At just one-fifth the width of a human hair, this must be a very strong contender for the smallest snowman in the world. The little fella's creator is David Cox, an engineer at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK. Rather than being made from snow, however, the body is formed by welding together two tin microparticles, each 10 痠 in diameter, which are usually used to calibrate electron microscopes.

A focused ion beam is then used to etch out the eyes and mouth on the top microparticle and a tiny fleck of platinum forms the nose. Cox made the snowman while taking time out from his research at NPL's quantum detection group. According to his homepage, Cox seems to enjoy making things on the nano-scale. "I guess I was just born to make stuff," he writes.