Making Things Small is Huge

In a 1966 Hollywood film “Fantastic Voyage”, screenplay by Isaac Asimov, scientists are shrunk to a few millimeters and injected into the bloodstream of a dying scientist who has vital information. Their mission:  Navigate to his brain and destroy a blood clot before returning to normal size.

Fast forward:  On sabbatical in Boston in the early 1980s, Rafael rocket engineer Gabriel Iddan encounters Israeli gastroenterologist, Eitan Scapa.  “I can’t reach the small intestine with my endoscope,” he says. Jokingly, to Iddan: “Can you shrink a camera and transmitter small enough to swallow and travel through the intestines?”

Iddan’s Israeli startup Given Imaging took 20 years to gain FDA approval, create its own Fantastic Voyage, and succeed.  Its Pillcam, the size of an Omega 3 pill, is swallowed, journeys through the lower intestine, films and transmits what it sees to a nearby screen, and thus  enables doctors to see inside the bowel and detect illness. Some four million people have used it, saving countless lives.

Indeed, making things small is huge. Consider the amazing Monarch butterfly. It weighs half a gram, less than a paper clip.  They fly from Ontario, Canada, through Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and down to the Monarch Reserve near Mexico City, where they winter – well over 4,000 kilometers (2,400 miles) – truly a fantastic voyage.  About one Monarch in four survives the perilous journey.

How do they navigate? They use the sun to keep them heading south, adjusting for changes in the sun’s position;  and use ultraviolet light to detect the angle of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Tracking the Monarchs’ migration has been difficult. Thanks to a 2007 New Jersey startup, Cellular Tracking Technologies, it is much easier. New York Times’ journalist Dan Fagin explains that their solar-powered radio tag, attached to the butterly, weighs only 60 milligrams – a tenth the weight of a Monarch —  and has Bluetooth to ease tracking on cell phones.  Like the Pillcam, it took two decades to perfect. Fagin notes that the radio tag is like a half-raisin (butterly) carrying three uncooked grains of rice (radio tag).  Each one costs $200.

Making the radio tag small enough to slip onto a butterfly was a breakthrough that will enable scientists to track many other species of insects.

From lab to life. Making things small can make huge contributions to our health and to our understanding of Nature.