World’s smallest weigh in
Weighing in at just one zeptogram, it’s a few xenon atoms.
Which is a billion trillion times smaller than a gram. Smoke that. :)
What scientists did was use a set of scales that involve a really really narrow wire in a magnetic field, to weight small clusters of atoms.
In this example, they measured a group of xenon atoms.
Why, though? Isn’t this pointless?
Well, actually, this is pretty important in medicine - what they are trying to do is be able to weigh individual proteins.
This would be really useful because a lot of the stuff that makes up our bodies is built from the same material.
Which means when you are working with a really really tiny sample of tissue from someone, it can be really hard to work out which building blocks of the body you’re working with. And very hard to tell how much of it there is.
By being able to measure proteins individually, they can make really precise measurements when trying to study new medicines, and how they can best help our bodies, for example.
The next step is to improve the technique a thousand times. Then instead of measuring in terms of zeptograms, they’ll be measuring in yoctograms. :)