14 DAY TRIAL // Word has it we should always try to think big. As it turns out, thinking stunningly small can also pay off every once in a while, especially if one happens to be a physicist.
Not to beat about the bush, a recent paper in the journal Nature Communications documents the creation of the world's smallest Swiss cross by a team of brainiacs at Switzerland's University of Basel.
This cross, a representation of which is available in the image above, comprises just 20 bromine atoms neatly arranged on an insulated surface kept at room temperature. It covers an area of just 5.6 nanometers square.
It's been decades since scientists first figured out how to toy with surface structures by rearranging single atoms. However, it took a while for them to be able to erect artificial structures at room temperature at such small scale.
In fact, this teeny tiny Swiss cross created by University of Basel scientists is argued to represent the largest number of atomic manipulations ever achieved at room temperature, Science Daily informs.
The physicists behind this research project hope that, in time, their achievement will aid the development of atomic-scale data storage devices, even a new generation of electromechanical systems, the same source explains.