research, please visit official web site of AIBEP.
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