Now our micro world is becoming a nano world. As you know, nanoscale is three orders of magnitude smaller than most of today's human-made devices. To get a feeling for what this means in terms of the cosmos, let's look at this next slide. Nanotechnology gives us the ability to manipulate matter one atom or molecule at a time. Nanostructures are at the confluence of the smallest human-made devices and the large molecules of living systems.
Individual atoms are a few tenths of a nanometer.
DNA molecules are about 2.5 nanometers wide. Biological cells, such as red blood cells, have diameters in the range of thousands of nanometers. Microelectromechanical systems are now approaching this same scale. This suggests a most exciting prospect. We are now at the point of being able to connect machines to individual living cells.