Forever young in a nano-world

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Here's the good news. Eternal youth may be possible to achieve and the overpopulation it causes may be easily managed.

The bad news: the technology is at least 20 years away. For some of us, it will be too late.

Texan millionaire Jim Von Ehr believes the science of the smallest particles, nanotechnology, will soon allow us to stay youthful for many years.

Mr Von Ehr, in Wellington for a conference on nanotechnology, also believes the new science will enable the creation of artificial "trees" that will take carbon dioxide out of the air to generate oxygen and energy.

In his 20-year vision, cars will run on roads paved with solar energy cells made out of tough new materials, ending pollution from petrol fumes.

The new solar-powered world will even be pleasing to the eye.

"We can bring artists and designers into the technology world and make things that look beautiful as well as functional," he said.

Unlike the other speakers at the conference, who are mostly university scientists, Mr Von Ehr is putting his own money behind his vision.

He founded a software company called Altsys which developed FreeHand and other computer programs and had a turnover of US$100 million a year.

In 1995 he sold the business to Macromedia, walking away with 10,000 times the money he originally invested.

He has sunk the proceeds into a new company, Zyvex, which he says makes him the only person in the world to invest commercially in the potential medical uses of nanotechnology - the science of particles on the scale of individual atoms.

So far it has not made him any profits. But the company has started earning revenue from making nano-scale tools and tiny carbon "nano-tubes", and has employed a scientist, Rob Freitas, who has written a book on nano-medicine.

"I think nano-medicine has such promise for humanity that I have taken a small portion of my net worth and hired Rob to write a book and to give us some ideas about what might be possible," Mr Von Ehr said. "We can't build any of the devices he has designed yet because we don't have atomic precision.

"But in 20 years we are going to be able to make little devices to go in your body and actually fight diseases and cure some of the ageing problems in cells."

Already Zyvex has been able to make tiny machines that can move nano-scale particles fairly crudely, using a device that can be fitted with a minuscule hook or tweezers or a sticky surface that can pick up individual molecules.

Since our bodies are made up of natural nano-scale machinery, he believes it should be possible eventually to build similar devices artificially with far more precision.

"We don't know a lot about ageing, but it looks like the process is caused by cellular degradation. The little nano-machines inside our cells start to break down," he said.

"If we had other nano-scale machines that could go in and repair some of those breakdowns, in principle we could repair them.

"And if we can repair the cell to the state it was in when it was young and healthy, we might be able to repair the organism to the state it was in when it was young and healthy."

He is not put off by the argument that the Earth is already strained by the environmental effects of the six billion people living on it and will not be able to cope with human beings living for much longer.

"Nanotechnology is going to fix the environmental effects. With atomic precision, we are going to have a lot less pollution."