In Japan, where people seem to have a fondness for high-tech gizmos and small, cute things à la Hello Kitty, an engineering professor and his students are serving up something, er, gastronomic: the world's smallest bowl of Ramen noodles.

The bowl is 0.001 millimeters in diameter, while the noodles were 0.002 millimeters long and 0.00002 millimeters thick.

But this wasn't just a fun stunt. The whole thing is made from carbon-based nanotubes, whose special properties (they're stronger than steel) mean they have the potential for wide use in electronics and medicine. Note: not food! As Masayuki Nakao, the engineer behind the creation, stressed to the Associated Press, "… they are not edible."