The machine that built the chip in this video should mass-humble every human who's ever lived.
ASML's latest EUV lithography system costs $370 million, weighs 180 tons, and requires three Boeing 747s to deliver. It contains over 100,000 individual parts from 5,100 suppliers across 14 countries. It shoots 100,000 molten tin droplets per second with a laser, superheating each one past the temperature of the sun's surface to generate light at a wavelength so short that no natural material on Earth can focus it.
So they had to invent new mirrors. Each one is polished with 100 alternating layers of molybdenum and silicon. The surface tolerance is so extreme that if you scaled a single mirror up to the size of Germany, the tallest imperfection would be 1 millimeter.
Those mirrors took 20 years to develop. The company that makes them, Zeiss, had to build entirely new metrology tools just to confirm the mirrors were flat enough, because no existing measurement instrument on Earth could verify the precision they needed.
The machine prints features at 2 nanometers. That's roughly 10 atoms wide. A human hair is 80,000 nanometers. A red blood cell is 7,000. A single COVID virus particle is 100. These machines are etching functional circuits 50 times smaller than a virus.
TSMC is now mass producing 2nm chips in a Kaohsiung fab so large the cleanroom is twice the size of any competitor's. Each 2nm wafer costs $30,000 to produce. The entire 2026 production run was booked before a single chip shipped. Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, and Qualcomm all reserved capacity years in advance. TSMC is spending $28.6 billion just to build enough fabs to meet demand for this one node.
The chip that comes out of this process is smaller than a fingernail, runs on less power than a light bulb, and contains transistors that wrap gates around nanosheets of silicon only a few atoms thick.
The raw material it started as was sand. The sand cost a fraction of a penny. The civilization that processed it into this started by banging rocks together.
Immense planning and technical precision was required for this absolutely preposterous (but real) view: I captured my friend @BlackGryph0n transiting the sun during a skydive.
This might be the first photo of it's kind in existence. See a video of this moment in the reply 👇
I proudly present my most detailed photo ever of an extragalactic object: a 400 megapixel photo of the Andromeda Galaxy. Captured over a period of 3 months using 2 telescopes and thousands of photos.
My favorite part is the core, which I’ll zoom into in the reply for you.
'Scavengers Reign' co-creator Joe Bennett has confirmed on Instagram that Netflix will not be renewing the series for a second season.
He posted a teaser produced at Green Street Pictures showing what was to come in season 2 if the show had been able to continue.
There is no Fox Marvel Universe or MCU without Blade first creating a market. He’s Marvel Daddy. Please retweet for a Logan-like send off. #DeadpoolAndWolverine
SHAUN OF THE DEAD was released 20 years ago today. Acclaimed as one of the great British comedies and the first part in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy, the behind-the-scenes story is a slice of Fried Gold…
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Some Hen Harrier shots from ECNR Wicklow, it is a great place like every other place and can be quiet at times, Then this happens to fly by the hide ps This is from a week ago, She was playing with the ducks, 😂🦊😂
IN BRUGES was released 16 years ago this week. Acclaimed as one of the great black comedies of the century and the film that kick started the McDonagh/Farrell/Gleeson triumvirate, the making of story is as beautiful as the city it’s set in…
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Engineer Ian Davis built his own mechanical prosthetic when his medical insurance did not cover him, it functions without batteries or electricity
https://t.co/kW92jbK7Ik