Radio Thinner Than Hair Invented

A UC Berkeley team has invented the world's smallest radio, composed of a single carbon nanotube 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the device is the first fully functional radio to qualify as a piece of nanotechnology -- inventions no larger than a 100 billionths of a meter.

The nanotube radio could be applied as a space-saving addition to cell phones or perhaps a kind of ear-implanted cybernetic iPod. But the most revolutionary use of the nanotube may be in its role as a radio transmitter: theoretically, thousands of the devices could be distributed into the bloodstream, delivering to doctors vast amounts of cellular information covered in the most minute detail. (More nanotechnology stories.)