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Weekly Confused on Small Wonders  Comments on "Small Wonders,"
published in the San Francisco Weekly in December of 1999
These comments are available on the web at  Peter Byrne recently
claimed that quantum mechanics implies that molecular machines
can't work. Oops.  The most generally accessible argument that
molecular machines are feasible is to observe that biological
molecular machines exist. Enzymes can copy DNA with remarkable
fidelity. Bacteria are propelled forward by flagellar motors
(enter "flagellar motor" into your favorite search engine for
more information on this fascinating subject). Ribosomes are
programmable molecular machines that make proteins using
instructions read from mRNA.  In 1992, K. Eric Drexler published
Nanosystems, which directly addressed the feasibility of
molecular machines. He concluded that molecular machines were
indeed feasible within the framework of generally understood and
accepted physical law. As part o