IBM Makes a Movie Out of Atoms

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IBM Makes a Movie Out of Atoms

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday May 1, 2013 @01:26AM from the better-than-iron-man-3 dept.

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.

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Wait... it's not porn by selectspec · 2013-05-01 01:27 · Score: 5, Funny

What a waste of time.

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Someone you trust is one of us.
1. Re:Wait... it's not porn by Angeret · 2013-05-01 02:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  A waste to you perhaps, but not to the people who do this hoping to show what can be done with the current technology - and hoping to inspire viewers to push boundaries and create things themselves. Maybe even pushing the technology onto better things - like creating medical nano-machines capable of removing tumours, or shrinking memory chip dies to allow you to cram more memory into your phone, etc.
  What would get someone's attention faster - a stuffy presentation with ideas presented from a list, or something like this which could make you think for yourself? Instead of boilerplating a whine, why not tell us WHY it's a waste of time, huh?
But... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-01 01:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

Isn't every movie made out of atoms?
1. Re:But... by SJHillman · 2013-05-01 01:35 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I don't know... it's usually all photons and sound waves by the time it gets to me.
The plot by Virtex · 2013-05-01 01:37 · Score: 5, Funny

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."

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For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
1. Re:The plot by JustOK · 2013-05-01 02:27 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  A tachyon walks out of a bar.
  The bar tender says "We don't serve your kind here"
  A tachyon walks in to a bar.
  
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  rewriting history since 2109
Quantum Movie by neoshroom · 2013-05-01 02:04 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

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Re:DPI? by saibot834 · 2013-05-01 02:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

How does that translate into DPI???
According to this report, the movie depicts an area of 45 x 25 nanometers. I use the body of the stickman to approximate pixels, which gives me about 30 pixels in height. Which translates to 3 * 10^7 DPI. Which will be in your iPhone 71's über-retina display (assuming dpi grows exponentially). Although it's really debatable if your eye is capable of making use of such a high resolution.
And the sequel will be a reboot by theurge14 · 2013-05-01 02:10 · Score: 5, Funny

A big bang, if you will.
Re:DPI? by femtobyte · 2013-05-01 02:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

Past a certain point, super-high resolution could get quite interesting: once your "pixel" structures get smaller than visible light wavelengths, you can use them to form interference patterns to not only control the brightness, but also the wavefront shape of transmitted light --- A.K.A. holograms. Then you get a "true" 3D display, which recreates the proper relation between binocular depth perception and how far out each eye is focused.
Re:Sounds like an Unknown Lamer story to me. by SternisheFan · 2013-05-01 03:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

IBM moved the molecules using two of its own scanning tunnelling microscopes. It's a huge machine that weighs two tonnes, operates at minus 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies atoms -- placed on a copper surface -- by 100 million times. The machine moved around 5,000 carbon monoxide molecules to create the movie. Each time the molecules were arranged in the right way, the IBM team rendered a still image to create each of the 242 frames. In those frames, you can only see one atom or pixel because you look at it from above. It took roughly 10 days of 18-hour shifts to get each frame right.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/1/ibm-movie-atoms
Re:What a waste of time by jellomizer · 2013-05-01 03:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Future Hollywood Titles by Roger+W+Moore · 2013-05-01 07:34 · Score: 4, Funny

I can see it now: coming soon to a cinema near you "A Real Quantum of Solace" and "Ion Man"