Microstructures Memes

Scientists have officially gone subatomic with their winter festivities! What you're looking at is a nanoscale snowman created using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) - those aren't snowballs, they're actually tiny platinum nanoparticles stacked and manipulated with incredible precision. The scale bar shows 200 nanometers, meaning this frosty fellow is about 1/500th the width of a human hair! The arms are likely carbon nanotubes or nanowires carefully positioned to complete the classic snowman look. Researchers probably spent hours on this instead of publishing their actual research paper. Priorities, people! The perfect combination of "I have access to millions of dollars of equipment" and "let me make a tiny snowman with it."