do you ever just think about how modern microelectronics is smaller than light

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like you can't take an optical photograph of the transistors in a typical CPU, with *any* level of magnification, because they're about an order of magnitude smaller than the light you're using to take that photograph

@Felthry

I can't even imagine how we manage to not destroy everything if we can't see it.

@Tathar there's a reason they do all this stuff in rooms that are climate-controlled to the point that they contain *no dust*.

@Tathar like the entire manufacturing process of semiconductor devices is *fascinating*

they even have to make clever use of interference to produce some features that are smaller than the extreme UV light they use for photolithography

@Tathar I don't know that much about it myself and I think the details are a trade secret at the moment anyway, i'm afraid

@Tathar the stuff other than interferometric photolithography I could probably explain in a fair bit of detail though! At a later point, though, busy right now

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