Video: Nano Earth created at IBM

Amazingly, this fantastic new nano-manufacturing process allows for 1000 Earth’s to be written onto a single grain of sand. The scientists accomplished this through a new, breakthrough technique that uses a tiny, silicon tip with a sharp apex — 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil — to create patterns and structures as small as 15 nanometers at greatly reduced cost and complexity.

A press release from IBM stated that, “This patterning technique opens new prospects for developing nanosized objects in fields such as electronics, future chip technology, medicine, life sciences, and optoelectronics.”