Nanosubmarines

In the year 2000 an image of a tiny robotic submarine travelling through a human artery travelled round the world and was even pictured in the UK tabloid newspaper The Mirror (Thursday, 7 September, 2000) under the title “Fantastic Voyage 2”. This tiny 4mm long craft was said to be able to save lives before the end of the decade, to be able to cruise through blood vessels using sensors to check for signs of illness and cancer and, it was reported, may one day be able to repair arteries and hearts. It was there to demonstrate in a visible way what could already be achieved in the field of micro- or nanotechnology. A similar picture was also exhibited at the Hannover Expo 2000 [see 11].

The year 2000 image of a prototype of a nano-submarine, which circulated widely in the press, appeared a century after a picture of Jules Verne’s Nautilus had graced the visitors’ guide to the Paris Expo in 1900 [20], a sign that the Nautilus had become part of modern mythology (see figure 1 for another example). We seem to have come a long way in a century, but we can’t seem to leave the Nautilus myth quite behind us yet – and, as we shall see, it would soon merge with the nano-myth. (It should be stressed however that the year 2000 image was not the first. An image of a nanosubmarine swimming through a capillary and attacking a fat deposit, such as normally may accompany an arteriosclerotic lesion, was published as early as 1988 in an article for the Scientific American

Micro-submarines in the body, conceptual computer artwork. Microscopic machines such as these may be introduced into the body to augment the body's immune system. The submarines could be programmed to find and destroy tumour cells, for example, or to repair defects in organs and tissues.