I don’t understand your scorn. Nanotechnology for medicine is a real topic. Many groups and companies are working on little machines to scrub arteries of plaque or perform other targeted procedures. A paper that clears Science magazine’s peer review is highly unlikely to be Ig Nobel worthy.
Richard Feynman’s 1959 speech “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” has inspired many in the area. It is a very tough problem, progress has been slow but steady.
“…A friend of mine (Albert R. Hibbs) suggests a very
interesting possibility for relatively small machines. He
says that, although it is a very wild idea, it would be
interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon.
You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood ves-
sel and it goes into the heart and “looks” around. (Of
course the information has to be fed out.) It finds out
which valve is the faulty one and takes a little knife and
slices it out. Other small machines might be permanently
incorporated in the body to assist some inadequately-
functioning organ…”
June 27th, 2025 at 12:47PM
I don’t understand your scorn. Nanotechnology for medicine is a real topic. Many groups and companies are working on little machines to scrub arteries of plaque or perform other targeted procedures. A paper that clears Science magazine’s peer review is highly unlikely to be Ig Nobel worthy.
https://commonfund.nih.gov/nanomedicine (unsure if will survive the current leadership)
https://www.embs.org/pulse/articles/the-state-of-nanorobotics-in-medicine/
Richard Feynman’s 1959 speech “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” has inspired many in the area. It is a very tough problem, progress has been slow but steady.
https://web.pa.msu.edu/people/yang/RFeynman_plentySpace.pdf
“…A friend of mine (Albert R. Hibbs) suggests a very
interesting possibility for relatively small machines. He
says that, although it is a very wild idea, it would be
interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon.
You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood ves-
sel and it goes into the heart and “looks” around. (Of
course the information has to be fed out.) It finds out
which valve is the faulty one and takes a little knife and
slices it out. Other small machines might be permanently
incorporated in the body to assist some inadequately-
functioning organ…”
June 27th, 2025 at 1:37PM
No scorn. Just noting that it sounds funny.