10 Most Microscopic Things Ever Created

Do you know what nanopainting is? This technology creates sculptures smaller than one millimeter. Here are ten miniature things created by human hands. Among them are a microscopic snowman and a mini-Bible!

In 2009, scientists created the world's smallest snowman, measuring about one-fifth the width of a human hair. Experts at the National Physical Laboratory in West London made the miniature figurine, measuring 0.01 mm across. The masterpiece was assembled using tools designed to manipulate nanoparticles.

The snowman is made from two small beads of tin that have been welded together with platinum, the kind normally used to calibrate a microscope's electron lens. A focused beam of ions helped create the snowman's eyes and smile, and a tiny drop of platinum for the nose. It's the work of quantum particle detection team member Dr David Cox, who also took the picture.

In April 2015, artist Jonty Hurwitz created the world's smallest sculpture. Hurwitz's creations are so small that they could rest on a human hair or the head of an ant of the same size.

The sculptures, less than 1mm tall, are made using a process called nanopainting. They are too small to be seen with the naked eye. They can only be seen under a microscope or in a photograph. Mr. Hurwitz used 3D printing technology in the production.

After spending months working on the fragments, he invited a 45-year-old photographer from Chichester, West Sussex, to photograph the sculpture under a microscope. Unfortunately, minutes after the photo shoot, Hurwitz's work was destroyed by a stray finger from a lab technician.

The Russell Berry Bible

It would be difficult to read the Bible, but that’s not the point. Russell Berry, a nanotechnology researcher at an institute in Israel, engraved the Hebrew Bible on a chip the size of a grain of sugar to demonstrate the scale at which it can work. The “nano-Bible” is written on an ultra-thin silicon wafer, less than 100 atoms thick, coated with a layer of gold. To engrave the Hebrew letters, the researchers used the same focused ion beam, cutting away the unwanted layers of gold. By combining modern technology and ancient methods, the team called the process of engraving the chip “poetic beauty.” The nano-Bible is on display in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum.

This microscopic bolide, just 100 micrometers wide, was built by scientists at the Vienna University of Technology using a nanoscale 3D printer in 2012. Like a regular 3D printer, resin is used to give it shape and a laser is used to harden it.

In 2007, Korean researchers used lasers to create a microscopic version of Rodin's famous sculpture, The Thinker, completed in 1880.

The "Micro Thinker" stands 20 millionths of a meter tall and is about twice the size of a red blood cell. The tiny model even shows off its fingers and even muscles.

If you decide to surprise your loved ones with something and believe that great things can come in small packages, then you will want to use the services of the smallest postal service in the world. It was created in San Francisco by the postmaster Leah Redmond, who decided to put a bold idea into practice. She simply put a small desk in her backpack, jumped on her bike and set up a post office in one of the local cafes. Lea immediately charmed everyone with her miniature post office.

This is not a joke, this movie was actually created by moving single atoms around in a circle and filmed using a giant microscope.

At the world's smallest postal service, your letters are written in microscopic letters, carefully packaged, and sealed with a tiny stamp with the sender's initials. To ensure that the little messages don't get lost in the traditional mail, Lea packs them in clear envelopes with a magnifying glass to reveal the postal address.

IBM is exploring new possibilities for atomic-scale memory. Soon you'll be able to press play and meet the boy who befriended an atom.

In 2001, a group of Japanese engineers created a small three-dimensional monument of a bull the size of a red blood cell. It was engraved from plastic by engineers at Osaka University in Japan.

Measuring just 10 by 7 micrometers (one micrometer is one thousandth of a millimeter), the bull is the smallest three-dimensional sculpture ever created.

Tiny at just 3.175mm by 6.35mm, this train is a true work of engineering art. Five carriages, 35,200 times smaller than the real train, follow an oval route and even pass through a tunnel on a 19mm track.

David Smith, a railroad enthusiast from New Jersey, created this train with a simple craft knife and a steady hand.

The train is powered by a standard 51mm long rotating motor, which is cut from moulding plastic. It cost David just over £6 (455 roubles) to make his model train.

Shoji Takeuchi and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo have taken the art of origami to new heights. The team has succeeded in creating microscopic origami folds using living cell tissue cultures.

They created the flat origami structures by cutting thin plastic sheets, then grew cells to fill the seams of the tiny plates. Early work used animal connective tissue cells (which typically help heal wounds) to create the models; later work began using rat heart cells. Takeuchi and his colleagues hope the process will eventually help create artificial blood vessels, as well as other biological tissues.