IBM Has Made The First Movie Using Single Atoms

IBM research just released an adorable stop-motion movie, "A Boy And His Atom," by moving individual atoms around and imaging them.

The movie is the "World's Smallest Stop-Motion Film" by the Guinness World Record.

The 5,000 molecules of carbon monoxide — a carbon and an oxygen bonded together — used during filming are moved using tiny magnets made of 12 atoms to drag the carbon monoxide.

The image created is magnified by the scanning tunneling microscope about 100 million times.

See the video:

These techniques are used in IBM's atomic data storage research. Currently it takes 1 million atoms to store a bit of data, but these 12-atom magnets can store the same amount of information in a much smaller space.

This breakthrough "has the potential to make our computers and devices smaller and more powerful, but also holds enormous implications for the way entire industries operate," according to IBM's website.

And now see how it was made: