Nanoman

Awww. Look at it. It’s so cute.

This is apparently the world’s smallest snowman, a tiny 2.7 microns (0.0027 millimeters) high. It was made by scientists at the Western University’s Nanofabrication Facility in Ontario, Canada. Pictures were posted on their Tumblr page.

Three 0.9-micron silica spheres were placed on top of each other to make the body of the snowman, while its eyes and smile were cut with a focused ion beam. Arms and a pointy nose were also added, made from platinum. For comparison, a human hair is about 75 microns (0.075 millimeters) thick.

As far as we can tell, the previous record holder came in at 10 microns (0.01 millimeters), made in 2009 by scientists at the National Physical Laboratory in London, UK. They also used an ion beam and platinum to put their relatively massive snowman together.