"Smart Dust" to Explore Planets

Ollabelle writes "The BBC is reporting how tiny chips with flexible skins could be used to glide through a planet's atmosphere in swarms to gather data and report back. 'The idea of using millimetre-sized devices to explore far-flung locations is nothing new, but Dr Barker and his colleagues are starting to look in detail at how it might be achieved. The professor at Glasgow's Nanoelectronics Research Centre told delegates at the Royal Astronomical Society gathering that computer chips of the size and sophistication required to meet the challenge already existed.'"

Comments

Goo

[Ajehals]

...tiny chips with flexible skins could be used to glide through a planet's atmosphere in swarms to gather data and report back...

Replace "gather data" with "decimate indigenous life" and "report back" with "multiply exponentially", and you have either a classic horror movie or an Iain Banks novel.

Actually its quite scary either way... grey goo anyone?

This project is doomed

[Timesprout]

When they get to the Dyson planet in the Hoover nebula.