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

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-small dept.

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."

9 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. 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...

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    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.

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      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. 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.

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

      Hey Slashdot! Read this: &MiddleFinger;

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      Have gnu, will travel.
  2. 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
  3. 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...

  4. 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.

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  5. 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....

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    Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  6. 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.