Saturday, May 08, 2004

The Wonderful World of NanoKids


nanokidFrom the U.S. Department of Officially Sanctioned Imagination:

    Q. How did you get the idea for NanoKids?

    Dr. Tour: I was bothered by press reports about nanobots, that they will reproduce, do bad things, even eat us as a source of carbon! No matter how many times I said, "No, this is not going to happen. Nanomaterials are smaller than DNA; they are not going to function like that." the reporters didn't write about that.

    So I thought, "Okay, you want nanobots, I'll give you nanobots!" More here

Update: On my way to looking up something else, I ran into this quote from Jim Tour in the Houston Chronicle:

    Nanotechnology sounded more like science fiction than science in the early 1990s, even among theoretical physicists and chemists. Tour says he was laughed at, even ridiculed, by his peers for his work.

    "Scientists can be extremely closed-minded," Tour says. "I've had reviews from my peers slamming my work for years." More here

Somehow, between then and now, the phrase: "not going to happen" entered Dr. Tour's vocabulary.

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