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Smallest Color Picture Ever Printed Fits Inside a Human Hair (www.ethz.ch)

Zothecula sends news about the tiniest color picture ever printed. Gizmag reports: "Scientists have created a picture that only fleas could truly appreciate. That's because the inkjet-printed image takes up an area no larger than the cross-section of a human hair. The picture of a few clownfish in their sea anemone home measures just 80 micrometers x 115 micrometers for a total area of 0.0092 square mm. Researchers from ETH Zurich University and the startup Scrona have been named the new holders of the Guinness World Record for the world's smallest inkjet color image, which they created using '3D Nanodrip' printing technology created at ETH Zurich."

32 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Kelly by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Kelly and the baby... they'll have something to look at now!

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  2. Smallest? by pushing-robot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The picture of a few clownfish in their sea anemone home measures just 80 m x 115 m

    Err...

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Smallest? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

      The Slashdot summary removed the "micro" symbol, so it should have been 80um x 115um.

      It should also be emphasized that it was the smallest ink jet printed picture, because some of these are probably smaller.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Smallest? by DavidMZ · · Score: 1

      oh, so it's almost the size of two football fields (to use an american unit of measure) ;)

    3. Re:Smallest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > The Slashdot summary removed the "micro" symbol

      Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant. So not only are the comments fucked, but they can't even post a story without boning non-ASCII characters.

      Get into the 21st century, guys.

    4. Re:Smallest? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      "The Slashdot summary removed the "micro" symbol"

      Rei doesn't get her thorn, last week I didn't get my A-macron, and now this rinkydink adaptation of Unicode fails at the Greek alphabet too.

    5. Re:Smallest? by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 3, Funny

      measures just 80 m x 115 m

      Yeah, but think of the size of the "hair" that it fits within.

    6. Re:Smallest? by PPH · · Score: 2

      Hey Slashdot! Read this: &MiddleFinger;

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    7. Re: Smallest? by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      Looks like somebody is having a bad case of the Mondays

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    8. Re: Smallest? by Serenissima · · Score: 1

      If only I had mod points! :D

      --
      Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
    9. Re:Smallest? by KGIII · · Score: 1

      U+1F595

      It's actually probably for the best that they don't support Unicode. I mean, really... It's not like we'd do anything useful with it. No, I'd expect the results to be people posting the pile of poop emoji.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  3. Nemo? by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Why print a picture of a clown fish? I'd have though an image of crabs would be more logical if it's being placed inside a hair.

    1. Re:Nemo? by wooferhound · · Score: 1

      I've always wanted a picture in my hair . . .

      --
      We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
  4. I was there by paiute · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sadly, the printer ran low on magenta after ten printings and I had to drive down to Staples and pick up a new cartridge. $69.95 seemed a bit steep.

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    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  5. 2015 nears its end by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    and Slashdot still doesn't support Unicode...

    Please fix those Greek SI prefixes.

  6. To boldly go where no unicode has gone before. by mrsam · · Score: 3, Informative

    The size is not given in meters, but micrometers. As in "um", where "u" is a unicode character that News For Nerds[tm] is still trying to implement, on this side of the 21st century...

    1. Re:To boldly go where no unicode has gone before. by tepples · · Score: 1

      If you want Slashdot with fixed Unicode, HTTPS, and no ads, you know where to find it.

    2. Re:To boldly go where no unicode has gone before. by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      ...or the lowercase m stands for microns instead of meters.

  7. An odd thing to do by ITRambo · · Score: 1

    This is so strange. A picture that only tiny organisms can enjoy, or not.

  8. A small accomplishment... by Bob_Who · · Score: 1

    One small step for those who like to get small....

  9. This should be good for printing organs. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2

    For some time now the medical community has been using inkjet technology, with the ink loaded with live cells, to "seed" 3D printed organ scaffolds with live cells, which then populate, then replace, the scaffold, yielding a live replacement part suitable for implantation. But that depends on the cells' ability to do the fine details of self-organization to handle the small geometry.

    It looks like this printer technology could put the cells right where they belong, or pretty much so, enabling the construction of a replacement organ or component in fine detail. Like for kidneys.

    Maybe even lay down guides for growing neural interconnections, to get the wiring diagram right. That's getting precariously close to being able to reanimate cryonics patients by (probably destructively) scanning the details of the neural interconnections and other stored state of the nervous system, then building a working brain (with freezing damage and the like repaired) with an accurate and functional instance of the original mind in it.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  10. This news flash just in: by kheldan · · Score: 1

    Scientists invent a way to troll their fellow scientists with a new uber-high-resolution inkjet printing technique capable of printing "The Game" small enough to be seen only under a microscope

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  11. When she asked for pix of my organ... by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    ...she didn't say I had to include the scale.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  12. NWA or by corezz · · Score: 1

    GTFO!

  13. Re:First application: PORN!!! by grcumb · · Score: 2

    If they figure out how to shrink people, there has to be porn available.

    It's actually a life-sized image of your dick.

    Okay, not life-sized. But with hardly any magnification....

    --
    Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  14. and still... by darkitecture · · Score: 1

    ...and still it used sixty dollars worth of ink cartridges.

  15. Ushering in the age by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1

    of cootietainment, cootvertising, and cootolingiustic programming.

    Studies have shown that people with happy cooties are 30% happier than people without cooties, and 70% happier than people with unhappy cooties.

    Now we can entertain your cooties or sell them nanoproducts -- or march them away like the Pied Piper, if for some reason you would prefer to be cootie-free than to have the easy and affordable happiness bonus.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  16. smallest possible pixel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    With interpixel distance = wavelength of visible light, is this the smallest possible scale for a visible color image? There are tricks to see slightly smaller pixels with a light microscope, but I guess not much smaller.

  17. Ah, there he is! by 6Yankee · · Score: 1

    Sneaky bastard, that Nemo.

  18. Very Impressive by jdagius · · Score: 1

    The image posted in the article seems to be the output of some kind of scanning microscope (note the vertical scan lines). Perhaps a 3-channel confocal "optical" microscope, which scans the image separately with red, green and blue laser beams, then combines them into a final image (like a "color" TV image). So it's really a false-color rendering of 3 mono-chrome images (but "true" color in the sense that each beam captures the actual color response of the inks in the printed image (like a TV etc).

    The article doesn't mention the resolution of the actual image but, eyeball counting the scanlines, it looks like somewhere around 160x80 or maybe 200x100. With 25,000 dots per inch, that's about 984 nanometers per dot, slightly larger than the wavelengths of visible light (380-870 nm).

    The limit of optical resolution is about a half-wavelength, so there seems to be enough headroom left for improving this result.

  19. Love the science on the linked page by umafuckit · · Score: 1

    requiring a special microscope to be viewed.

    WTF is a "special microscope"? What a shit article.

  20. Requires a special microscope to be viewed by DrXym · · Score: 2

    The fact that the microscope has a picture of clownfish stuck to its lens is purely coincidental.