A Boy And His Atom.The Worlds Smallest Stop-motion Film.

A Boy And His Atom. The worlds smallest stop-motion film. 

A team of IBM scientists created this short animation by moving individual carbon monoxide molecules using a scanning tunneling microscope, infact it can only be seen when magnified 100 million times. For this film the Guinness World Records awarded them the title of The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film.

The film uses Carbon monoxide molecules which have one carbon atom and one oxygen atom on top. The scanning tunneling microscope itself is operated at a temperature of -268 degrees celsius on top of a copper plate because copper, in combination with carbon monoxide, produced the most stable atoms for moving. The microscope essentially acts as a needle that drags atoms across a surface using magnetism.The ripples around the atoms are caused by the disturbance in electron density in the copper atoms when a carbon monoxide molecule comes close to the plate. Very similar to the way water ripples when you throw a rock into a lake. 

The film was developed in California, USA and lasts for 60 seconds read more about that research here. The research is part of larger efforts at IBM to reduce the physical size of data storage on computers. It shows the story of a boy named Atom, who befriends an atom and goes on to dance, play catch, and even bounce on a trampoline.

Source video here. How it was made here. Download the movie here.

Beautiful glass work, showing Home T4 Bacteriophage (Source: lukejerram.com)

A plant doesn't need a brain to remember things

According to a new study, Mimosa pudica, also known as the sensitive plant, can learn from experience.

The sensitive plant is famous for its ability to rapidly close its leaves in response to touch (as well as light and heat) by reducing the turgor pressure in its cells.

During the study, researchers dripped water on the leaves of the plant at a steady rate. The plant quickly learned to ‘ignore’ the harmless stimulus and keep its leaves open in a type of learning referred to in animals as habituation. In fact, the plant behaved similarly to animals in another way: in a more stressful (light-deficient) environment, it habituated faster.

What’s even more amazing is that researchers do not yet know the mechanism with which the plant is recording these memories- after all, plants do not have brains.

Similar work by the same research team has also shown that chili plants can differentiate between kin and nonkin seedlings when communicating with them.

Also, if you hadn’t heard about it, it’s well-documented that tomato plants send out signals to attract parasitic wasps when they are being eaten by tomato hornworms. The wasps then lay their eggs in the hornworms like plant-contracted hitmen.

Basically, plants make me really nervous.

LOOK AT THIS CUTIE PATOOT I'M DOGSITTING. His name is Trooper and I love him. Also, he was a little embarrassed about the sweater, but it's stupid cold out and he seemed to have forgotten about it by the time he came back from his walk.

I just like to point out when people are "mincing their metaphors".

you can take one man’s trash to another man’s treasure but you can’t make it drink

Do Andy Goldsworthy’s beautiful ice and snow sculptures give you chills?