For now, nano is starting out modestly. The biggest markets for nanoparticles remain in familiar products, from the black rubber filler in tires, a $4 billion industry, to the silver used in traditional photography. Lux Research Inc., a New York nanotech market researcher, estimates that only $13 billion worth of manufactured goods will incorporate nanotechnologies this year. That's little more than a rounding error in the global economy. 

Yet new nano-based products that could have a far bigger impact are only a step or two away. Within the next two years, diagnostic machines with components built at the nano scale should allow doctors and nurses to carry pint-size laboratories in their briefcases, perhaps to test for HIV or count white blood cells on the spot. Nano sensors will scour airports and post offices for anthrax and sarin. Toward the end of the decade, scientists say, new computer memories composed of nanoparticles could conceivably pack the digital contents of the Library of Congress into a machine the size of a yo-yo. By that point, Lux predicts, nanotechnologies will have worked their way into a universe of products worth $292 billion.