Nanotechnology, which alters the fundamentals of nature by manipulating matter on an atomic or molecular scale, is becoming a larger presence in everyday life through its use in more than a thousand products ranging from solar panels, scratch-resistant automobile paint to enhanced golf clubs. Even so, cultural and religious beliefs give rise to differing views of its acceptability. This is a view from within a flattened, twisted carbon nanotube. Nanotubes are tiny tube-like structures that have unique electronic, thermal, and structural properties that make them potentially useful for nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of material science.

Credit: Vin Crespi, Pennsylvania State Physics. Distributed under the Creative Commons license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.