A doctor injects a cancer patient with microscopic gold spheres that hunt down and stick to tumors. She then shines a harmless invisible light through the body. The light warms the spheres, frying the tumors while allowing nearby tissue to thrive.
This is where the next big thing in science may occur -- on the ultra-small nanoscale, a physical netherworld where the laws of gravity begin to give way to the forces of quantum mechanics. It's a frontier where atoms and molecules behave in unexpected, sometimes almost magical ways.
The possibilities, some near and some distant, range from bullet-proof battle jackets weighing no more than a rain coat to self-repairing highway concrete.
Such innovations can no longer be considered far-fetched, scientists and tech entrepreneurs say, because the field of nanotechnology has matured to the point that the question may no longer be if but rather when the nano-revolution comes, be it five years or 50.
Yet if Houston, already a hotbed for nanotechnology research, wants to cash in on possibly the next great technology gold rush it must act now, said Conrad Masterson, a Houston entrepreneur and nanotech promoter.
"This could be as important to Houston as Spindletop," he said.
But wrenching profits from this potential gusher will require more than the patience the city's boom-and-bust mentality has historically afforded. Any investment made today in nanotechnology might not see a payoff for a decade or more.
For all its promise over the past 15 years, nanotechnology has delivered but a handful of innovations -- such as better sunscreen and wrinkle-free pants -- but that has done little to dampen the spirits of enthusiasts for the science of nanotechnology, so named for the nanometer, one-billionth of a meter.
More and more, government budget writers who hold the purse strings to research funding are joining the ranks of nanotech enthusiasts.
This year, spending under the National Nanotechnology Initiative will rise about 17 percent, to US$679 million, continuing an upward spiral. Japan will spend almost as much. Worldwide spending by governments will eclipse US$2 billion as nations don't want to miss a possible economic windfall.
The National Science Foundation estimates the market for nanotechnology-related products and services will reach US$1 trillion by 2015.
Seeing appllications
Neal Lane, the science adviser who convinced President Clinton to begin increasing nanotechnology funding in the 2001 budget, said he became a believer in the field when he saw the country's top scientists flocking to the discipline.
"While the science is interesting, we thought here was an opportunity to begin seeing applications really soon," Lane said. "The science is moving so rapidly."
Nanotechnology is also rapidly moving into the public conscience.
Once the province of edgy science fiction or technical magazines, it is now the subject Prey, a bestseller by popular novelist Michael Crichton, based on nanomachines run amok. Written like a movie script, undoubtedly it will soon be a blockbuster.
And in Houston's schools, because of a federal grant, Rice University is bringing nanotechnology education into classrooms.
Increasingly precise engineering opened the world of nanotechnology to scientists in the early 1980s.
In 1981, scientists built a microscope that took pictures on the atomic scale and soon were manipulating matter that is 70,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. In some cases they were making objects only a few atoms wide.
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