Researchers at Rice University have developed and successfully built the world’s smallest car. It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The whole car is no more than 4 nanometers across. No idea how small that is? It’s slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick. You can build a 20,000 lane highway for these cars on a strand of hair.
Other have tried making nanoscale objects that look like a car. But this is the first one that rolls “on four wheels in a direction perpendicular to its axles,” Newsoxy reports.
Now, researchers want to put the diminutive car to good use. “We’d eventually like to move objects and do work in a controlled fashion on the molecular scale,” said James Tour, a Rice University researcher who co-led the work. Eventually the researchers want to build tiny trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories.
Law enforcement is already alarmed: If you want to watch the car, you need to use a scanning tunneling microscope –otherwise it’s invisible. Not word on top speed, mpg, or price.
22 Comments on “The Sub-Sub-Sub-Sub-Compact (It’s A Ricer)...”
Back to TopLeave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You can also login using Facebook Connect.
Sorry. Tata already created the first Nano car.
“Eventually the researchers want to build tiny trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories.”
Down in Fraggle Rock?
I have to ask: Can the atoms roll the windows down?
I saw one of these at Hertz the other day, only they called it a Midsize.
how exactly are they planning on making that work? Or am I thinking too…(ahem) small?
Well, that’ll take care of ATS. You can’t ticket what you can’t see…
But my Geo metro got better mileage than that in the 80′s, you would think that progress blah, blah, blah…
Might be a little tight on leg room and trunkspace.
But just think, when they can make people that small, natural resources will stretch to infinity, and 1 snowflake could constitute an instant ice age!
Sorry, I don’t understand the picture.
“It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension.” I think I see those parts but what about wheels?
Is that a crank on the left to start it?
According to the caption, the picture is of the electron microscope you need to see it, not the actual car.
0.1 nm is the size of a atom so don’t expect it to look like a car
Awww Maaan! Cars are already too low and curvy for people to get into and out of – especially us older folks – but this is going too far!
But I can get a used (insert car name here) for less than that. Who would want to buy one of these new for that price?
Steven, the new ones are much safer. You’re much less likely to lose sub-atomic particles in a collision.
I hear the warranty is 10 years or 100 millimeters, whichever comes first.
Can you reference the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to get out of a speeding ticket?
+1
If the cop uses a laser speed gun, the photons shove the car down the road too fast and make it speed. Pure profit for the evil bureaucrats.
Yeah, well, give it a couple of model years and it’ll be six nanometers across, and weigh 1/10*10^23 grams more. And I bet they’ll decontent it, too.
Make it a station wagon with manual transmission and I will buy it!
What, no diesel?
I’m disappointed. Where is “what, no Hemi?”
“We’d eventually like to move objects and do work in a controlled fashion on the molecular scale.”
I’d be pleased if the researchers at Rice merely conquered the ability to move objects at the cellular level. Then perhaps these nanodevices could rid bodies of cancers that too often have shortened the lives of those we love, respect and admire.
One can only hope that the researchers at Rice will cross paths with their cross-town academic colleagues at the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Cars have given me much pleasure in my life; it would be neat to be able to say that a nanocar extended it.