Grey Goo - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

The term grey goo is often used in a futuristic or science fiction context, as the required technologies do not yet exist. In the worst postulated scenarios (requiring large, space-capable machines), matter beyond Earth would also be turned into goo (with goo meaning a large mass of replicating nanomachines lacking large-scale structure, which may or may not actually appear goo-like). The disaster is posited to result from a deliberate doomsday device, or from an accidental mutation in a self-replicating nanomachine used only for other purposes, but designed to operate in a natural environment. Notable examples of such a work can be found in the novels The Reproductive System by John Sladek (1968), Blood Music and The Forge of God by Greg Bear (1985), the 2002 Michael Crichton novel Prey and Wil McCarthy's novel Bloom. This idea was also featured in an episode of Futurama.

An alternative pink goo scenario is the end of the world in the Jasper Fforde novel Lost in a Good Book, where a nanotechnology 'Dream Topping making machine' turns all matter on earth into a pink dessert similar to Angel Delight. The Dream Topping is taken back in time to the beginning of earth, where it supplies the organic nutrients needed to create life.

Denial-of-service attacks in the virtual world Second Life which work by continually replicating objects until the server crashes are referred to as grey goo attacks. This is a reference to the self-replicating aspects of grey goo. It is one example of the widespread convention of drawing analogies between certain Second Life concepts and the theories of radical nanotechnology.