'There's plenty of room at the bottom', but what if all of us go there?

First attempt at 3D illustrations

This blogpost was in my draft folder for quite a long time. I thought of putting it out now that I have tried making my first 3D science illustration. Although it might look like a 'Bundi cha ladu' to some people, this is an illustration of how a gold nanoparticle looks under the electron microscope. 

There was a time, during my student life when I was really fascinated by the world of Nanotechnology. I had been listening to talks by Nano scientists and researchers and I admired their work and experiments. The fact that amazed me the most was that if you scale down to the Nano level then the properties of the material change. I found the application of quantum dots, carbon nanotubes and graphene really cool. I decided to step into the field, as the famous quote by Richard Feynman: There's plenty of room at the bottom. Soon, I realized that there were too many people at the bottom. Every 4th scientist was synthesizing and working on nanoparticles. Thousands of papers were available on every application. Several nanomaterials had already been explored. 

I dropped the idea and began searching for something unique (the search is still going on). I do not know if that's the thing with anyone else or not, but I sometimes get into this mode of 'Is there anything left to be researched'? Then I go into the 'we know that all' mode of 19th century classical physicists. 

There might be many 'still unexplored' realms of modern science out there. There might also be a successor of Quantum mechanics or something really entirely new waiting for us somewhere. Who knows. 

Continuing with the Nano story. It's still nanoparticles, not the car. By the way, the car got its name from Nanotechnology because of its size. Also, the particles in Mayonnaise are Nano-sized, that is the reason it has that unique soft and creamy texture. Moving ahead. There's Nanorobotics and Nanomedicine. There's something called viral Nanotechnology. It seems that viruses lie exactly within the Nano range. So, they can be employed for synthesis of Nanoparticles by removing the genetic material and inserting our material of interest in its protein coat. For instance, a drug molecule. 

But what if a virus is pathogenic? To overcome this problem there is a very interesting solution. For example, plant viruses modified to nanoparticles could be used in animal cells. Since, viruses are host specific, plant viruses wouldn't have the receptors for the animal host to cause pathogenicity.  A quality of the virus being used for our benefit. Similar to a situation where people use our own virtues against us! 

This mechanism is really interesting. I guess the best part about science lies in its process: the way it works!

©Neha Kanase