Resizing the world

Scientists claim to have created the world’s smallest 3D map — a map of the Earth so small that 1,000 of them could fit on one grain of salt.A team at IBM accomplished this breakthrough technique...

Scientists claim to have created the world's smallest 3D map — a map of the Earth so small that 1,000 of them could fit on one grain of salt.A team at IBM accomplished this 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.

It is composed of 500,000 pixels, each measuring 20 nm2, and was created in only 2 minutes and 23 seconds, the Science and Advanced Materials journal reported.