Tuesday September 10, 2013
![](https://www.aiweirdness.com/content/images/public/images/db08a19a-afd2-4800-be17-45c16ee8811e_630x495.jpg)
Looking like architectural columns, these structures are more than two million times shorter than their life-sized counterparts. Put another way, they’re only knee-high to a bacterium - the only way we can see them is with a powerful electron microscope.
We’re not making buildings with these structures, but microscopic lasers, small enough to fit on a computer chip and enable the chip to communicate with others with light, rather than electricity. Using light, we hope that chip-to-chip communication will be faster and more energy efficient, leading to faster computers and faster internet. These lasers are just one of many microscopic light-using components needed to make this work - we’re also working on making light detectors and switches.