The Hurbicide Guru

The “grey goo” scenario is one of those quasi-scientific concepts that captures the public imagination, but how likely is it? Scientists can and have built tiny self-replicating “nanobots”, but are we in danger of these laboratory creations getting out of control and “reproducing” out of control? Is the idea of a world buried in grey nano sludge as the machines consume the environment science or sci-fi?

Thankfully it’s pretty unlikely we’ll be drowning under a wave of grey goo any time soon: nanotechnology isn’t reliable enough to build an efficient, inexpensive self-replicating device right now, and many experts in the field don’t really see the need for self-replicating nano-devices anyway…it’s an idea more of the naysayers than coming from any practical need.

The single strongest argument against the possibility of a grey goo future is this though: we’ve already been living with microscopic, self-replicating organisms since the dawn of man, and it’s done us far more harm than good. We are, of course, talking about bacteria. They’re the most prolific class of creature on earth, as insidious and hard to eradicate as any imagined nanobot plague could be, yet we live in harmony with them each day of our lives, and whilst they’re not always our friends they do serve many useful functions for mankind, and they’re yet to take over the planet and re-make it in their own image!

Today nanotechnology is used in everything from surgical techniques to nanotech solar cells, and we can expect to use it for many other applications safely, for a long time.