Recently, researchers from the University of Groningen developed the smallest nanocar. The nanocar is propelled by electron and can move on a surface instead of solution. At one nanometer, it is smaller than an earlier nanocar built by Rice University scientists measuring 3 to 4 nanometres across.

The breakthrough in nanotechnology brings the world envisioned by "Jurassic Park" author Michael Crichton in a new novel "Micro" a lot closer to reality. The techno-thriller starts off with three men dead in Hawaii, showing no sign of struggle except for the ultra-fine, razor-sharp cuts through out their bodies. The only cue to their deaths is a tiny bladed robot, almost invisible to the naked eye.

"Micro" follows seven graduate students recruited by Nanigen MicroTechnologies, a pioneering microbiology start-up, to the mysterious lab in Hawaii where they are promised access to tools which opens a whole new scientific frontier. However, the scientists finds themselves thrust in a hostile environment in the Oahu rainforest where danger lurks at every turn. Only their knowledge of the natural world aids them as they become prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power.

“Perhaps the single most important lesson to be learned by direct experience is that the natural world, with all its elements and interconnections, represents a complex system and therefore we cannot understand it and we cannot predict its behaviour," writes Critchton in the Introduction for "Micro."

"It is delusion to behave as if we can, as it would be delusional to behave as if we could predict the stock market, another complex system. If someone claims to predict what a stock will do in the coming days, we know that person is either a crook or a charlatan."

"If an environmentalist makes similar claims about the environment, or an ecosystem, we have not yet learned to see him as a false prophet or a fool. Human beings interact with complex systems very successfully. We do it all the time. But we do it by managing them, not by claiming to understand them.”

"Micro" was unfinished when its author Michael Crichton succumb to his battle against throat cancer in 2008. Picking up where he left is Richard Preston, author of "The Hot Zone" and "The Wild Trees", aided by Crichton's notes and files. The novel is scheduled to be published by HarperCollins in Australia on Dec. 1 later this year. It will be available in print edition and as an e-book.