It's a small world

A hushed office in Building 8 at MIT stands at the cutting edge of small things.

Newly minted PhD Tim Hanlon, 27, points to a device called the nano-indenter, and remarks, "Experiment after experiment, it never fails to amaze me . . . and I've been working here for 4 years."

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. For most of history, such minute distances, the scale where atoms lurk, have been invisible to humans, even though all activity in the physical world really begins there.

The nano-indenter contains a tiny diamond tip that can detect the resistance and friction between atoms at the nano-level. Hanlon and his boss, MIT professor Subra Suresh, often prod the tip into various materials -- copper and steels, for example -- to determine how they might be engineered at the nano-level to become stronger and more resilient. Their work may have sweeping implications for a wide range of technologies, from massive military machines to tiny computer chips.

"The ability to see things and measure things at the atomic scale, then to simulate them in computer models is very powerful," says Suresh, head of MIT's NanoMechanical Technology Laboratory.

Five years ago the Clinton administration initiated a national nanotechnology push. Suresh was about to start writing a book on engineering, but the newly available grant money was enticing.

Years later his lab's work pushes ahead on two wildly different fronts.

First, Suresh's team is experimenting with manipulating really hard things at a nanoscale. For instance, they've found that when copper is finely ground at that level, the resulting copper has some unique properties: super-high strength; far more durability than normal copper; and the ability to get stronger the faster it is hit. The US military is already interested.

The lab also works with human tissue, crossing the divide from engineering into biology. Researchers there are studying how blood cells stretch and deform to cause diseases like malaria. They use their nano-tools to measure the progression of cell distortion in malaria, which may point to ways to create drugs that disrupt the process, which kills millions worldwide annually.

But just as fascinating for Suresh is simply watching nature unfold at the smallest levels.

"At the very least," he says, "we'll be able to understand nature much better than we ever have."