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Essay / Tiny robots in your blood: the future of...
The idea of microscopic robots traveling through your body may sound like a 1960s science fiction novel, but, in the next decade, it could become a scientific fact. Imagine clogged arteries being swept out, cancer cells detected and destroyed, and kidney stones dissolved, all done by tiny robots, eliminating the need for costly and invasive surgery. These are just some of the possible applications of nanotechnology in medicine, also known as nanomedicine. Nanomedicine can dramatically improve medicine and healthcare beyond our imagination. Nanotechnology was first mentioned in 1959 in a lecture given by physicist Richard Feynman. Although he did not use the term, he described a process by which a pair of normal-sized robotic arms would construct a copy of itself that was one-tenth its size. This pair of arms would continue the process and so on until the arms reach the size of a molecule. (Patel 63) This would be the level of nanotechnology. Nano comes from the Greek word meaning “dwarf”. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter and when we talk about nanotechnology, we are talking about devices on the scale of 1 to 100 nanometers. To help visualize how small this is, a germ is about 1,000 nm wide, a human hair is about 100,000 nm wide. (Marchant, GE 231)The scanning tunneling microscope, invented in 1981 by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, allowed humans to see individual atoms. Both Binnig and Rohrer worked as physicists for the computer company IBM. The atomic force microscope was invented a few years later and allowed the user to move atoms using a feeler with an extremely small, sharp needle on the end that allowed the user to see and move the atoms in the middle paper. ......and we will be able to create our own virtual realities that will integrate all of our senses, expanding our intelligence in ways we cannot imagine. Nanomedicine will give rise to AI by providing humans with extremely detailed analyzes and diagrams of the human brain and how it works. Ultimately, AI will be able to think and have emotional responses using information collected by nanobots. The two technologies will power each other, creating a world perhaps wilder than any science fiction novel ever written. (Kurzweil 40-46) It is clear that nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize health care and even transport humanity to the next evolutionary leap, but great care must be taken to ensure that we get there safely. security. Once technology becomes smarter than humanity, we may no longer be able to control our destiny.