quantum-revolution

How them to keep the plasma going long enough to reach the critical point at which fusion becomes self-sustaining. The science of nuclear fusion has been around for half a century. In principle, we know we can do it. But as a society, we've lacked the commitment to allocate enough resources to solve all the many technical challenges. But as scientists grapple with the hottest plasma on earth, the political climate is beginning to change. Last year, governments were presenting half the population of the world decided to fund a new fusion reactor. The international, their monopoly or experimental reactor to be built in France. This is designed to be big enough to create self-sustaining fusion energy for the first time. Fusion energy may finally become a reality. Between 15 and 20 years from now, we will be ready to start building a real pastation, which will produce electricity. That could be operating within 30 years, a few prototypes. After that, by the before the middle of the century, we hope to have large scale fusion power. Fusion, for me, it's a way of producing electricity in a safe way and in a cheap way. And we have to try that basically. There is no other way. If we had energy that saved, clean, cheap and unlimited, imagine what we could do. We could control global warming. We could replace fossil fuels and oil, feed and expanding population. Meet the needs of a growing world. Ultimately, the quantum revolution will give us a whole range of sustainable, renewable energy sources. And it will also give us a new technology who is intact could be even greater. Nano technology. Nano technology will allow us to redesign the world by building with atoms one by one. When you can do that, you're talking about really controlling the fundamentals of matter and energy. And that's a breathtaking moment. You know, that's a thing where you no longer study nature in science. You're creating nature. You're creating new realities. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. You can't see it. In fact, it's about 10 atoms across. Now, imagine a machine that is on the scale of a nanometer. A machine that's made out of a few hundred, a few thousand individual atoms. Well, you may say to yourself, well, that science fiction. How can you make a saw, a lever, a wheel, made out of maybe a thousand atoms? Well, mother nature has already done it. Mother nature can take raw materials and out of that create life. The goal of nanotechnology is to create nanomachines on the scale of living cells, like proteins, DNA, or bacteria, and design them to perform equally complex tasks. These miniature mechanical devices could turn toxic waste into harmless matter. Or they could travel through our blood vessels to men's cells from within. The first step toward building these nanomachines is to hijack living systems at the molecular level and engineer them to do what we want. And MIT, Andrea's mission is doing this with plant proteins. We're trying to use plants to create solar power. Plants have developed this amazing ability to capture sunlight and create chemical energy in stored. Now, we can grab the machine, the protein, inside the plant called photo system one, which is responsible for generating the synergy for the plant and hijack its function, essentially. Put it on a substrate of our own choosing and use the energy to create solar, electrical power and to run light bulbs or any kind of machinery that you want. Merchant modifies the plant protein. Then connects it to a bed, especially engineered nanowires that act as electrodes. The final product will be a nanomachine that delivers solar power in the form of a paint. Our goal is to provide an alternative to regular silicon-based solar panels. They're big and heavy and they're not ideal to be transported to a remote village and a fico or China or India. What we're trying to do is produce a material. It's almost like a paint that you can paint on a metallic surface, exposure to light and have yourself some electricity. Hi Jacking Nature to make nanomachines offers an awesome new power with endless potential. We're domesticating protein molecules, protein living machines essentially, to do things that are interesting to us. And there's a huge monashory of such proteins in the natural world from plants and animals and all sorts of other things such as bacteria that can make pretty much anything you want. The trickers to be able to engineer them and change them and harness their power and make them do what you want them to do. One of the most exciting applications of these hybrid machines is to cure illness from within our own bodies. Here in this very estuary in Rhode Island, scientists have found bacteria which they are using to power a prototype nanorobomb that could fit in our blood vessels. Hi, how are you? Nice meeting you. I'm doing my koscovian, thousands of bacteria in here you got a joystick. I think an idiot can control left right, go forward and backward. My first thing to us button over here. Wow, I see thousands of bacteria and I can move them down. Yes, I can see them move down. Up. Moving to the right. These bacteria are sensitive to magnetic fields. So I'm actually controlling them with magnets. Moving to the left. I almost feel omnipotent like a god controlling thousands and thousands of bacteria. Amazing. Martell's team has already used the magnetic field of an MRI machine to drive a tiny device along a living artery. The plan is then to shrink this device, place the bacteria inside it and use their rotating tails as miniature engines to drive it around our bodies and deliver drugs to specific targets. Our main goal here is to develop new medical tools. In the main application we have right now is to target a tumor inside the human body. So the tricks here is to be able to integrate those tiny motors into a machine that could deliver drugs and be able to control it by computer. This is good. Yeah, exactly. So the next step is to engineer a microchip to give the nanomachine intelligence. So this microchip is used for us. It's too big. So we want to get it much, much smaller. So you want to get it so small, you can fit it right into the capillaries of the body. Exactly. So they can go anywhere they want. Well here what we see is one of those kind of robots. This version adds six motors. I mean, six more of that contains several bacteria which are a control because you need to be able to turn left and right in same time to go forward or backward. So how many bacteria are pushing this chip? About 80 bacteria. 80 bacteria. So this is like a chip with propellers, right? Exactly. Exactly. In the future, swarms of invisible nanorobots might be permanently patrolling our blood systems, repairing tissue and keeping us healthy. You know, when I think about the implications of the work being done here, I can't help but think about my father and my mother. My father died of Alzheimer's disease. And now it afflicts my mother. It's a horrible disease. It robs you of your very sense of who you are. And yet I can now imagine a time when we can use these kinds of targeted therapies and artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to zero in on the brain to clear up the brain of the proteins that have gummed up our neural circuits and give us hope.