So this is kinda awesome. This is the smallest movie EVER, made by IBM.
They did it using a particular device which “plants” atoms individually onto a surface (I’m not sure what this is called, as it’s apparently rather sensitive information), and allowed the folks over at IBM to create the precision images seen in the video.
Just in case you’re not entirely sure how small this really is, the particles used are carbon monoxide molecules, which are 112.8 picometers in diameter. That’s 1.128 x 10 -10 meters. 0.00000000001128 meters long. That kind of baggage works out to be almost 900,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair! It’s 62,000 times smaller than a red blood cell, for gods sake! It’s really, really, really, really, really small.
So being able to manipulate these molecules as though they were a 1980’s computer game (with sound effects to match) is pretty rad.
Making a stop-motion animation out of them is a whole new level… And if you ask me, it’s pretty clear that they pulled it off rather nicely.
Nanotechnologists can do all sorts of other cool things on the small scale, and IBM go through a few of those things in their “How we made it” video.
If you’re a techy kind of person, check out the trusty wiki page for the full run down of who what where and how!
“And they’re really bloody small.”
Why is it so...? 