Yesterday’s ‘Impossible’ Nanobots are Taking Flight Today
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1895
This is one of my favorite quotes, for many reasons. I think of it every time I read news like this about a DNA nanobot being developed for drug delivery. I enjoy it because it was just about a decade ago, when I first began to write about nanotechnology, that nanobots were derisively dismissed as impossible by many leading scientists. As a result, just the fact that I gave the possibility any ink at all in commentaries at Small Times magazine and on my old nanotech blog made my life as a reporter and editor a bit more difficult.
But, keeping in mind Lord Kelvin’s quote about the impossibility of flight, when I write about nanotech I try my best not to embarrass my future great-great-grandchildren who might someday go on an archaeological dig into the caves of the early Internet to see what kind of nonsense their ancestor wrote using stone knives and bearskins.
So, I think I did OK in giving a voice to the minority opinion.
Now, in this latest experiment in DNA nanobots (we’re calling them nanosized robots because they sense and react to their environment, but more on that later), the scientists used a technique called DNA origami, which I have written about in various contexts over the years. It was actually used as a part of an art exhibit at the MOMA, with tiny happy faces made using this technique.
With this new study described in Science, “A Logic-Gated Nanorobot for Targeted Transport of Molecular Payloads,” it sounds like DNA origami is moving beyond a novelty act and is finding a path forward to true nanotech enabled drug delivery.
Over the years, I have been in touch with the inventor of DNA origami, Caltech’s Paul Rothemund, so I recently used this news to knock out a note to him to congratulate him on the continued success of this technique and to ask him how he feels about helping to create the once-impossible nanobot.
I told him that I can remember when the “conventional wisdom” was that the nanobots of our imagination were not only declared to be impossible by leading scientists at the time, but that their images in popular culture were derided as harmful to the “real” nanotech research going on.
Professor Rothemund surprised me with a lengthy answer that covered, among other things, the issue of what to call these little buggers that sense and react. It might seem like simply a semantic issue, whether or not to call them nanobots, but I think there’s more involved that gets at what captures the public imagination — a factor that cannot be discounted in whether and how the public supports its continuing development.
The race, of course, will be between those carrying the torches and pitchforks saying, “impossible; presume harm,” and those who say, “possible; potential to save humanity.” It will be a close run race.
re #1:
unless the settled science of global warming kills us first.
Wait, aren’t we all dead from avian (swine? HK?) flu?
It’s hard to keep up!
last week there was an article in the news (finally) about the space elevator. as a long time proponent of this basic idea, it was fun to watch people making fun of it, whether the science behind it makes sense or not. the Japanese have grabbed the S.E. ball and started for the end zone. good for them.
science has always been the crazy uncle in the closet to humanity. even in our ‘who woulda thunk it’ society, with all the great scientific stuff out there that defines our society, we still see widespread joking about science trying to surge forward in new areas that could literally propel us into new dimensions of even more fantastic science stuff.
the old saying that there is nothing new under the sun is very true. what we are instructed to do is use what is given us, what we know, and sometimes what we see every day, and use it for the betterment of mankind. who knows, maybe the new age of enlightenment the Mayans were describing is within ourselves?
“do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightment” (dogen)
“by any resonable measure of achievement, the faith of enlightened thinkers was justified” (
The Royal Society is always trotted out, along with the APS and a few others, as exhibit A in the case for global warming. “So you know more than the Royal Society do you?”
The scientific consensus when Lord Kelvin spoke was also rock solid, more solid even than the “consensus” for AGW: the universe had been explained, physical laws were known, and there was nothing much left to discover. Eight years later came special relativity, and a few years later general relativity, then quantum physics.
Bear that in mind next time someone tells you “the science is settled”.
I’m sad because I read the headline was thinking that someone came up with actual flying nanobots. Which would be cool.
Still, great article.
No doubt Phineas and Ferb are working on it.
I always think of Genesis 11:6 when I read stuff like this.
I remember the debates about nanobots 10 years ago. The debate was really about nanobots based on nano-mechanical technology or “dry” nanotech. It was these kinds of bots that were considered impossible. These nanobots based on DNA are based on solution-phase chemistry, as is life itself. Solution-phase nanotechnology is definitely possible and will be developed over the next century or so.
We need this kind of technology, not only to cure aging and develop regeneration, but for space colonization as well.
BTW, I looked up the Genesis 11:6 quote, which is the “Tower of Babel” story. It seems to me that Christianity is promoting luddism with this story. I do not like luddism at all.
It’s not all that connected in context. The people were ordered by God to disperse and fill the earth. The people staying together and building the tower were disobeying.
Not really about the tech per se.
Some might refer to these remarkable advances as “intelligent design.”
Did Kelvin think birds are lighter than air? Very strange.
No, the “settled science” at the time was that human-originated engines and materials could never be powerful and light enough to make a functional aircraft. Most people don’t appreciate that one of the Wright brothers main innovations was a new type of small, lightweight gasoline engine. (The other was the wind-tunnel).
Lord Kelvin never said any such thing. Here’s what he actually did say to the Aeronautical society:
“I am afraid I am not in the flight for ‘aerial navigation.’ I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society.”
A pretty far cry from the mis-quote.
If it is a misquote, it is one made by many sources. I am open to the possibility that it might be a misquote passed on from generation to generation until it becomes “true.” However, I am not a historian and not qualified to make that determination. All I know is that he is widely quoted, by many sources, as having said it. If it turns out he did not, the main point of my piece still stands. Instead, substitute Lord Kelvin’s quote with the medical community’s initial dismissal of antiseptic surgery and read the piece from there. There are numerous other examples, as well, of established scientific thought being dead wrong on what is “settled.”
Well, imo, if it can be programmed with even the simplest ‘code’, it’s a robot…it’s at least a simple computing ‘machine.’ On/Off, Yes/no…
In view of past advances in technology, I expect we’ll see more dramatic results in less time than some people might think. If any specific area of bio-nanotech, for example, is given the full attention of a well-funded group, we’ll see many of those advances within a decade. The Human Genome Project is one example of such an effort. When it first began, most experts said that, even if it wasn’t impossible, it would take decades to finish the work. …some even proclaimed that it would take a hundred years. (Also see: Clarke’s Three Laws.)