Bernadette Tansey | Berkeley, CA | November 1

San Francisco Chronicle - Physicists at UC Berkeley say they have produced the world's smallest radio out of a single carbon nanotube that is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Professor Alex Zettl led a team that developed the minuscule filament, which can be tuned to receive AM or FM transmissions.

The first song it played? "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos. Eric Clapton's unmistakable guitar riff can be heard on a scratchy recording of the nanoradio's output posted by Zettl online.

Zettl said the device, built by graduate student Kenneth Jensen, is the first radio within the size range of nanotechnology, which covers inventions no larger than 100 billionths of a meter. The nanoradio is 100 billion times smaller than the first commercial radios of the early 20th century. It is a thousand times smaller than the most minute radios in use today, which are based on silicon chip technology.

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But there is indeed more. The nanotube can also function as a transmitter. Theoretically, thousands of nanoradios distributed through the air or in the bloodstream could send back signals about air quality or the state of a patient's cells, Zettl said.