An Even Smaller Model
The new prototype is about the size of an aspirin tablet and will get even smaller.
In the time frame of a year, Kahn predicts, we should have out first working prototypes that are the size of a grain of sand.
Smart dust particles could send back information using a minute laser that has already been tested, transmitting data 13 miles across San Francisco Bay.
Because the Pentagon is paying for the research, smart dust might at first have mainly military uses:
Distributing a network of these sensors all around the desert in Iraq, for example, and looking for SCUDs [missiles], or looking for biological weapons, Pister says.
Smart dust might have confirmed whether the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant the United States bombed two years ago really was making chemical weapons. But the dust could also be scattered from planes to check the weather inside storms, warn jetliners of air turbulence and discover almost anything where humans cant risk going.
Its the power of a PC, in a speck of dust.