I Am Sure We Have All Heard Of Sand Castles,

but how about a castle on a single grain of sand?

that is what artist Vik Muniz has achieved in collaboration with artist and MIT researcher Marcelo Coelho, Muniz explores the microscopic with a series of sandcastles etched onto individual grains of sand,

I will not go into the details of how after four years of trial and error utilizing both antiquated and highly technical methods the drawings made by Vik were then sent to Coelho, who worked with a number of microscopic drawing processes for several years before deciding to use a Focused Ion Beam (FIB) which has the capability of creating a line only 50 nanometers wide, (as an aside a human hair is about 50,000 nanometers wide), if you want to read the full story and see more pictures have a look here, but what an amazing concept, a castle on a grain of sand.