> ...Ediger and his team dropped molecules one by one onto a surface as if they were Tetris pieces, allowing them to find snug fits.
Let's assume a 40kg super mirror was made from the same base silica[1]/tantala[2] substrate as the legacy mirror. Let's also assume 50% distribution by mass.
That's a (20kg/60.08g/mol)+(20kg/441.893g/mol) ~= 378.1mol tetris endgame.
So if we took this analogy quite literally and wanted to build 1 mirror in 10 years, you'd have to play precision atomic tetris a mere 17 orders of magnitude faster than this guy[3].
Not going to lie...sure does make watching grass grow sound a lot more pragmatic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_dioxide