How Big Is The Worlds Smallest Computer?
You might be surprised that the world’s smallest computer is so small you can’t see it. In fact, several hundred of them would fit on top of a pin point. Ehud Shapiro, a computer scientist at the Weizmann Institute, and colleagues devised a tiny biomolecular computer for use in cancer diagnosis and treatment in 2004 and it was listed in that year’s Guinness Book of Records as the worlds smallest computing device. The tiny device, known as a nanotechnology device, uses DNA to get inside cells, identify molecular traces of prostate cancer or lung cancer and then decide on a treatment that it could deliver inside the cell, causing the affected cell to commit suicide. This is only one development in the very exciting but unseen world of nanotechnology. Tiny instruments are being developed for use in nanosurgery for neurology, at the level of individual cells. Other drug delivery systems will become possible and some of the biological machinery such as the hinge on the flagellae of bacteria
