Bible put on a pinhead-size chip

Researchers in Israel say they have succeeded in putting a version of the Bible on a chip smaller than a pinhead.

Its 300,000 words in Hebrew were inscribed on a silicon surface at the Haifa Institute of Technology.

Scientists say the aim of the project is to increase young people's interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

The record for the smallest copy is held by a Bible measuring 2.8x3.4x1cm (1.1x1.3x0.4in), weighing 11.75g (0.4 ounces) and containing 1,514 pages.

The 0.5sq-mm (0.01sq-in) nano-Bible was written on a silicon surface covered with a thin layer of gold (20nanometres thick - 0.0002mm).

It was written using a device called Focused Ion Beam (Fib).

"When we send the particle beam toward a point on the surface, the gold atoms bounce off of this point, thus exposing the silicon layer underneath," Ohad Zohar, one of the project's managers at Technion, said.

"By sending a particle beam towards various points on the substrate, we can etch any pattern of points, especially one that represents text."

The next step for Technion researchers is photographing the Bible and displaying it on a giant wall within the Faculty of Physics.

Source: BBC

What a huge waste of time and resources. Why on earth would they do this, no one is going to be able to read it without an electron microscope anyway, and they could just read the bible in a book.

I am sure it probably cost quite a bit to achieve as well which just makes the whole point of this exercise pointless.

If you want young people to be interested in nanoscience and nanotechnology let them play Crysis on a good computer that can actually run the game properly, that has a nano suit in it. Now that is much more interesting then a book that a large portion of the world hasn't read and has no interest in reading.