If you jump ahead to watch this new short film, you might think you're watching a recently-unearthed stop-motion animation from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century's accomplished filmmaker Georges Méliès.  In fact, you'd be watching a cutting edge stop-motion short created by IBM data storage researchers who use scanning tunneling microscopes to manipulate atoms into position and then take still-frame images at 100 million times magnification. Yeah.

The Guinness World Record-certified short, The World's Smallest Film: A Boy and His Atom, is simple in concept but ridiculously complex in its design.  Luckily, we not only have the film to share with you but a behind-the-scenes featurette that introduces the filmmakers/researchers, the technology and their reason for making the film.  As a bonus, there are also some famous Star Trek icon images and GIFs made using the same technology!  Hit the jump to view it all ... for science!

Check out The World's Smallest Movie: A Boy and His Atom below, followed by a making-of featurette and the Star Trek images (via IBM):

Here's more on IBM's data storage research and filmmaking process:

About IBM's "The World's Smallest Movie: A Boy and His Atom"

Using the smallest object known for engineering data storage – atoms - IBM scientists shrunk the big screen down to the atomic level and created "The World’s Smallest Movie: A Boy and His Atom." The tiny Guinness World Record certified movie is comprised of almost 250 stop-motion frames that were combined into an animated film. To help bring this world of atoms to life, the scientists used their scanning tunneling microscope, a unique two-ton microscope that operates at -268 degrees Celsius to tell a short story of a boy (who’s made of atoms) playing with an individual atom. You can check out IBM's movie, behind-the-scenes footage, video diaries and atomic shorts on different technical aspects of the movie here: youtube.com/madewithatoms

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