It’s only 60 seconds long: here’s the world’s smallest film, certified by Guinness World Records

This is the smallest movie ever made! Not necessarily the shortest, but definitely the smallest. Because this short film is only created at the molecular level. Did you lose it? We will explain everything to you!

as reported Guinness bookwho named the film A boy and his atom (Probably a reference to the SF film A Boy and His Dog, 1975) The record for “shortest stop motion film”, the film lasts 60 seconds and simply tells the story of a boy named Atom playing with a ball.

Before I explain why it’s the smallest film ever, here’s the artwork in question:

But how does it work, jam?

Collider Contacted scientists in San Jose, California, who were technically able to make this short film entirely out of atoms. The IBM labs transferred the carbon molecules individually, frame by frame, onto a small sheet of copper.

The motion was created by a small electrical discharge that was sent through the molecules a Scanning tunneling microscope. In addition, so that they did not move themselves, the molecules were cooled to -260 degrees.

The entire film consists of 242 images, each measuring just 45×25 nanometers (or 45×25 billionths of a meter), which is how small it is and if the film doesn’t win a Guinness World Record.

And the shortest film I’ve ever seen?

Probably not ! This is Soldier Boy, a very short 7 second film. It is the shortest film to receive an exhibition visa. American in origin, it is directed by Les Scholes and tells the story of a couple separated by World War II, but who find each other again.

Note that this data dates from the 2007 Guinness Book of Records and would have been true since then Dethroned Filmed in 2011 with a laser pulse (FLASH x-ray laser), also at the molecular level, and lasts 0.000000000000005 seconds and two images. But again, with such scientific tools, isn’t it a bit “cheated”?