I know this is serious science, but I’m just picturing a tiny version of the squid bots from The Matrix. Fighting cancer is an long and painful process, but science has now created a machine that seems to be able to kill cancer cells in just 60 seconds. These nanomachines are little more than spinning, molecule-sized creations that are powered by light and can drill into cells on command. One test on a prostate cancer cell, resulted in cell death in less than three minutes.
“We are moving towards realising our ambition to be able to use light-activated nanomachines to target cancer cells such as those in breast tumours and skin melanomas, including those that are resistant to existing chemotherapy,” said Dr Robert Pal of Durham University.
“Once developed, this approach could provide a potential step change in non-invasive cancer treatment and greatly improve survival rates and patient welfare globally.”
So, how fast do these nanomachines have to spin to get the job done? Amazingly, they need achieve an RPM of 2-3 million. The reason for this is something called natural Brownian motion, it’s the chaotic natural motion of microscopic particles suspended in fluid. If you can’t spin fast than that, you’ll essentially get caught up in the current.
While it’s important to note that this is still a new scientific development, it could mean amazing things for how we look at diseases like cancer in the next 10-20 years.