These different disciplines fuse on this length scale. We have the help of the biologists to control single molecules. Remember, Mother Nature works on the basis of single molecules. A single DNA is needed to build you. We need physics to understand what these molecules do, and we need chemistry to build them and so on and so on. So that's actually one of the most beautiful things of nanoscience as it is practiced these days. That all the folks from the different disciplines come together and do it.

Q: Do you have any nightmares?

That everything is called nano just because it's fashionable.

Q: I've heard someone get really angry about that.

Oh yeah, I could join him. Because this is really a mess. If people call what they are doing nanoscience just because it is fashionable, they will ruin this field. It's a gold-rush mentality: "Oh, great stuff! Nano, that sounds good - isn't what I'm doing all the time Nano? Oh yeah, I'm an established nanoscientist because I've been doing nanoscience all the time." So that's a big pity. What we need is people that are really willing to engage themselves deeply in this field, and not people that think it is cool and now hop the train and ride it for a while. Another ,yet smaller nightmare is that for example, I go into a movie theater and then the suit that Spiderman wears is a nanotechnology, micromanufactured thing or whatever, or that I open a computer game and it's a Nano-saur, that flies into my face.

What also bothers me a lot is that the border between science fiction and science is crossed too often. Certain colleagues call science what they should probably call science fiction. It is important and fascinating to dream about the future, which nanoscience opens up for us! However, one must in these prophecies not omit valid physics laws as long as one can not falsify them and merely hopes one will be able to do so in the future. Science fiction and science should be kept apart otherwise the credibility of nanoscience will be damaged.