No, not those MiniDiscs. The ones we're talking about, created by researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, are much, much smaller -- less than 300 nanometers across. The tiny disks of magnetic material are formed using glass spheres that are themselves about 300nm in diameter. They are arranged into hexagonal shapes on top of a thin, magnetic layer and are then bombarded with argon ions. The ions wear away the magnetic layer that is not protected by the glass spheres, leaving behind tiny disks. The argon also starts to eat at the glass too, shrinking the sph
