nanotech motor

Taking us one step closer to the diamond age, my undergraduate physics professor has just created the smallest motor ever built by man... a gold rotor on carbon nanotube shaft, 300 times smaller than a human hair.

"It's the smallest synthetic motor that's ever been made," said Alex Zettl, professor of physics at UC Berkeley and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Nature is still a little bit ahead of us - there are biological motors that are equal or slightly smaller in size - but we are catching up."