
This nano-scale model of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise measures just 8.8 nanometres long, a nanometre being a 'rather small' size - just one-billionth of a metre. It was made by Takayuki Hoshino and Shinji Matsui of the Himeji Institute of Technology, one of three campuses at Japan’s University of Hyogo.
Hoshino and Matsui used a 30 kV (kilovolt) Ga+ (Gallium arsenide) focused ion-beam that works with individual atoms to etch patterns and models on a submicroscopic scale. Equipment like this is widely used in the semiconductor industry - for example, your computer would not be possible without similar machines in computer chip production.
As for the model’s scale, there are various estimates for the size of the movie Enterprise, but one we found quoted several times is around the 760 m (2494 ft) mark. So that makes this invisible-small ion-carved replica somewhere in the region of 1:684 billionth scale! Yikes!
View USS Enterprise models and collectibles here.








