Talk:Gray goo

Some other colour of goo ?? Black's taken, so's green

What about Zombie Goo? This variant shows up in fiction a lot, and some zombie stuff is arguably sort of science fiction, absurd as it may be. I don't know of a goo colour name but the concept is pretty analogous and highly prevalent in Speghetti Zombie flicks, including Return of the Living Dead and Resident Evil (both where military development bred dead guys who took over the world)

Ahh, just a thought. Seems to fit in there somehow.

What about entropy?

I think that this scenario: "all of the matter in the universe could be turned into goo (with "goo" meaning a large mass of replicating nanomachines lacking large-scale structure") violates the second law of thermodynamics, as nanomachines are significantly more complex than almost all of the universe.

There's no "Movie" section for fictional depictions, but Mission Impossible III should be on that list if there is one.

Presumably a large percentage of the universe's matter would be converted into energy (with attendant entropy) rather than into more nanomachines, so there would be no second law violation. Dysfunction (talk) 04:33, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

mathematical error

"The acceleration of gray goo is most likely to be geometric as most replicators will quickly exhaust available raw materials. Although the growth is not truly exponential, it is worth noting that geometric growth is fast enough to warrant concern."

This is plain wrong, since geometric growth is the same as exponential growth.

This page has been vandalized (not sure how to notify of this).

um

so the entry itself almost doesn't even describe the concept well, doesn't discuss how others have discussed it, and is 90% pop culture references. given that there have been lots of serious papers about whether grey goo is possible, probable, etc., surely this entry could be rewritten and de-crufted. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 19:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Overzealous deletion of Sci-fi examples?

I think the recent deletion of all examples from science fiction is a bit too heavy-handed. Most of the examples referred to articles, and from what I can see, those articles commonly do establish the facts mentioned about the source material here. I am not advocating using wikipedia as its own source, but just noting that there are sources for most of this - they just aren't mentioned in the bottom of this article. I personally do not believe wikipedia would be improved if we took a week out to delete everything which is not sourced. And I certainly do not think we should delete outright the stuff which is not sourced properly in the right articles, but for which sources do exist. I say reinstate the examples based on good articles - people can check those articles if they have doubts about the veracity of the claims here. And that is really the standard, isn't it? Verifiability? (All that said, some of the examples were... less than noteworthy). Lundse (talk) 19:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Did anyone notice how they also didn't mention a poignant example of this from pop-culture media?? There was no mention of the "replicators", which featured prominently in several seasons of Stargate SG-1. These machines are a great example of this idea of self-replicating machines and some of the "possible" outcomes of such an "outbreak" are depicted in many episodes of this TV show. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.104.118.52 (talk) 20:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

This already happened

Consider removing the word "hypothetical" because this has already happened once - at the beginning of photosynthetic life. So really, the only thing hypothetical about the scenario as it is presented in the article is the color "grey" - when it actually happened, the goo was green! Zaphraud (talk) 05:49, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The term grey goo only applies to non-biological machines. Biological cells don't count. Rreagan007 (talk) 20:07, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I've heard the term "green goo" being used to refer to bioengineered graygoo. --TiagoTiago (talk) 05:00, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

self-replicating?

I have heard the theory of a robot programmed to make two copies of itself, half its size, out of any available materials, with the same instruction. That would not be self-replication, so is the mention of self-replication necessary?--Richardson mcphillips (talk) 16:54, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

REASON I REMOVED TAG OF MERGE

"However, the word "ecophagy" is now applied more generally in reference to any event—nuclear war, the spread of monoculture, massive species extinctions—that might fundamentally alter the planet." Because of that quote, you can't merge the articles. You could edit this article to focus on the now more general reference, but not merge with the specific goo article. Beam 16:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Prince Charles?

I thought it was Prince Charles who, although not necessarily inventing the term, certainly brought it into the mainstream during a speech about the onslaught of nanotech and GMOs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.6.35.235 (talk) 02:17, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Clanking replicator

What is the relation between this article and Clanking replicator? Why does neither of them mention the other, and in fact, should they be merged? Shreevatsa (talk) 08:25, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Or, for that matter, why not include reference to the "Replicators" from Stargate: SG-1? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.51.32.147 (talk) 04:53, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Are humans a form of grey goo, or is grey goo a specialized form of a larger concept?

Grey goo is..."a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario [involving molecular nanotechnology] in which out-of-control self-replicating [robots] consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves, a scenario known as ecophagy ("eating the environment")."

Omit the qualifier "involving molecular nanotechnology" and replace "robots" with a more generic term like "entities", and is there a name for the concept? Under this concept, humans might qualify as a possible entity. Humans are consuming an exponentially increasing subset of the biosphere. If there is a separate concept for what I'm getting at perhaps it should be mentioned and linked here, to distinguish that concept from the more specialized concept called "grey goo". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.49.8.237 (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The term 'Grey goo' is strictly a nanotech apocalypse. If you can find reliable sources (Wikipedia:Reliable_sources that suggest a more general concept, go for it! Guyonthesubway (talk) 01:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Macroscopic Grey goo?

The conventional definition of grey goo being microscopic artificial self-replicating consumers, is there an equivalent term for a macroscopic variety? The specific example that makes me ask is the Slylandro probe from Star Control 2, which, due to a programming error, seek materials for replication above all else, even if those materials come from a starship holding alien life. The game postulates that, within just a few years, millions of these probes will inhabit the galaxy, with the number growing exponentially. They seem to fit all of the criteria for grey goo (artificial, self-replicating, consuming all, able to snuff out life) save one (being microscopic). Could grey goo even include such constructs that are macroscopic? --74.192.54.152 (talk) 16:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)