Mysteries of the Unseen World Page #4

and yet completely elastic.

Imagine what we might build

if we could produce

a synthetic version.

The first step is getting

a closer look at spider silk.

The journey could take us

all the way down to what we call

the nanoworld.

The silk is 100 times thinner

than a human hair.

On it, there's bacteria.

Near the bacteria,

ten times smaller, a virus.

Inside that, ten times smaller,

three strands of its DNA.

And nearing the limit

of our most powerful microscopes,

single carbon atoms.

Four of them are the size

of one nanometer.

Welcome to the nanoworld.

This incomprehensibly small

place is the new frontier.

Exploring it will lead

to huge changes in our lives.

Our most advanced microscopes

can now see this:

individual atoms, though fuzzy,

proving years of scientific theory,

simulated here.

And not only can we see them-

with the tip

of a powerful microscope,

we can actually move atoms

and begin to create

amazing nano devices.

Some could one day

patrol your body

for all kinds of diseases,

and clean out clogged arteries

along the way.

Tiny chemical machines

of the future

may even repair DNA.

One of the wildest things

about the nano world,

substances here

behave differently

than the same material

does in our world.

To us,

gold is golden in color.

But nano gold

can be any color.

It absorbs light

and generates heat,

leading to an idea:

injecting nano-sized gold particles

into the bloodstream...

which are chemically coded

to attach to cancerous cells.

An incoming laser beam

heats the gold particles...

burning the cells.

The promise of nano

goes beyond medicine.

Another material

with far different nano properties

is carbon,

the same breakable stuff

found in pencil lead.

At the nano scale,

it has mind-boggling strength.

With it, we've created

the world's thinnest material,

graphene,

one carbon atom thick.

It's harder than diamonds

but nearly

as flexible as rubber.

Turned into a roll,

it's called a carbon nanotube,

one of the strongest

and lightest materials on Earth.

With it, we could

one day make things

we can only dream about today.

It may even be possible

to use carbon nanotubes

to build an elevator to space.

We are on the threshold

of extraordinary advances

born of our drive to see

all that's hidden

in the world around us.

On a summer evening,

under an endless rain

of cosmic dust,

the air full of pollen

and skin flakes

and bits of everything on Earth...

people go about their lives...

Happy birthday.

- Happy birthday.

surrounded by the unseeable.

Knowing there's much more

around us than we can see...

forever changes

our understanding of the world.

Who knows what waits

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