The Closest Thing We Have to Alien Technology

What people said

btown · 2026-05 · Strong recommendation

For those interested in ASML, and how much engineering goes into being able to make EUV lithography work reliably at scale for 3nm nodes (by hitting individual droplets of tin with highly accurate lasers and turning them into plasma!), I highly recommend this recent (Dec 2025) Veritasium video about them: [VIDEO] For more: [LINK] (There's something incredible and downright "alchemical" about the fact that the reason our sand can "think" is because we use light to vaporize tin which then carves intricate glyphs into the sand!)

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terlisimo · 2026-04 · Recommendation

The whole process was deep magic to me before I watched that video. It didn't seem less magical after I've watched it. More so, if anything. Asianometry[0] has a number of videos on EUV lithography that cover some of the mind-blowing advances in the years since. Veritasium[1] recently also made a video on the subject. [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]

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random3 · 2026-04 · Recommendation

Veritasium has a nice video about it [VIDEO] Obviously, there are a lot of reasons why. But it boils down to having the vision, the belief and the strength to follow through over many years. It's important to not confound vision with random Kool-Aid. Instead it's grounded in research. That research is itself grounded in a strong vision and belief — it got laughed by the entire physics community at the time: > 'people seemed unwilling to believe bending x-rays, and they tended to that we had actually made an image by regard the whole thing as a big fish story Now contrast this with the current academic reality — "publish or perish" and the reality of venture financing and corporate culture that "depends" (arguably in self-inflicted manner, that's not 100% the case) on quarterly repots. ASML is just a recent story, but if you look back, you'll see that most revolutions have a similar pattern of people crazy enough to deviate from the herd. The rest— the immense financial risk, the 5000 suppliers, etc. came as a result of having the ability to see through all the noise and the grit to to follow through when everyone calls you an idiot for not doing something "useful"

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