Friday, December 21, 2007

The Pinhead Codex

In a nanotechnology breakthrough, scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have printed the entire Old Testament onto a silicon chip smaller than a pinhead (less than 1/1000th of an inch).The idea to write the Old Testament on such a tiny surface was conceived by Technion Professor Uri Sivan of the Faculty of Physics, who is also head of the university's Russell Berrrie Nanotechnology Institute.
The text was written using a focused ion beam (FIB) generator that shot tiny particles called Gallium ions onto a gold surface covering a base layer of silicon. In a process that can be likened to digging a hole in the earth using a water jet, the ion beam etched the surface of the gold layer, making the underlying silicon layer visible. The actual "writing" of the full text took just 90 minutes. The computer program that guided the FIB, however, took more than three months.(from ATS)

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