Unfortunately, during the last few millennia, the Bible has been inscribed into billions of pinheads, without the aid of scientists.
As to writing at the scale of atoms, IBM did that in 1989, probably with finer resolution than the operation described here. The following references can also serve as an entry into the topic of STMs and AFMs, which are quite interesting, as they may be a means to undertake nanoscale construction immediately, instead of building a succession of smaller and smaller assemblers to do it. (On the downside, of course, is the "grey goo problem", or perhaps the runaway "replicators" portrayed in SG-1. It may be that nanotechnology, not nuclear energy, is responsible for the relative lack of other intelligent species in the universe. Nanotechies are sanguine about this: "From energy considerations it would take six months for a runaway self-replicating assembler to convert the entire Earth into grey goo." Well, nothing to worry about, then.) http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/section2_84_14.html http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/event.php?id=3457012&lid=1 http://www.umsl.edu/~fraundorfp/stm97x.html http://www.google.com/images?as_q=ibm+xenon+nickel http://www.google.com/images?q=+site:www.almaden.ibm.com+ibm+xenon+nickel On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 09:55:17PM -0800, Sean McBride wrote: > Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Scientists inscribe > entire Bible onto pinhead via Engadget by Darren Murph on 12/23/07 > Filed under: Misc. Gadgets > And you thought that fellow who managed to fit your entire name -- > middle initial included -- onto a grain of rice was hot stuff. > Apparently, a team of nanotechnology experts at the Technion institute > in Haifa were able to etch some 300,000 words onto a minuscule silicon > surface "less than half the size of a grain of sugar." The feat was > accomplished by "blasting tiny particles called gallium ions at an > object that then rebounded, causing an etching affect," and was > reportedly done in order to show that copious quantities of data could > eventually be stored on bio-molecules and DNA. Oh, and it only took > about sixty minutes to finish the job. >
