CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 5 -- A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) device that makes the world's most precise rulers -- with "ticks" only a few hundred billionths of a meter apart -- could impact fields from the manufacture of computer chips to space physics. The Nanoruler is 10 to 1000 times faster and more precise than other methods for patterning parallel lines and spaces (known collectively as gratings) across large surfaces more than 12 inches in diameter. 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