From 10⁻¹⁰ m to 10²⁶ m · real photographs only

Tera‑Marvel Atlas

The greatest machines and structures humans have built, ordered by scale: transistor maps you can zoom to single gates, the rooms that compute, the machines that hold stars, the detectors that watch matter break, the rockets and rails and dams, and the mirrors that see back to the first galaxies. Click any photo to open it full screen, then press Inspect to pan the native-resolution file.

112real photographs

8orders of scale

3.0 Gpxcombined native pixels

22,036 pxwidest original

10⁻¹⁰m

The Infinitesimal

Silicon mapped gate by gate, the purest crystals ever grown, the roundest objects ever made, and the cold machines that hold single atoms still. · 19 images

Raptor Lake, mapped — Raptor Lake, mapped14,999×6,905

Pentium II “Dixon” at 292 megapixels — Pentium II “Dixon” at 292 megapixels22,036×13,288

Intel CE3100 “Canmore” — Intel CE3100 “Canmore”15,125×13,801

Zen “Zeppelin”, metal stripped away — Zen “Zeppelin”, metal stripped away11,960×5,235

EPYC Rome I/O die — EPYC Rome I/O die5,946×4,000

NVIDIA TU104 — NVIDIA TU1045,947×4,000

Four AND gates, whole chip — Four AND gates, whole chip5,613×6,356

STM32 microcontroller — STM32 microcontroller6,809×6,622

A 300 mm Haswell wafer — A 300 mm Haswell wafer4,288×2,848

Silicon photonics wafer — Silicon photonics wafer2,432×2,242

A single crystal — A single crystal2,848×2,136

Clean room — Clean room7,556×5,066

Lab on a chip — Lab on a chip6,720×4,480

IBM Quantum System One — IBM Quantum System One6,144×8,160

Ion trap, NIST — Ion trap, NIST3,756×2,564

Seeing single atoms — Seeing single atoms3,456×2,304

Titan Krios cryo-EM — Titan Krios cryo-EM3,787×5,681

The Avogadro sphere — The Avogadro sphere3,000×2,334

Gravity Probe B rotor — Gravity Probe B rotor3,552×2,384

10¹m

Rooms That Think

Exascale and near-exascale machines: tens of thousands of nodes, liquid plumbing, and megawatts turned into floating-point operations. · 5 images

Frontier — Frontier3,000×2,400

Frontier, cabinet row — Frontier, cabinet row3,000×2,460

Summit — Summit4,216×2,372

Fugaku — Fugaku4,096×3,072

Fugaku rack — Fugaku rack3,264×4,928

10¹m

Star Machines

Twisted magnets, 192 converging lasers and pulsed power. Engineering whose job is to make a small star on Earth and hold it. · 11 images

Wendelstein 7-X — Wendelstein 7-X4,032×3,024

W7-X vacuum vessel segment — W7-X vacuum vessel segment3,012×2,268

W7-X hall — W7-X hall4,032×2,268

JET, Culham — JET, Culham3,543×2,783

KSTAR — KSTAR2,592×1,944

ITER coil winding — ITER coil winding3,000×2,000

NIF laser bay — NIF laser bay3,600×2,700

NIF target chamber — NIF target chamber4,256×2,832

The hohlraum — The hohlraum3,648×2,736

Keyhole target — Keyhole target2,816×2,112

Sandia Z machine — Sandia Z machine3,300×2,180

10⁴m

Machines That Watch Matter Break

Cathedral-sized detectors, X-ray lasers kilometres long, a cubic kilometre of instrumented ice, and arms that measure a stretch of space smaller than a proton. · 15 images

ATLAS calorimeter, 2005 — ATLAS calorimeter, 20052,975×1,908

ATLAS — ATLAS5,800×2,900

ATLAS end-on, 2007 — ATLAS end-on, 20072,990×5,724

CMS — CMS6,000×4,000

Inside CMS — Inside CMS2,448×3,264

ALICE — ALICE9,099×6,018

LHC tunnel — LHC tunnel2,816×2,112

Muon g-2 ring — Muon g-2 ring7,357×4,909

European XFEL accelerator — European XFEL accelerator5,184×3,456

XFEL undulator — XFEL undulator3,456×5,184

LCLS beamline, SLAC — LCLS beamline, SLAC5,616×3,605

Diamond Light Source — Diamond Light Source5,570×1,991

50 cm photomultiplier — 50 cm photomultiplier5,472×3,648

IceCube, South Pole — IceCube, South Pole11,621×8,716

LIGO Hanford — LIGO Hanford2,400×1,600

10²m

Machines That Leave

Engines, stacks, towers, crawlers and the buildings that assemble them. From the F-1 to Raptor, from Sriharikota to Starbase. · 22 images

F-1 engine — F-1 engine5,184×3,456

Saturn V first stage — Saturn V first stage2,415×3,000

Apollo 11 rollout — Apollo 11 rollout3,812×5,194

Crawler-Transporter 2 — Crawler-Transporter 26,720×4,480

Vehicle Assembly Building — Vehicle Assembly Building5,275×3,753

Inside the VAB — Inside the VAB3,072×2,048

SLS core stage — SLS core stage7,706×5,138

RS-25 hot fire — RS-25 hot fire2,775×3,450

Artemis I — Artemis I8,640×5,760

LVM3 · Chandrayaan-3 — LVM3 · Chandrayaan-32,865×3,274

Nine Merlins — Nine Merlins3,000×2,000

Falcon 9 at LZ-1 — Falcon 9 at LZ-13,411×2,295

First Raptor firing, 2016 — First Raptor firing, 20164,752×3,168

Starship in the High Bay — Starship in the High Bay6,154×5,583

Full stack — Full stack3,072×4,080

The catch tower — The catch tower4,470×6,216

Building the arms — Building the arms5,916×3,921

Crew Dragon cabin — Crew Dragon cabin5,760×3,840

Europa Clipper in the space simulator — Europa Clipper in the space simulator6,200×8,272

SR-71 Blackbird — SR-71 Blackbird6,000×4,000

Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 — Rolls-Royce Trent 10008,256×5,504

DARPA Atlas — DARPA Atlas3,456×5,184

10³m

Megastructures

Towers, spans, tunnels, dams, sun-fields and steel arches built where engineering meets geology. · 20 images

Burj Khalifa — Burj Khalifa5,184×3,456

Shanghai Tower — Shanghai Tower2,805×4,633

Statue of Unity — Statue of Unity3,456×5,184

Chenab Bridge under construction — Chenab Bridge under construction4,608×3,072

Millau Viaduct — Millau Viaduct3,600×2,400

Akashi Kaikyo Bridge — Akashi Kaikyo Bridge17,613×2,691

Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge — Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge4,465×2,905

Tunnel boring machine — Tunnel boring machine3,872×2,592

Inside the TBM — Inside the TBM2,592×1,944

Three Gorges Dam — Three Gorges Dam8,149×4,520

Hoover Dam — Hoover Dam11,000×9,243

Itaipu — Itaipu2,600×2,773

Kurobe Dam — Kurobe Dam6,000×4,000

Agua Clara locks — Agua Clara locks4,730×2,661

New Safe Confinement — New Safe Confinement4,800×3,200

Troll A — Troll A4,660×3,631

Ivanpah — Ivanpah5,161×2,783

Noor Ouarzazate — Noor Ouarzazate6,855×3,192

Gemasolar — Gemasolar5,020×3,025

Wind installation vessel — Wind installation vessel3,975×2,981

10¹¹m

Off-World

Hardware working where no human can repair it. An outpost at 400 km, and machines on the surface of Mars, 10¹¹ metres away. · 5 images

International Space Station — International Space Station4,288×2,848

The Cupola — The Cupola4,288×2,848

Northern India at night — Northern India at night4,928×3,280

Ingenuity on Mars — Ingenuity on Mars3,026×2,253

Curiosity selfie — Curiosity selfie20,000×10,000

10²⁶m

Machines That See Everything

Mirrors polished to nanometres, a 3.2-gigapixel camera, a telescope as wide as the Earth, and light from galaxies 13 billion years old. · 15 images

Hubble mirror, 1979 — Hubble mirror, 19793,000×2,401

Inspecting Hubble's mirror — Inspecting Hubble's mirror3,000×2,334

Webb's primary mirror — Webb's primary mirror4,256×2,832

Webb mirror segments — Webb mirror segments4,256×2,832

Webb sunshield test — Webb sunshield test5,616×3,744

Steward Mirror Lab — Steward Mirror Lab6,600×4,407

GMT mirror, from behind — GMT mirror, from behind5,760×3,840

The 3.2-gigapixel focal plane — The 3.2-gigapixel focal plane6,529×4,008

Extremely Large Telescope — Extremely Large Telescope15,000×5,177

ALMA — ALMA6,084×4,096

VLT laser guide star — VLT laser guide star4,000×3,631

FAST — FAST3,264×2,448

Inouye first light — Inouye first light7,320×7,320

M87* — M87*7,416×4,320

Webb's First Deep Field — Webb's First Deep Field4,537×4,630