What is Nanotechnology?

It's the next not-so-big thing: microscopic components that can be used as the building blocks for faster computer processors, more powerful wireless radios, cancer-fighting medical instruments, superstrong polymers and metals, and even miniature works of art. Nanotechnology is not without controversy, however, as Billy Joy, Sun Microsystem's co-founder, once famously warned us of the (now largely debunked) threat of "gray goo," or self-replicating nanobots that some feared would disassemble everything on Earth. Researchers now worry about the more prosaic environmental by-products of nanotech, such as the potential health effects of nanoscale particles--carbon nanotubes, for instance, which can behave like asbestos fibers when inhaled.