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The Sharpest Object Ever Made
ultracool writes "Forget the phrase 'sharp as a tack.' Now, thanks to new University of Alberta research, the popular expression might become, 'sharp as a single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation.' Maybe it doesn't roll off the tongue as easily, but considering the researchers have created the sharpest object ever made, it would be accurate."
single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation: SATFBCASCFE. Sharp as a SATFBCASCFE... hmmm maybe not.
(end of post)
"they were able to coat peripheral atoms near the peak with nitrogen"
Nitrogen?? That chunk who wears a dress-size seven? She sneezes crisco. Sharp? Yeah, like a marble. Wake me up when we get to Kate Moss waif-like Hydrogen. Then I can carve my initials on tubby Boron.
How about, "sharper than a tack?"
Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's not as sharp as the rapier wit you see on here everyday. Ba-boom Tish.
...Chuck Norris
Well over time knives get dull from use. unless I'm mistaken, this one atom could easily break off, right? Wouldn't it be instantly dull?
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
It sounds like science is catching up with the glass blades Raven carries in Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash.
Dmitri "Raven" Ravinoff -- An Aleut native who works as a mercenary. His preferred weapons are glass knives - undetectable by security systems and reputed to be molecule-thin at the edges - and throwing spears. He travels on a motorcycle whose sidecar has been replaced with a hydrogen bomb that will automatically detonate if his heart stops beating.
On another technicality, isn't pencil lead actually made up of sheets a single molecule thick?
We could arm minjas (midget ninjas) with these molecular spears and graphite shurikens to make the real ultimate killing power even more ultimaterer.
liqbase
I won't be impressed until they split the atom. Now THAT will be a shiny pin.
Meta will eat itself
The Sharpener!
Now that we can use these to apparently make a super-hi-fi electron microscope, maybe we can use them in the electron guns of TV's and create super Xtreme HD! I for one welcome our potentially ever-changing HD format overlords.
stuff |
I'm more in favour of "as sharp as the devil himself", but you know...with our PC society we have to settle with tacks...how dull! (Pun intended!)
I remember watching a documentary on Discovery or History about the technique of chipping the edges on weapons and tools created molecule sharp blades.
;)
they didn't need all that research and science, just a couple rocks!
Sharper than Beatrix Kiddo's Hattori Hanzo sword?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Now they need to make knives out of it and have Ron Popeil endorse it! "For a limited time, I will throw in a Poultry Cooker Ray-Gun. And all for only 13 easy payments of $2,234.99!"
Can it penetrate virtually any material? Does it dull after use? Will it be publicly available?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
It slices! It dices! Watch as it cuts through this ... oops lost a thumb!
rapier like wit, to "sharp as a single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation" like wit.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
... it won't so much roll off the tongue as slice right through it.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
I never thought the old saying was any good anyways... There's just too many different tacks in the world! I always ended up clarifying.
...a sharp tack, that is!"
"Man, you're sharp as a tack!
How is saying that something which is not the sharpest object ever made is 'sharp as a single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation' in any way "accurate"? I'd wager that the sharpness of whatever you're comparing is a lot closer to the sharpness of a tack than it is to a single atom tip.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
to describe most people that I know
when they've created something better than a monofilament whip. 10S is good, but we need something that keeps up with troll melee.
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
Cool! now I can get myself a monokatana!!
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Does it still squish the bread?!
[%] Cingular Ringtones
So, does this mean it is sharp enough to get the wrapper off of a CD?
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
...the cheese with it, but it passed right through it!
I know the submitter is tring to be whitty, but I'd have to use 'sharp as a bowling ball' to describe his attempt. Surely there must have been a better way of announcing this break-through, like "Do you want you pastrami cut thin!".
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
* Passengers may not have on the person cargo with atomic or subatomic slicing capabilities or any other nitrogen coated particles. "tough protective paint job" - I'm wondering if I can get some of these in my favorite NFL team colors.
...I don't want to hear about it. Mind that expect that sharp a razor to come with safety wires, cause I'm not going to be able to fork out for skin transplants after Gillette charges me, what, three million dollars for this sort of thing by the time it hits the market.
In a world without walls, there is no need for Windows.
Nothing is sharper than Sharpie!
Or a witty saying...
Lone Gunmen crew.
Take down the Black Knight.
... Does it cut?
errera hunamum ets
Call me when the edge cuts through to another universe.
(Just finished reading the dark materials series. Terribly disappointing, I must say. Started with a bang and finished with a whimper. Hell, I'm a big fan of bittersweet endings, but this one was just pitiful and frayed)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Could it run Linux?
It sounds like science is catching up with the glass blades Raven carries in Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash
I prefer the scythe Death wields in the Diskworld books, so delicate it can havest the soul of a deep-sea organism, yet able to harvest a field of wheat, one straw at a time. And he tries to sharpen the blade with everything even sun light, but it is still far to dull for the job when he must confront his replacement.
any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's not a knife...
The Russian Mafia will mod you down just to see if the Moderate button works.
So is this Philip Pullman's Subtle Knife then?....I look forward to being able to skip between dimensions...oh no what happened to my little finger :-)
Here is a picture.
5M x amplification
.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
The sharpest object is a fart - it cuts through your pants without leaving a mark.
WTF? Who the hell rated that informative?
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
The second sharpest object, Ann Coulter's cheek bones, seems to be getting more and more honed by the week. Those University of Alberta researchers better work quickly to keep the lead.
I don't know, i just can't think of a tack as sharp.
When i think 'sharp' i think razor blades, maybe a scalpal, something with an edge, not a point.
For things like tacks and needles i prefer the term 'pointy'.
Neither have you I guess...
What would be a legitimate use for such a thing?
Now if they could make the worlds sharpest blade...
...I can get my lownmower blade to be that sharp...
On a computer or under a hood.
The STM uses a stylus with a single-atom tip and is about a decade old. IIRC it's a carbon atom.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Reminds me of playing Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday and weilding a Nano Sword.
People who are against human cloning must be bitter they are not good enough to be cloned.
It's the greatest thing since atomically-thin sliced bread.
I belive it should be:
Sharper than yo momma's KNEES.
Can it cut through armor and still slice a tomato?
I for one welcome our new chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporated tip overlords... hmmm... that doesn't roll off the tongue well, now does it?
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel...
From TFA: These sharp tips are needed for making contact with metals or semiconductors as well as for the manipulation and examination of atoms, molecules and small particles. Ultrafine tips are demanded for future experiments where the results are directly dependent on shape of the tip.
/. Lotta sharp wits.
This is HUGE news in the nano scanning tunnel microscope world! Combined with the ability to determine an electrons spin, this could really open up new research results in a lot of fields. Good to see so many comedians on
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
And we'll throw in this rubber jar opener. Operators are standing by...
When I was a kid I used to think that if my sword was sharpened enough so that there would only be 1 atom at the tip, it would be as sharp as the anti-robocop-ninjas' swords.
Umm, how sharp exactly is this thing? Does it cut through steel easily? Or is it like, too soft?
*waves it around*
*drops it on desk*
Ah crap, anyone got a spare one.... ;-]
Jaj-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And what would be the point of having a 1-atom wide object again? Let's face it, it's not practical or excessively useful to us (Ok, don't rant about "future potential" of this just yet... Really now? Do you think that this will REALLY make a significant difference in anything, other than the bragging rights of those that made this "breakthrough"...) More imporant in my mind isn't the sharpness but the hardness. If it is sharp enough to slice through anything in existence but has the rigidity and frailty of, say, an egg-shell... it'd be useless anyway. ^_^ Again, I ask (with full pun intended), "What's the point?"
-- "You must be the change you desire to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi --
That would be my wit.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Looks like science is once again catching up with comic books. There was a character in the Alpha Flight series that had a sword that was 1 atom thick and could cut through anything by just pushing the molecules apart.
c s)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(Marvel_Comi
"sharp as SOAP" where SOAP is Sharpest Object At Present. Then even if something sharper comes along, you don't have to change your phrase, because it is so highly abstracted from the hardware that it hardly means anything anymore.
Does it run Linux?
..... best things in life are not so free..........
The dullest object ever made is being kept safe in the Oval Office.
That a fart was the sharpest thing in the world. It can cut through a pair of pants without leaving a hole.
I thought the sharpest thing in the world was a fart. It goes through your pants without leaving a hole.
is everybody that culturally ignant?
"sharp as a tack" has evolved into a tongue-in-cheek comment or even a back-handed compliment that implies somebody/something is clever but not all that clever since, as we all know, tacks are sharp but not all that sharp. think about it...needles are sharp and needle-sharp definitely implies smarts...same with razor...tacks aren't even in the same league.
kind of like all the folks commenting that they never have really grokked the phrase since tacks aren't all that sharp.
proof, meet puddin'
This is so exciting. I'm just on pins and single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporations waiting to hear more about it.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
I think the thing that most people missed here is that the single or several atom tips isn't necessarily even the most interesting achievement, tips as small as 3 atoms, or unstable 1 atom tips have been routinely observed up to this point. The high aspect ratio of these tips though is pretty incredible, a lot of FIM based tips are pretty blunt, but with pointy tips. For STM that doesn't matter so much as the tip apex is the crucial part, but for other imaging techniques like atomic force microscopy, using fat tips is like trying to play a record with a basketball instead of a needle.
I remember vividly of an IBM project where they created the sharpest object with an atom tip, and they didnt even have to coat it in nitrogen.
Posted on slashdot about a year ago. Its a dupe at the U of Alberta. Wake me when they use a Hydrogen atom at the tip, with an accentuated electron orbit which adds a sharper 'tip'.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Does anybody else find those little pop-up ads that appear when you hover over the green double-underlined text to be about the shittest invention ever?
Those in the article seem to be from someone called ContentLink, but I've also seen them done by IntelliTXT. Their idea of context is usually so wrong as to be laughable. For example, in that article, the sentence "Technically speaking, they were able to coat peripheral atoms near the peak with nitrogen, making it a one atom-thick, tough protective paint job" has _nitrogen_ offering to inflate my car tyres with nitrogen, and _job_ offering a job search.
Stop the madness!
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
Why did they make this sharp object?
till I get that mono-sword my ShadowRun character used to sport all the time? I'm really jonesing for some snacks and its dangerous out there on the streets what with all the Riggers, Runners, and Street Samurai.
...dildos for ants!
Good against Jabberwocks, though.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Man, that was funny.
And it would be funny no matter who was in office. It just happens that this time it's true!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Great, now my face can resemble Nicholas Cage's from Face/Off when I shave with the new Gilette 10-bladed razor made from this stuff.
Now that is scary!
I have been tearing my hair out for 10 years now. I read Snowcrash in 95 in the waiting room of the hospital where my first daughter was born when the nurses kicked me out from time to time. I got to a part about some robot dog when the book disappeared and I couldn't remember the name or author.
unfortunatly, a sword 1 atom wide would be mostly harmless.
The atoms it's moving through would just re-bond behind it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The business end of a scanning tunneling microscope is often a one-atom tip. Those are made by cutting a wire of some suitable metal (tungsten, or platinum/iridium), hoping to get a sharp tip. Such tips look like this. As you can see, sometimes the break gives you a very sharp one-atom point, but the area around it is ragged.
The technology for making these tips is embarassingly simple.
Electrochemical etching is used to make better-formed STM tips. Electrochemical etching with STM feedback to determine when the best form has been reached does even better.
it's not the lost Ginsu technology.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Funny you mention swords. In the TV show "Batman of the Future" there's this assassin girl called Curare, whose sword had an edge 1 atom thick and could slash through any material known to man.
My only question is... with a sword so sharp, why the heck doesn't the sword sheathe break apart? Does it have a one atom thick clip or what?
...when they devise something that's sharper than the tongue of an angry woman.
And when they do, I want to be somewhere far, far away.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
EOM
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
now i can make LPs that much smaller since the track wont have to be as wide.
It won't be sharp enough until I can swing the knife in midair, splitting atoms along the way, with a ripple of nuclear fusion in my wake.
Mad scientists of the world (and Canada), unite to make my dreams come true!!!
This was a joke? I don't get it.
When a master sharpens a katana to the best standards of the art, the last step involves a polishing compound so fine that it has to be kept in water so it doesn't fall apart, and the edge is so thin you can see through the metal. (Yes, this process costs as much as a computer).
Googlespace, on my first few searches, didn't turn up any numbers for the edge of a katana. It's bound to be a long way from a single atom, but it would be fun to know just how close or far it is.
Nice cut 'n paste summary of the article.
I'll assume that they'll (eventually) going to make the tip or edge or whatever out of some cristalline metal. In which case, not really.
Let's first define "sharp". No object in the world is a perfect edge ending in a clean zero-width edge. All knives, pins, etc, have a tip that, under a powerful enough microscope looks "blunt". What you'd see would be something like a pretty rounded "tip". What makes it "sharp" is that it's a very small surface.
In other words, imagine two cones, both ending up in a bit of a section of a sphere. Except one is a 0.01 inch radius and the other is a 1 inch radius. What makes the first one sharp and the other one blunt? Pressure. Pressure equals force divided by surface. The surface rises with the square of that radius. So the first one needs 10,000 times less force to produce the same pressure. You can create enough pressure with your thumb to push a tack's small tip through wood, but you'd need an industrial press if you wanted to push a 1 inch steel ball into wood.
In other words what makes something sharp is simply having a small enough tip. You need the same pressure to break through a given material. Having a smaller tip just means you can reach that pressure with less force. At some point you need very little force, and at that point we consider the object to be "very sharp".
How does that help us here? Let's say you had such a pyramid, and let's say you managed to break off the atom at the tip. So now you have a "blunt" tip that's made of a 2x2 atom square. That's still _incredibly_ sharp. It's million times smaller than the tip of a tack or pin, hence it would need accordingly less force to push through the material of your choice.
In other words, forget about breaking off an atom. You'd coukd lose _thousands_ of layers from that tip and still count as sharp.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
sharp Audio pronunciation of "sharp" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (shärp)
adj. sharper, sharpest
1. Having a thin edge or a fine point suitable for or capable of cutting or piercing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
pointy Audio pronunciation of "pointy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (point)
adj. pointier, pointiest
Having an end tapering to a point.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Something pointy can be dull or sharp, like an edge can be dull or sharp.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What's the dullest object ever made?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
When cooking it is necessary to have the sharpest knives you can because this (counter-intuitively) is actually safer.
IF you had a knife with a single atom edge, how long would that last, and how would you re-sharpen it?
I started thinking about this in regards to cooking but for any application how would you keep this sharp?
1 atom? wouldn't that be sheared off during the first use?
I would assume a pyramid form, 1 atom supported by 2 or 3 underneath it and those supported by 6 and so on, even up to 5000 atoms would be "sharp" but how would you ever get back to 1?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I have it on good authority (mother), that the sharpest object is a pair of sizzers in the hands of a running child. They are capable of poking out an eye at over three hundred feet.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Cuz I was kinda thinking it was gonna be a tie between a Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona Spyder and Morris Day.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Imagine a new tool that instead of fibre wire, it uses these as an "atom wire"..
Just think of the uses...
-Cutting a block of cheese
-Chopping down trees
-Invisible clothesline for an unsuspecting target, with an effect similar to the lasers in Resident Evil
~CYD
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
What a sharp wit.
Groan.
Frog blast the vent core.
I won't be impressed until they've sharpened it on silk, spider threads, and sunlight.
I thought Fission was splitting . . .
:)
Heck, I could be wrong & am too lazy to google it
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Its all fun and games until someone puts a Planaria's eye out!
Letter To Iran
Until someone loses an eye working with it.
...it's still not sufficient to get through the missus' "puff" pastry... :(
Make it so the sheath doesn't touch the one atom thick section, just has to touch the beveled part of the clamp to the sides of the sword.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Somehow I thought this would have something to do with a ninja's sword.
Prehistoric man did this before with flint. Flint arrow heads and knives have been found that were only 1 atom across at the sharpest point. Although their methods may not have been as accurate they were still there first!
this made me remember the subtle knife from the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy...
Don't go losing any fingers using it now!
Baka Drew
A fart is still the sharpest thing in the world.....
Goes through your pants without leaving a hole.
Introducing the new Ginzu 3000 with literally atomic cutting precision for your next dinner!
A fart can go through your pants without making a hole.
I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Noone else remembered this. OK, I'll go back to re-drywalling the bathroom now.
Oh drudgery!
I mean, man, they cut open a car's muffler with that knife!
And then sliced a tomato!
I have lost my faith in TV.....
Everyone knows the sharpest thing in the world is a Mother-in-Law's tongue.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Reminds of Gabriel's Horn in calculus. Basically, you rotate the area under y=1/x from 1 to infinity, creating something that looks much like a horn. I remember someone in my class mentioning that you could be holding and move it and be stabbing someone miles away (of course, it would be so small they wouldn't feel it). Also, it has finite volume, yet infinite surface area, so you could fill the horn with paint, but you could never paint the outside of it completely. Anyway, here's a link for more info.
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
I can't imagine ever meeting anyone smart enough to warrant memorizing such a phrase.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
It is compared to someone with a penis the size of a hydrogen atom
What the heck? Tacks are not sharp at all. They are POINTY. If you could make a chain of these along the edge of something, then I guess you would have a really sharp object. But now it's just POINTY.
Typos... that's just how I role.
Reminds me of a pre-technology leading to Larry Niven's Variable Swords from Ringworld. It "just" involves a statis field for stability and a little ball afixed on the tip so you know where the end of the sword is. Too bad the former's probably a show stopper -- for a while anyway.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I remember playing GURPS Supers, and one character of ours had a monomolecular sword... very cool back in the day... but now.. REALITY !!
I want to mount one of these on the front of my car. Take that, deer!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
now these will make good razor blades!
Gillette better watch out!
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
Come on people, use standard units! How sharp is this point, in units of LEGOs per barefoot?
(insert non-plural LEGO grammar nazi here)
I once shot a man in Reno 'cause they cancelled Firefly.
The University of Alberta is located in the city of Edmonton, which is the capital city of the province of Alberta, Canada.
Interestingly, this is also the same province which contains Calgary, which some people mistakenly think is the capital city. Edmonton in general (and the University of Alberta in particular) has a great track record of innovation and research. In addition, Edmonton is one of the prettiest cities you're likely to see, and far less testosterone-infused and brash than our cattle-fixated cousin to the south (Calgary).
Ralphie: I want a single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation with a compass in the stock!
Mom: No, you'll poke your eye out!
Exactly when has the tack been the benchmark of sharpness?
The most convincing testimony to jurors is not a clear, honest explanation, but a whiz-bang over-your-head technical explanation that laypeople don't understand.
Sad but true... can't recall source right now.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
What does this have to do with Snakes On A Plane?!!
I love lazy people who just copy and paste the first paragraph of the article and post that as thier summary.
Excalibur is sharper. At least in the Camelot 3000 comics.
SPOILER: King Arthur literally cuts an atom with it. You see the tip of the blade (solid as ever) entering the atom and KABOOM! Nothing better than a fission bomb to kill Morgana Le Fey in a very, very definitive way.
Oh, and BTW, the Excalibur itself survived the atomic explosion. And shining! It's not only a sharp sword, it's also a damn hard sword! I wonder how Lancelot managed to break it once...
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Mod parent up
Now there's something sharper than his infinitely sharp implement of Death...
Task Mangler
This reminded me that prehistoric peoples were able to make obsidian blades with edges of molecular width. Though atomic thinness beats that I guess.
Bitter and proud of it.
In both works, items with 'monomolecular edges' were used as weapons:
:P
Linna Yamazaki's hardsuit 'battle ribbons' from BUBBLEGUM CRISIS
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088863/
Takahashi's 'garrote' wire from JOHNNY MNEMONIC
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/
Maybe one day they'll exist in the real world. But who would use them -- THEY ARE LETHAL!!!
Someone could poke their eye out!
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Would prick just as sharp.
now send this to the russians, and they'll drill a hole through it and send it back.
Shamelessly stolen from dictionary.com:
1. Intellectually weak or obtuse; stupid.
2. Lacking responsiveness or alertness; insensitive.
3. Dispirited; depressed.
4. Not brisk or rapid; sluggish: Business is dull.
5. Not having a sharp edge or point; blunt: a dull knife.
6. Not intensely or keenly felt: a dull ache.
7. Arousing no interest or curiosity; boring: a dull play.
8. Not bright or vivid. Used of a color: a dull brown.
9. Cloudy or overcast: a dull sky.
10. Not clear or resonant: a dull thud.