Italian polenta is the most cosmopolitan form of mush and is best when made with a slightly coarse meal with grains about the size of table salt.

NPR: Kernels of Truth About Cornmeal

Another early beneficiary might be Carbo Ceramics, which sells ceramic pellets the size of grains of sand that are pumped into the rock surrounding the wells to prop open the tiny cracks through which oil and gas flow.

FORBES: Roughneck stocks

This development is made possible by a new wave of technology: radio-frequency ID chips the size of pepper grains, broadband wireless and Web-based "dashboards" enabling monitoring and management.

FORBES: Your Product's a Hit

The first kind, the chunks, could be anything in size from dust grains, up through rocks and asteroids, to brown dwarfs (condensed lumps of gas not quite heavy enough to be stars).

ECONOMIST: The dark side of cosmology

About the same size as fine particles of cigarette smoke, the grains are made of silicate minerals and carbon-based materials coated with ice - principally water ice and frozen carbon monoxide.

BBC: University of Nottingham

The US space agency observatory is well suited to picking up the infrared signal expected from cold grains of dust about 10 microns (millionths of a metre) in size.

BBC: New ring detected around Saturn