Welcome to the new year!
I've written previously (see here, item #3) about the extreme ultraviolet lithography tools used in modern computer chip fabrication. These machines are incredible, the size of a railway car, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars each. Veritasium has put out a new video about these, which I will try to embed here. Characteristically, it's excellent, and I wanted to bring it to your attention.
It remains an interesting question whether there could be a way of achieving this kind of EUV performance through an alternative path. As I'd said a year ago, if you could do this for only $50M per machine, it would be hugely impactful.
A related news item: There are claims that a Chinese effort in Shenzen has a prototype EUV machine now (that fills an entire factory floor, so not exactly compact or cheap). It will be a fascinating industrial race if multiple players are able to make the capital investments needed to compete in this area.
