Incredibly tiny nanorods work wonders on faulty cells.
Anything on a minute scale is inherently fascinating, and even Atomic has roots seated in the very small (after all, nuclear fission is one of the many things that our name relates to), but especially so when those small things have big uses.
The latest one is golden nanorods, literally a rod of gold atoms that are slightly less than 40nm long, which is injected into a patient in a similar way to radioactive isotopes used to detect cancers.
Each golden particle will be attracted to tumourous tissue within the body, concentrating in those areas and making detection incredibly easy.
Not only do they make it easy to detect, but with an infrared laser the nanorods can be heated up hot enough to destroy the tumour cells without damaging the neighbouring cells - and amazingly any leftover rods are expelled from the body's normal waste systems.
Fingers crossed we can use this in the future to aid patients, but we'd be interested to see if there were a similar substance that could be added to a watercooling loop; all that maintenance is a lot of effort!
Head over to The Future of Things to read more about this cool little discovery, and post below with what you'd do with a golden rod of any size.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012