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

explanation. The quantum theory has only one thing going for it: it is correct. Its accuracy has been measured to one part in ten billion, making it the most successful physical theory of all time.
    The reason we don’t see these incredible phenomena in daily life is because we are composed of trillions upon trillions of atoms, and these effects, in some sense, average out.
    MOVING INDIVIDUAL ATOMS
    Richard Feynman dreamed of the day when a physicist could manufacture any molecule, atom for atom. That seemed impossible back in 1959, but part of that dream is now a reality.
    I had a chance to witness this up close, when I visited the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. I came to observe a remarkable instrument, the scanning tunneling microscope, which allows scientists to view and manipulate individual atoms. This device was invented by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer of IBM, for which they won the Nobel Prize in 1986. (I remember, as a child, my teacher telling us that we would never be able to see atoms. They are just too small, he said. By then, I had already decided to become an atomic scientist. I realized that I would spend the rest of my life studying something I would never be able to observe directly. But today, not only can we see atoms, but we can play with them, with atomic tweezers.)
    The scanning tunneling microscope is actually not a microscope at all. It resembles an old phonograph. A fine needle (with a tip that is only a single atom across) passes slowly over the material being analyzed. A small electrical current travels from the needle, through the material, to the base of the instrument. As the needle passes over the object, the electrical current changes slightly every time it passes over an atom. After multiple passes, the machine prints out the stunning outline of the atom itself. Using an identical needle, the microscope is then capable not just of recording these atoms but also of moving them around. In this way, one can spell out the letters, such as the initials IBM, and in fact even design primitive machines built out of atoms.
    (Another recent invention is the atomic force microscope, which can give us stunning 3-D pictures of arrays of atoms. The atomic force microscope also uses the needle with a very small point, but it shines a laser onto it. As the needle passes over the material being studied, the needle jiggles, and this motion is recorded by the laser beam image.)
    I found that moving individual atoms around was quite simple. I sat in front of a computer screen, looking at a series of white spheres, each resembling a Ping-Pong ball about an inch across. Actually, each ball was an individual atom. I placed the cursor over an atom and then movedthe cursor to another position. I pushed a button that then activated the needle to move the atom. The microscope rescanned the substance. The screen changed, showing that the ball had moved to precisely where I wanted it.
    The whole process took only a minute to move each atom to any position I wanted. In fact, in about thirty minutes, I found that I could actually spell out some letters on the screen, made of individual atoms. In an hour, I could make rather complex patterns involving ten or so atoms.
    I had to recover from the shock that I had actually moved individual atoms, something that was once thought to be impossible.
    MEMS AND NANOPARTICLES
    Although nanotechnology is still in its infancy, it has already generated a booming commercial industry in chemical coatings. By spraying thin layers of chemicals only a few molecules thick onto a commercial product, one can make it more resistant to rust or change its optical properties. Other commercial applications today are stain-resistant clothing, enhanced computer screens, stronger metal-cutting tools, and scratch-resistant coatings. In the coming years, more and more novel commercial products will be marketed that have microcoatings to improve their performance.
    For the most part, nanotechnology is still a very young science. But one aspect of nanotechnology is now beginning to affect the lives of everyone and has already blossomed into a lucrative $40 billion worldwide industry—microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)—that includes everything from ink-jet cartridges, air bag sensors, and displays to gyroscopes for cars and airplanes. MEMS are tiny machines so small they can easily fit on the tip of a needle. They are created using the same etching technology used in