Behold, The World's Smallest Comic Etched Onto A Human Hair

Behold, The World's Smallest Comic Etched Onto A Human Hair

Imagine a strand of human hair. Now imagine the little guy not as a pesky throwaway you'd find lodged in a hairbrush or stuck to your favorite sweater, but a canvas of the smallest and scaliest variety.

This is exactly the case with "Juanita Knits the Planet," also known as the world's smallest comic strip. In the video above, you can watch as a single hair is transformed into a dynamic landscape full of more edges, layers and cavities than we could ever imagine.

The microscopic piece was made to promote the Exceptional Hardware Software Meeting, a Hamburg-based open source and DIY conference for makers, hackers, scientists and engineers.

The comic contains 12 frames, each measuring in at around 25 micrometers. (A hair strand is approximately 80 micrometers wide.) Originally drawn by Claudia Puhlfürst, the comic depicts a young woman playing and interacting with a variety of objects and eventually coding a robot. The final frames read "Create" and "EHSM."

A focused ion beam was used to engrave the diminutive artwork, employing a "sharp jet of matter thinner and more delicate than a laser beam" as a drawing utensil. Needless to say, our minds are blown by the possibility of entire artworks living in such tiny and unexpected spaces.

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For different takes on microscopic art, check out the work of Hasan Kale and Nikolai Aldunin.

Before You Go

Micro Art: Russian Artist Nikolai Aldunin Crafts Tiny Masterpieces You Can Barely See

Micro Art: Russian Artist Nikolai Aldunin Crafts Tiny Masterpieces You Can Barely See

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