Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

have unpredictable effects on the battlefield, and could easily escalate to a nuclear confrontation.
    All the arguments mentioned in this chapter, as we have seen, involved the manipulation of genes, proteins, and molecules. Then the next question naturally arises: How far can we manipulate individual atoms?

The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom.
    —RICHARD FEYNMAN, NOBEL LAUREATE
    Nanotechnology has given us the tools to play with the ultimate toy box of nature—atoms and molecules. Everything is made from these, and the possibilities to create new things appear limitless.
    —HORST STORMER, NOBEL LAUREATE
    The role of the infinitely small is infinitely large.
    —LOUIS PASTEUR

4 NANOTECHNOLOGY Everything from Nothing?
    The mastery of tools is a crowning achievement that distinguishes humanity from the animals. According to Greek and Roman mythology, this process began when Prometheus, taking pity on the plight of humans, stole the precious gift of fire from Vulcan’s furnace. But this act of thievery enraged the gods. To punish humanity, Zeus devised a clever trick. He asked Vulcan to forge a box and a beautiful woman out of metal. Vulcan created this statue, called Pandora, and then magically brought her to life, and told her never to open the box. Out of curiosity, one day she did, and unleashed all the winds of chaos, misery, and suffering in the world, leaving only hope in the box.
    So from Vulcan’s divine furnace emerged both the dreams and the suffering of the human race. Today, we are designing revolutionary new machines that are the ultimate tools, forged from individual atoms. But will they unleash the fire of enlightenment and knowledge or the winds of chaos?
    Throughout human history, the mastery of tools has determined our fate. When the bow and arrow were perfected thousands of years ago, it meant that we could fire projectiles much farther than our hands could throw them, increasing the efficiency of our hunting and increasing our food supply. When metallurgy was invented around 7,000 years ago, it meant that we could replace huts of mud and straw and eventually create great buildings that soared above the earth. Soon, empires began to rise from the forest and the desert, built by the tools forged from metals.
    And now we are on the brink of mastering yet another type of tool, much more powerful than anything we have seen before. This time, we will be able to master the atoms themselves out of which everything is created. Within this century, we may possess the most important tool ever imagined—nanotechnology that will allow us to manipulate individual atoms. This could begin a second industrial revolution, as molecular manufacturing creates new materials we can only dream about today, which are super-strong, superlight, with amazing electrical and magnetic properties.
    Nobel laureate Richard Smalley has said, “ The grandest dream of nano technology is to be able to construct with the atom as the building block.” Philip Kuekes of Hewlett-Packard said, “ Eventually, the goal is not just to make computers the size of dust particles. The idea would be to make simple computers the size of bacteria. Then you could get something as powerful as what’s now on your desktop into a dust particle.”
    This is not just the hope of starry-eyed visionaries. The U.S. government takes it seriously. In 2009, because of nanotechnology’s immense potential for medical, industrial, aeronautical, and commercial applications, the National Nanotechnology Initiative allocated $1.5 billion for research. The government’s National Science Foundation Nanotechnology Report states, “ Nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human performance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and foods, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses. …”
    Ultimately, the world economy and fate of nations may depend on this. Around 2020 or soon afterward, Moore’s law will begin to falter and perhaps eventually collapse. The world economy could be thrown into disarray unless physicists can find a suitable replacement for silicon transistors to power our computers. The solution to the problem may come from nanotechnology.
    Nanotechnology might also, perhaps by the end of this century, create a machine that only the gods can wield, a machine that can create anything out of almost nothing.
    THE QUANTUM WORLD
    The