Although it has no less than 300,000 words, the Hebrew Bible was successfully put on a chip smaller than a pinhead. Just a few days before Christmas, the Israeli researchers announced this funny and meticulous achievement, which reportedly aims to increase young people’s interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

The nano-Bible was written on a silicon chip covered with thin layer of gold (20 nanometers or 0.0002 mm thick). The Jewish nano-Bible’s own surface is of no less than 0.5 sq-mm (0.1 sq-in). The Israeli researchers used a device called the Focused Ion Beam (Fib) to write it.

"When we send the particle beam toward a point on the surface, the gold atoms bounce off of this point, thus exposing the silicon layer underneath," said Ohad Zohar, one of the researchers at the Technion Haifa Institute of Technology, where this project was developed.

The Jewish nano-Bible broke the previous record for the smallest copy of the Holy Book, which was held by a Bible measuring 2.8 x 3.4 x 1 cm (1.1 x 1.3 x 0.4 in), weighing 11.75 g (0.4 ounces) and containing 1,513 pages. According to the Guinness Book, this tiny Bible was created by an Indian professor in November 2001.

Now, the next step for the Haifa Institute of Technology’s researchers is to photograph the Bible and to display it on a giant wall within the Faculty of Physics. "In this picture, which will be 7m by 7m (23ft by 23ft), it will be possible to read the entire Bible with the naked eye (the height of each letter will be some 3mm - 0.1in)," Ohad Zohar said, adding that "Near this picture, the original - the nano-Bible itself, which is the size a grain of sugar - will be displayed."

The fact that this whole nano-Bible event was made public a few days before Christmas is very ironic, if we take into account that Judaism doesn’t consider Jesus as the Messiah and that Jews do not celebrate Christmas.