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IBM Makes a Movie Out of Atoms
harrymcc writes "IBM's Almaden Research Center has a scanning tunneling microscope, a device invented by the company. It uses it to move individual atoms around — mostly for storage research. But it's created a 242-frame cartoon, A Boy and His Atom, using individual atoms as pixels. Guinness has certified it as the world's smallest movie."
242 frames, and ten 18-hour days of work by multiple people using a very tiny copper needle attached to an expensive machine to move the atoms around.
What a waste of time.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Isn't every movie made out of atoms?
How does that translate into DPI???
Aren't all movies made out of atoms?
I mean the media at least, rather than the photons.
A sodium atom and a potassium atom are walking down the street when suddenly the sodium atom stops with a concerned look. "I just lost an electron" he said. "Are you sure?" asked the potassium atom. The sodium atom replied with, "Yeah, I'm positive."
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
"Atomation"
I can't wait for the sequel.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40970.wss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0&list=PLaFe0BJiho2pbiULC7W4UpxFGArH7oD7i&index=1
The making of the world's smallest movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0&list=PLaFe0BJiho2pbiULC7W4UpxFGArH7oD7i"
By Larry Greenemeier, Scientific Amererican:
What is the “final frontier”? Star Trek fans will tell you it’s space. Filmmaker/aquanaut James Cameron will tell you it’s the ocean’s depths. IBM, however, is thinking much smaller.
The company’s research division on Wednesday released a stop-motion movie whose main character is a stick figure only a few atoms in size. “A Boy and His Atom” is the story, not surprisingly, of a character named Atom who befriends a single atom and proceeds to play with his new friend by dancing, playing catch and bouncing on a trampoline. It may not be an Oscar-winning script, but the performance does mark a breakthrough in scientists’ ability to capture, position and shape individual atoms with precision using temperature, pressure and vibrations.
“Think of this as Claymation—you shape your Wallace and Gromit, put them in your scene and take a picture of it,” says Andreas Heinrich, principle investigator at IBM Research. “Then you change the position of the characters and take another picture.” Heinrich and his team arranged and rearranged atoms to create 242 distinct frames later stitched together to make their movie, which Guinness World Records has certified as the tiniest stop-motion film ever made.
IBM researchers relied on a bit of movie magic to bring Atom to life (see video below). Each of the dots used to make the character is actually a molecule of carbon monoxide resting on a copper surface, framed so that the audience can see only the oxygen atoms (the carbon atoms are off screen). The researchers used a two-ton scanning tunneling microscope to magnify the atoms’ surfaces more than 100 million times. The microscope features an extremely sharp needle that the researchers used to move the molecules to specific locations.
This ability to manipulate individual atoms has big implications for the future of computing and communications. Engineers have managed to shrink certain components within today’s magnetic disk drives down to a few dozen nanometers. “We’re interested in exploring data movement and storage at the atomic scale,” the stuff of quantum computing, Heinrich says. Whereas a classic computer uses bits—a zero or a one—to store information, a quantum computer lets you—in principle at least—have a zero and a one at the same time in a quantum bit (or a qubit).” If you can do both of these at the same time, you can calculate answers faster than any computer using classic bits,” he says, adding that his lab’s mission is to determine whether atoms can someday be harnessed for computation and data storage.
In a tie-in with the upcoming film "Star Trek into Darkness," IBM Research created this nanometer-sized image of the Enterprise. Courtesy of IBM Research.
IBM researchers decided to make their movie last year after publishing the results of years of atomic storage experiments, Heinrich says. “The general public should know about this kind of work and be interested in it,” he adds. “The best way to do that is to make a movie that is told in the language of science although doesn’t necessarily tell a scientific story. It tells a human story of a boy dancing with his friend.”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/05/01/ibm-movie-does-claymation-at-the-atomic-scale-video/
But, Norman McLaren would have approved, as would anyone who truly understands that great science is true art. A mind at play can do astounding work. Unfortunately we are losing this important perspective.
Where would have Gates and others been without the creative artists at Xerox Park to lead the way? Without people like the Woz, without those who say "hey wait a minute we can do this another way" companies stagnate and eventually fall into a stagnation as we are seeing now especially in the world of software.
Go IBM, never lose your creativity or allow others to convince you that a creative culture is a frivolous expense that is better outsourced or purchased from others.
What are the ripples around the atoms?
For a brief moment I thought "What a big investment of manpower and expensive equipment for something so silly..." but you know what, all my attention is now on science and investigating the answer to my question and how this all works.
We need more of that going on. Well played, IBM.
Atoms of what!? Oh, not atoms at all, but molecules of Carbon Monoxide (CO), which I technically still comprised of atoms, just not on their own.
See the video 'Moving Atoms: Making The World's Smallest Movie' at 1:42 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xA4QWwaweWA#!)
Marketing FTW!!
Although they still get their message across.
The sequel is being made out of quantum entangled atoms. So, if you and your friend go to see it, one will think it is horrible and the other it is great no-matter how far apart your seats are.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
"Atomation 2: Quantum Boogaloo"?
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
The problem with the movie is the more you know about its plot, the less sure you are sure about its characters and the more you know about the characters the less you know about what is actually occurring.
Tragically, because the credits at the end tell you who the characters are, after seeing the movie you won't be able to know anything about what happened in it.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Reading that there are microscopes that
see individual atom (wow),
individual atoms can be placed at specific locations and be stationary without a chemical bond (wow),
and these atoms can be arranged on this surface at will (wow).
It would be great stuff for a series of stuffy articles.
But showing these abilities as a movie (an illustration) uses imagination again to show it to the world.
I don't think Hollywood should be worried. I think our electron devices will be getting smaller (super smaller).
I am so happy to see that imagination is alive.
"Up... and Atom!"
"Up and at dem."
"No, no. say it like this. Up and ATOM!"
"Up and... at-dem!"
A big bang, if you will.
2 dozen atoms, still better than "Twilight".
ArsTechnica article http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/ibm-makes-stop-motion-film-using-atoms-as-pixels/
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/1/ibm-movie-atoms
my movie is animated, so it is only made of electrons - top that IBM!
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Welcome to science. You are experimenting on a new method of doing something, you got some success, however you need more testing, you might as well have some fun while doing it. Drawing a series of pictures are just about as productive as drawing grids or some other pattern. Besides that after effect is a cute little movie to explain the technology they are doing.
We need more support for these type of things, and less of the bean counter mentality who assumes just because the research isn't obviously monetizable that it is useless.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I bet they discovered something or at least increased their comprehension of moving molecules around. The goal is molecular-scale data storage, not screwing around.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Great, now we'll be seeing atoms that sparkle.
Yeah, it's not like people screwing around with impractical technology at IBM ever produced anything useful, like inventing the scanning-tunneling microscope .
...than Twilight. And that copper atom blows Kristen Stewart away as an actress.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The world's most annoying music. Ugh!
What this demonstrates is a manufacturing method for producing nanoscale machinery. The concept is, with a series of simple experiments conducted in many labs, enough data is obtained to create an accurate nanoscale design simulation. (many of this experiments have been done already). You would then design a set of nanoscale machine parts - sensors, motors, gears, and so on in the software then create prototypes very laboriously and at very high cost using a tool like this microscope at IBM.
Once you have tested the prototypes and debugged them, correcting mistakes in the software model of them as you go, you'd then design a nanoscale machine that could place atoms down according to a template. You'd build that machine at even higher cost, using hundreds of microscopes like the one at IBM, and test it.
Anyways, a series of iterations later (and about a trillion dollars, realistically) you'd have a machine that could PRINT ITSELF and you no longer need the microscopes. By print itself, I mean it can slowly manufacture itself if kept in a clean vacuum chamber, supplied with clean DC power, atomic intermediates as substrate, and a high bitrate stream of the design files for itself from a control computer system. Nevertheless, exponential growth would be possible and you'd be very close to changing the world forever.
They're not using "atoms" - they're using molecules.
CO to be specific.
Seems that they are well on their way. It may only be a bit array, but that definitely was a bitmap image stored in the making of the movie.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Atom jokes are fine, but the parent is the first interesting or informative comment on the whole thread.
The "making of" linked at the end of the movie is well made and stimulating. I particularly liked this comment from the director of the project:
"If I can do this and I can get a thousand kids join science, rather than go to law school, I would be super happy".
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html or if you don't like to read. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eRCygdW--c
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
I can see it now: coming soon to a cinema near you "A Real Quantum of Solace" and "Ion Man"
From the Timetech article: >And the animation is rudimentary — it’s monochromatic, blocky and... Yeah, right, next time it'll be better, they will use colored atoms and do antialiasing with fragments of atoms ! (I'd expect that someone who writes an article about physics at least understands some of the basic properties of atoms. Oh well, this is 2013...)
I'll settle for a /. T-Shirt. :^)
An impressive demonstration of the reality of the probability waves. They are plainly visible and form attractive interference patterns around the atoms.
My kids have a chemistry test tomorrow. This movie might put some meat on the bones of the electron shells and covalent bonds.
Rom is going to make a movie out of Quark's
I hope he got the Holosuite customers to sign the disclaimer forms
Particle Man would work.
Even before reading the article, I knew that if IBM was making the movie, it wouldn't have any BIG stars.
but, you do realize that IBM have basically turned this into another one of those pointless corporate advertisements that you might see on TV? ..like the GE jet engine adverts..or the siemens ones with spaceX mentioned.. you know, things the average consumer buys..
this is one of those.
neat 'science' tho!