Fantastic Voyage II: Nanotech Motors

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Robert Oszakiewski

When I was growing up, one of the local tv channels in Baltimore, after football season was over, devoted Sunday afternoons to running old movies. One of those films was Fantastic Voyage, a fairly slick 1966 sf film. The plot of the movie revolved around a submarine and its crew being shrunk to the point where they could be injected into a human vein with the mission of finding and dissolving a blood clot lodged in the brain of a scientist defecting from an unnamed Iron Curtain nation.

The plot and acting ranged from the thoroughly absurd to the god awful bad, but the special effects were top of the line for that period of film making (okay, the scene of Donald Pleasance' villain being devoured by a white blood cell that looks more like slowly poured soap bubbles is a hoot and a half, but it worked . . . sort of.) The image that stays in the mind is of the sub just gliding through the blood steam.

Fantastic Voyage leapt up from the depths of my memories while I was reading "How to Build Nanotech Motors" , by Thomas E. Mallouk and Ayusman Sen and published in the May issue of Scientific American briefly reviews nanocar experiments and focuses on two problems with nanocars: (1) how to power them and (2) how to steer them. The article discusses progress made in developing "motors" to power the nanomobile and controlling its direction via the manipulation of magnetic fields.

Mallouk and Sen's vision of the future of the nanocar is more one of nanotrucks, carrying cargoes of drugs to areas of the human body where no ordinary delivery system can reach. For example, anticancer medications could be carried directly to the site of the tumor and delivered without affecting the surrounding healthy cells, much as the crew of the sub reached their blood clot and dissolved it without damaging the other brain cells. This is one area of nanomedicine that I think everyone hopes will reach its full potential.

As for Fantastic Voyage,  the producers and director of Independence Day are working on a remake, scheduled to come out in 2010. If its anything like the remake of Godzilla, do yourself a favour and watch the original.

 

 

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Nanosurgery and being human

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Robert Oszakiewski

Larry Marsh is a columnist for the Kansas City Star. Judging from his recent article, "Stem Cells and Nanosurgery May Change What it Means to be Human", Mr. Marsh has either read or seen some really REALLY bad science fiction.

According to Mr. Marsh

Nanotechnology, which is just beginning to make its debut, may change what it means to be human.

Apparently nanosurgical techniques will accomplish this by speeding up the process of replacing damaged or aged body parts, such as knees or hips. Oh, and somewhere along the line, the human mind will merge with Google. Sorry Yahoo.

Having undergone surgery to replace a shoulder and having gone through the intial period of having to learn to accept that the replacement was part of me, I can understand Mr. Marsh's somewhat strained point, but knee and hip replacement surgeries have been around for sometime now and not too many people have reported not feeling human.

However, its his next idea that makes one step too many:

 What if nanosurgery ultimately allows us to transfer the mind out of the brain into silicon in a stainless steel model?

I don't know about anyone else, but I have two images that leap into my mind after reading that:

1) Spock's Brain, which anyone who has sat through it will painfully admit was probably the single worst ST:OS episode ever written

and

2) "The Colossus of New York". For anyone who hasn't seen it, "Colossus" is a much underrated film from the golden age of SF movies, the 1950's and is still the only film I know of where the film score uses a single piano and the music is based on Schoenberg's 12 tone system.

Marsh ends his article by suggesting that those of us who are growing older might want to consider placing an advance order with Microsoft for that new stainless steel body. Considering all the problems Microsoft had with Vista, you might want to wait until they get all the bugs worked out first.

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