[00:11.60]WARMING UP
[00:16.04]"How many new uses can you think of for the folowing items?"
[00:36.49]reminds us of the appearance of nanotechnology,
[00:53.76]according to which nothing is useless and
[01:04.91]no garbage or waste material to speak of
[01:13.17]Everything can be broken up into very small things
[01:23.80]and be made use of.
[01:31.25]The word nano is a scientific term for anything one billionth of a meter long.
[01:49.58]The idea behind it was
[01:54.34]first proposed by Nobel Prize winning scientist Richard Feynman
[02:02.10]in 1959.It was later developed in more detail by Eric Drexler,
[02:10.85]a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT)
[02:50.79]He now heads the Foresight Institute,
[02:57.74]a group tormed to encourage research and regulation of all aspects of nanotechnology
[03:24.49]for eric drexler,the benefits of nano technology are literally universal.
[04:00.04]They include space exploration vehicles,which will be cheap to produce because they will only
[04:09.50]need very small rockets.
[04:24.33]More generally,
[04:29.06]humans will be finally able to understand how things really work
[04:37.24]how atoms combine to produce materials with certain qualities.
[05:13.68]"Nanotechnology is expected to touch almost every aspect of our lives,"he says
[05:23.63]"Once we have the ability to structure a molecule,
[05:29.38]we should be able to create systems that will scrub the toxins
[05:37.03](=poisonous things)from the air or remove
[05:42.80]hazardous organisms for the water we drink.
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