This is NOT the World’s Smallest Car

The illustrious title of World’s Smallest Car, sought by many, but held by only one. And who is that one? No, it’s not the car above, or the Smart ForTwo, or the Tata Nano; not the obscure Waaijenberg Canta or even the Peel P50, no matter what the Guinness Book of World Records says. Those cars are giants compared to the real smallest car.

So what is it? Check out the REAL picture after the jump:

It’s the Rice University Nanocar, and it’s the size of a single strand of DNA. It measures just 4 x 3 nanometers (A nanometer is equal to one billionth of a meter or one millionth of a millimeter). A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick. But it’s not just bullshizz nonsense made up by grad students with too much time on their hands…this thing actually works like a car. It has a chassis, axles, a pivoting suspension, and the wheels are buckyballs (aka Buckminsterfullerenes, which are tiny spheres of pure carbon – named after R. Buckminster Fuller, one of the coolest dudes ever).

It’s apparently hard to make a nanoscale object roll, but they’ve done it. And why? Well, the eventual goal is the create nanoscale trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories. It’s one step closer to tiny autonomous self-replicating machines doing our work for us at the nano level. End of the world Grey Goo, here we come!