Who doesn’t hate mosquitoes? For centuries humans have had to endure this pest, and we started to win the war when DDT came out. Of course DDT isn’t allowed any more, but now you can kill these little buggers with a new gadget. It’s like Star Wars technology for vampire defense. I want one, preferably with a USB port so I can watch the body count on my PC. It will probably be a few years before the digitized ghost of Billy Mays hawks one on TV though. Still, I want one.
Here’s some background from Information Week:
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the project has been dubbed “WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.” It aims to kill mosquitoes with lasers to prevent the spread of malaria, which mosquitoes can transmit.
The anti-mosquito laser system is being funded by Intellectual Ventures, a company run by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s former CTO.
…
Kare said that “WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction” isn’t a term used internally to refer to the project. He calls the project “the Photonic Fence.” “When we’re being lighthearted, we call it ‘the bug zapper,'” he explained.
As its name suggests, the Photonic Fence prototype consists of two posts that direct laser fire at mosquitoes that fly between them. Kare said the research team is still optimizing its targeting algorithm. “But we definitely can detect them and aim a beam at them,” he said.
When that happens, the mosquitoes literally get toasted.
From the intellectualventureslab.com website: This illustration shows one way our “photonic fence” mosquito laser system could be used to set up a perimeter defense, protecting a single building. The red “fence” shows a border that mosquitoes can’t pass through, but it is safe for everything else. There is no top coverage because mosquitoes don’t fly very high.
Here’s the videos of mosquitoes meeting a well deserved death by laser fire:
Here’s the live demonstration setup at the 2010 TED conference:
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David Elder:
Consider how post WWII farmers saturated their barnyards with DDT, and did not kill off their chickens. Nor is there large numbers of DDT related cancers, even in the generation that was raised on those farms. We are more susceptible to cancer as we age, and no DDT/cancer link?
DDT and raptor eggs was pure hokum. (T’was the bounty on the birds that done it.)
King Lear as actually performed once with an impromptu line:
LEAR …What is your study?
EDGAR How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin.
LEAR Skeeters and sech?
EDGAR [totally speechless]
I laughed but then I pondered.
Is this for real?
Why would anybody set up those laser walls when they could hang up nets that are cheaper and need no energy supply?
Why not spray DDT on the building’s interior walls when it is cheaper and needs no energy supply?
The videos are funny, but this is a joke, isn’t it? Or am I missing something?
Richard
davidmhoffer (10:51:04) : “Funny, but the first bug actually was a bug. Admiral Grace Hopper of the US Navy (deceased) started her career programming one of the first computers for the Navy.”
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve read this story several times and only now do I see the humor in having the first “bug” discovered by someone named Grace Hopper.
Rick (13:52:53) :
“I imagine it would wreak havoc on my honeybees…”
Dont be too sure about that. Remember that this is a laser.
It can measure range and bearing to the target. And just as a camera today can measure the area of the target, and the range, it can calculate how big a target is.
Rest asure, the software will be ably to have a “size-window”…Dont zap it if its larger than so and so….
Honeybees saved…. And so are humans….and eyes…. as long as the eye doesnt have wings, and fly all by itself.
@David Elder
The reason that DDT was banned for crop dusting is the quick ineffectiveness of the pesticide, use skyrockets quickly when used, and leaves harmful insects untouched. The result was that eg in Tanzania huge DDT stockpiles were left unused.
The only evidence for the thinning of eggshells is based on a controversial chicken egg experiment. Standard real pollution policy led to the reemergence of the pelican and the eagle.
“Silent Spring” is a myth.
1DandyTroll (13:36:34) :
@davidmhoffer (10:51:04) ‘Funny, but the first bug actually was a bug.’
I don’t know, personally I don’t find it at all funny when people assume too much.
But sure, dude, I bet you’re the only one on this whole planet, in your mind, that read the history books. Personally I must have been too deep into the code. Now, that’s funny. :p>>
Not having read the history books myself, I would not know what they say. I only know the story directly from the Admiral.
Your apology is accepted.
Phillep Harding (14:07:28) :
“DDT and raptor eggs was pure hokum. (T’was the bounty on the birds that done it.)”
It wasn’t. I was there when it happened. It took thirty years for the raptors to recover in Sweden. And they were protected. No bounties.
Would it work on my ex wife?
“The only evidence for the thinning of eggshells is based on a controversial chicken egg experiment. Standard real pollution policy led to the reemergence of the pelican and the eagle.”
Sorry but no. There was extensive research on raptors in Sweden which showed the egg-thinning effect. When DDE disappeared from the environment egg thickness went back to normal.
davidmhoffer (10:25:33) :
“that puff of smoke wouldn’t be aerosol soot or something? ”
What appears to be smoke is actually the spirit of the newly deceased skeeter winging it’s way to mosquito heaven. 🙂 Well that’s what it looks like!
I can just hear the chatter between the mosquitos now:
“Red Leader, this is Gold Five. Lost Tiree, lost Dutch.”
“I copy, Gold Five.”
“They came at us from behind….”
I would have thought the biomass of mosquitoes would be a food source for some higher order predator(s) in the food chain.
If the mosquito is zapped – which species does get to eat lunch?
It was interesting to read the comments on this new mozzie-zapper folly and especially the DDT diversions. Like climate, the DDT story is complicated and it was never as simple as ‘DDT bad, ban DDT good’ (substitute CO2 for DDT if you find this difficult to understand). DDT is too broad spectrum and too persistent for most of the systems we used it in, and its breakdown products are not good, but DDT is just a chemical. The problem was the way that we used it as a solution for all insect problems (and dumped what we didn’t want with no thought of what might happen). Our ‘solution’ – to ban it completely was just as numbskulled. Perhaps the real problem is that we (i.e. people) tend to treat problems as simple black and white dichotomies – a bizarre view of the World in my view.
Err – Anthony, wasn’t this meant for release on 1 April?
<];o)
Tom
Vancouver’s best kept secret: No mosquitoes in the summertime!
Barbed wire would work just as well for New Jersey mosquitos.
The sledgehammer will also do the trick.
But without the advantage of using much more energy and material than DDT does.
And killing huge amount of insects doesn’t seem as disastrous as some people make it seem — remember, only a few decades ago we were covering large areas with DDT and nobody seems to be predicting anything with as much of an effect as that had.
kadaka (11:43:32) :
“….As opposed to a real natural solution like putting up a bat house. “A single brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in one hour. They are a great natural pest controller.”
Granted that idea is not as sexy as a “Laser Beam Curtain of DEATH,” but still…”
Oh I do not know about that. I think it is kind of neat watching the bats doing “aerobatic” flying in the evenings and at barbeques watch the ladies run screaming when the bats dive bomb the bugs hanging around they heads.
I am the one who gets dragged into friends houses to rescue the bats trapped in the living room. At least I now have my friends trained not to kill bats or black snakes.
What Stacey (11:18:09) said, re the Baltic sea ice thread, and in general. Since you closed that thread, let me just say this:
I agree with her that your contribution is enormous, and all of us, even the naysayers and nit-pickers appreciate the fantastic (and fascinating) job you are doing.
Sorry to have caught you on a bad day. You and the moderators have generally responded graciously to grammatical and spelling corrections, so I deemed it OK to point out the ‘itsy’ error.
Let me add that I’d be willing to help out in a proof-reading capacity, and I’m sure many other nit-picking fans would, too. It would be an honor to contribute in even a small way to so vital an enterprise. The only problem I could see would be keeping up with the fast and furious pace you have set. There’s a reason why magazines take a while. Regrettably the immediacy of the Internet creates a sense of urgency that works against the old rule of having a fresh eye look over copy before shipping it.
At least I didn’t complain about ‘England’.
Now back to your regularly-scheduled thread.
/Mr Lynn
Haven’t seen a mosquito in the 8 years I’ve lived where I live. And no, it’s not a desert.
Ask the Japanese. This is all well and good until Mothra shows up.
Some of us do read the content.
And we know what the plural of ‘comma’ is.
Ignore us at your peril! 😉
/Mr Lynn
I want it.
Maybe the presence of this laser zapper miight finally pave the way for the US to drill for oil in ANWR. My understanding is that oil drilling there would disrupt the caribou there and we must not do it. However, I’ve heard that mosquitoes can take up to half a pint of blood from those caribous daily. Mosquitoes or oil drilling on less than 2% of the land. I’ll take drilling.