Story highlights Scientists etch 1.2 million letters onto tiny silicon disk

But to read this tiny Old Testament, you'd need a very big microscope

Jerusalem (CNN) Noah squeezed pairs of every creature on Earth into his ark. A miracle helped the Maccabees stretch one day's worth of oil to last eight days. And now scientists have etched the 1.2 million letters of the Old Testament onto a disk no larger than the tip of a pen.

They're calling it the Nano Bible and reading it would require an electron microscope.

The teeny tiny text started as an experiment in miniaturization, to see how much data can be stored in very, very small spaces.

Scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa created a layer of silicon less than 100 atoms thick, then plated it in gold. Then they used a focused ion beam to engrave the 1.2 million characters, one at a time, blasting away the gold to reveal the darker silicon beneath.

If you want to check the work, you'd have to magnify the font about 10,000 times.

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