You may have noticed that the word “nano” can be found practically everywhere these days. It’s been in the scientific press for a while, and now it’s regularly showing up in mainstream newspapers, magazines and the TV news. Apple even used it as a name for one of their MP3 players.

So what is nano?

Well, from a scientist’s perspective, nano means something more specific than an mp3 player. In Greek, nano literally means dwarf, so nano is about very small stuff. It is short for nanoscale science and the technologies based on that science. It’s a relatively new kind of science that explores matter and its properties at the scale at which life organizes itself.

In the last two decades, scientists have developed tools, called scanning probe microscopes, that allow us to manipulate and control matter at the atomic and molecular scale. These microscopes use very, very fine tips to scan, push, prod, poke and pull nanoscale size objects to investigate their properties and behaviors.

What’s the Big Deal?

So, you might ask yourself why this matters. We’ve been working with atoms and molecules for a long, long time, haven’t we? Aristotle talked about matter being composed of atoms, right?

That’s true, but it’s not the whole story. What makes nanoscale science a big deal is that for the first time we can control individual atoms and molecules. We can arrange matter in novel ways, producing never before seen properties and behaviors. Nanoscale tools allow us to learn more how matter behaves at a very small scale, giving us the opportunity to understand and manipulate biological systems, materials, electronics, pharmaceuticals —really everything— in ways we never could before. Our ability to understand and influence the world around us has never been greater, and that power is being fueled by nanoscale science.

The U.S. government is so optimistic about the potential of nanoscale science and the technologies it produces that it proposed to invest almost $1.5 billion in FY08 in nano research. The practice of medicine, the development of pharmaceuticals, high-tech equipment, nearly all consumer products—basically everything that we come into contact with—is being re-thought through the lens of nanoscale technologies.

Societal and Ethical Implications

We’ve had amazing technological promises made to us before, and not all of them have worked out too well. DDT was supposed to transform agriculture so we could eliminate world hunger, but it nearly eliminated birds of prey that were driven to the brink of extinction. Asbestos was supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, but turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. What about nanotechnology?

The reality is that we just don’t know what the potential impacts of the novel properties and behaviors of nanoscale materials will be. We know that there will be both intended and unintended consequences of this research and its resulting applications, but how much risk should we take? Who should regulate this research? Do we have the appropriate laws and infrastructure in place to ensure public safety? These questions are not fully answered.

Some groups are calling for caution, and some outright moratoriums, on continued work in nano until we better understand the potential impacts.

The Museum of Life and Science will be exploring these societal and ethical questions now and in the future through a series of ongoing forums for the general public where we plan to ask participants from all walks of life to weigh in on the pressing questions of the day after hearing from experts on the question at hand. For example, we recently held a forum and asked participants to consider who should decide the questions above—the government, experts or scientists?

 

Illustration above: Artist rendition of an experiment in which a carbon nantoube lying on a graphite surface was touched by a metal coated AFM tip (shown as a gold object from above touching the CNT). The red indicates the putative electronic current flow running from the AFM tip through the carbon nantube and into the graphite surface. This study was performed using the nanoManipulator and showed that the resistance bewtween the CNT and the graphite surface depended on the angle between the CNT carbon lattice and the graphite lattice. Image created by Rajeev Dessani. Courtesy of R. Dessani and Mike Falvo, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill