The Flyest Fly

May 25, 2006 10:23 PM

A Fly Wearing Glasses
PopSci offers this cool gallery of high-magnification micro manufacturing coolness. Potentially NSFW if a mite at 50,000x could be construed as sexy.
posted by fenriq (17 comments total)

Tee Hee
posted by longsleeves at 10:25 PM on May 25, 2006

Woah.

That is cool.
posted by VirtualWolf at 10:27 PM on May 25, 2006

That's gotta be a double...
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:28 PM on May 25, 2006

Too hasty. The fly, I mean, is a double. Just ignore me.
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:29 PM on May 25, 2006

The fly is a double.
posted by Galvatron at 10:34 PM on May 25, 2006

Errr... triple.
posted by missbossy at 10:40 PM on May 25, 2006

Admins, reset the URL, reset the URL!
posted by fenriq at 10:45 PM on May 25, 2006

Man, a 4mm long submarine is way too fucking big to be sticking in my veins. That thing starts farting around in my cerebral capillaries, has an engine failure, and suddenly I'm stuggling to eat pudding for the rest of my life. Call me when the protein folding nanobots arrive.
posted by quite unimportant at 12:24 AM on May 26, 2006

Though struggling to spell "struggling" is an affliction I have to cope with through no fault of any miniature submarine.
posted by quite unimportant at 12:26 AM on May 26, 2006

This trips me out because we are actually making proto-robots on the micro level. I'm 43 and...you know...our whole world might change dramatically in the next few decades.

We're learning so much, so fast.

A lizard can re-grow its tail; an octopus can re-grow a tentacle.

I know this is a stretch to say, but...we might be stepping into an age that could be dubbed "Methuselah."

For better or worse, I don't know.

Space travel, anyone?
posted by rougy at 12:30 AM on May 26, 2006

We're currently at the peak of micro-bot coolness—it's all downhill from here. Expect this field to grow less exciting every year. Just look at what happened to the big robots. Instead of Lt. Cmdr. Data and Rosie the Maid, we have automobile welders and Roomba. Turns out the brilliant technological marvels of the future are efficient, utilitarian, and boring. Instead of flying cars we have Segways. Meh.
posted by ryanrs at 5:22 AM on May 26, 2006

Bono is such a tart.
posted by catchmurray at 6:21 AM on May 26, 2006

"Instead of flying cars we have Segways."

Never judge the future by the standards of today.

In a few decades we will process and store terabytes of data just as we do gigabytes today.

I agree that the reality of tomorrow often disappoints our expectations....

But if you look at anything from calculators to computers to video games - the progress is there, and when a synthesis of that progress comes to pass, we will move forward in ways never anticipated.
posted by rougy at 6:41 AM on May 26, 2006

oh, emofly, how we've missed you.
posted by boo_radley at 7:50 AM on May 26, 2006

I liked the camel going through the eye of a needle. Up next: scientists get a rich man into heaven!
posted by GuyZero at 8:20 AM on May 26, 2006

Turns out the brilliant technological marvels of the future are efficient, utilitarian, and boring. Instead of flying cars we have Segways. Meh.

I've been on a Segway; it's neither efficient nor utilitarian. This is an interesting point, though, because I think that technology WILL become more efficient, utilitarian, and boring as we need greater innovation just to address, say, our environmental and transportation ills. Our resources will be devoted to just trying to maintain the status quo and get by rather than creating cool stuff.
posted by lunalaguna at 12:02 PM on May 26, 2006

That Fly is so much cooler than other flies. The other flies are like "you'll never pass the big test" and this fly is all "fuck the fucking test."
posted by I Foody at 12:10 PM on May 26, 2006