It must be a good 20 years since I pondered the (fictional) technological underpinnings of Transformers, which has a new Hollywood sequel out now called "Revenge of the Fallen."

For one: how could the main bad guy, Megatron, turn from an "arm-mounted fusion cannon" (huh?!) into a hulking beast of an evil robot? 

At an early age, I was chalking it up to fantasy and I suspended my disbelief while I watched the cartoons after school while eating a bowl of Froot Loops. But some are more willing to try to explain the technology and science behind the Transformers, I learned this morning. There is a Wikipedia entry on Transformers technology that, right now, is striving to bridge the gap between science and fantasy. One of my favorite sections ponders the notion of death among Transformers:

Death of a Transformer can follow irreversible (mortal) stasis lock or be caused by a sudden traumatic injury (such as a close-proximity nuclear explosion, or spark excision). A few weapons, such as a high powered fusion cannon, are known to be powerful enough to cause severe enough damage to immediately terminate a Transformer. Also, while the utter destruction of a body can and usually does cause death, a Transformer can often survive total dismemberment. Notable examples include Optimus Prime (during the Generation 1 series), Ultra Magnus (during the movie), and Waspinator (repeatedly).

This blogger raises the point that the technology behind Transformers involves advanced nanotechnology and even femtotechnology, a largely theoretically area involving the "manipulation of excited energy states within atomic nuclei."

Hey, we've got a lot of folks in Maryland working in the nanotech field. If using this tech to build robots that change from boring cars to steely warriors isn't likely, then why bother?

Har. Kidding.

Seriously, nanotech is a young but choppy field. There are detractors and skeptics on one side, who either think a lot of it is overstated marketing bunk, or potentially dangerous. (One guy wrote a book called "Nano-Hype: The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz."

On the other side are businesses, universities and researchers who are pushing for breakthroughs that could be brought to market and maybe save lives, if nanotech gets more incorporated in medical practice. Johns Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering has a nanotech research area, and the university has its own Institute for NanoBioTechnology, too. And the University of Maryland has its own Nanocenter.

Do they see a Transformers future?