It was just a few years ago that scientists managed to user lasers to etch the Bible on the head of a pin. While that was impressive enough, the latest feat of miniaturization comes to us from good old IBM. It would seem that its scientists have created a 90-second animation composed of 242 frames, each of which depicts a stylized figure of a boy. Sounds dull so far. But the twist is that the figure is made up of individual carbon atoms. Now that’s small.
Whimsically dubbed A Boy and His Atom, as you might guess the resulting clip (below) is a proof of concept of just how small the elements of nature are that we can now manipulate. Science sure is great. Now if we can just figure out how to keep 15 million children from dieing of hunger each year. Oh, wait, there are no research funds available for that.
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