A Boy and His Atom is a 2013 stop-motion animated short film released on YouTube by IBM Research.

One minute in length, it was made by moving carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunneling microscope, a device that magnifies them 100 million times.

Traditional silicon transistor technology has become cheaper, denser and more efficient, but fundamental physical limitations suggest that scaling down is an unsustainable path to solving the growing Big Data dilemma.

"[5] In addition, the researchers created three still images to promote Star Trek Into Darkness—the Federation logo, the starship Enterprise, and a Vulcan salute.

While the film was used by the researchers as a fun way to get students interested in science, it grew out of work that could increase the amount of data computers could store.