Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Imagine a machine which can shoot mosquitoes out of the sky using a laser. From the Arctic to the tropics, mosquitoes are a major nuisance, and in some cases a lethal threat. The possibility of shooting the nasty little critters out of the sky just edged a little closer, thanks to a study which investigated the most efficient means of delivering a lethal pulse of laser light to our mosquito enemies.
Small, flying insects continue to pose great risks to both human health and agricultural production throughout the world, so there remains a compelling need to develop new vector and pest control approaches. Here, we examined the use of short (<25 ms) laser pulses to kill or disable anesthetized female Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes, which were chosen as a representative species. The mortality of mosquitoes exposed to laser pulses of various wavelength, power, pulse duration, and spot size combinations was assessed 24 hours after exposure. For otherwise comparable conditions, green and far-infrared wavelengths were found to be more effective than near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. Pulses with larger laser spot sizes required lower lethal energy densities, or fluence, but more pulse energy than for smaller spot sizes with greater fluence. Pulse duration had to be reduced by several orders of magnitude to significantly lower the lethal pulse energy or fluence required. These results identified the most promising candidates for the lethal laser component in a system being designed to identify, track, and shoot down flying insects in the wild.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep20936
Blowing up sleeping mosquitoes, however satisfying, is obviously not going to to completely solve the issue of how to blast them out of the sky. But one of my favourite TED talk videos, presented by Nathan Myhrvold, demonstrates an experimental device designed to do just that – to target and eliminate flying mosquitoes, under laboratory conditions.
The TED talk is fascinating and inspirational, because Nathan claims they built their mosquito laser defence system out of optical scrap purchased on eBay. Ever since I saw the video, I’ve had a burning urge to try to build my own mosquito laser system. I suspect my version would probably pose more of a danger to the cat, than to flying mosquitoes – but I really want to give it a go.
Because someone, somewhere will make that vital set of breakthroughs required, to take this idea from the laboratory to the shelves of Walmart. My prediction is in 10 – 20 years at most, no backyard BBQ will be complete, without its own laser light show blasting mosquitoes out of the air before they get a chance to bite.
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The problem with lasers is their range. A laser pulse hot enough to fry a bug is probably also hot enough to damage a retina or temporarily blind an airline pilot, far, far away.
So your laser bug zapper would need to be set up like a gun at target range, to only shoot at bugs when they’re in front of a suitable backdrop. That could still be useful, I guess, though it still might blind the occasional songbird.
Only if the laser misses its target and the pulse is of sufficiently long duration.
If it’s possible to track and identify a mosquito it should be possible to hit it with a pulse. I think there’s more likely to be problems with people moving between the zapper and target just at the wrong time, but even then the software should be able to stop the laser from firing once something starts to move between it and the target. At the very least, facial recognition will stop the laser firing at peoples faces.
What with all that and not having it shoot down harmless insects, it’s a mighty interesting challenge. Even if the zapper never comes to fruition it’ll push the technology in interesting new ways…
NO. even if the laser hits it’s target there will likely be some light which gets past and presents a hazard. If the pulse is long enough and strong enough to kill a mosquito it will certainly be long enough and strong enough to blow a hole in your retina.
This could find an applicaiton for indoor use aimed up in the air , as long as there are no reflective objects like metal light fittings up there.
Sounds pretty risky to me.
It may be nice to clear your sleeping area but as a general solution to reducing mosquito populations it’s a joke. Someone should work out how much energy it required per shot , how many mosquitoes there are in the world and do the sums.
We’d probably need to double global power generation capacity just to power all these lasers.
Mike,
Put it on a UAV and blast the critters in a look-down, shoot-down mode for 30 minutes before the engagement then patrol the perimeter away from guests. Not much danger of hitting a pilot unless you have a mirror or a swimming pool on a very calm day. The hard part will be to program the sensor to not shoot ladybugs and preying mantis or other desirable insects. Still a hard problem though.
How about hanging it off a gutter/tree/ and having it look/shoot down?
Put it on your house’s ridgeline and set to shoot downwards.
Set the sensor to disable the system if there is anything larger than a cat in the yard.
Mark W…NOT THE CAT!
Rather than using a parallel ‘beam’ of light a couple mm in diameter, start with a beam a couple of cm in diameter that is ran through a variable focus lens. Set the focus so that the beam converges right at the mosquito but is harmlessly dispersed everywhere else.
That should be workable. Laser light can be focused. The system will need a good ranger as well as a targeter.
+10 Took the words right out of my mouth.
So let’s take the already nigh-impossibility of lasering a mosquito mid-flight and add a complicated laser focus to make it useless unless you get not only the angle but the range correct.
The laser is easy. It’s targeting that’s the problem.
Long wavelength infrared such as the wavelength of CO2 lasers is blocked by water, fluids and tissues in the eye, and glass.
Laser beams also diverge and become less dangerous with increasing distance. The divergence rate can be adjusted by choice of wavelength, initial beam diameter, and any optics to cause divergence greater than the theoretical minimum.
What is beyond the mosquito target that might be collateral damage from firing that laser? As a shooter of firearms we’re constantly aware of what is behind our target. Beyond the target of a laser could be a Boeing 777.
Linking the laser to an aircraft tracker website should make the system aware when there is a risk of collateral damage. Not that I think the short burst that’s being talked about here pose a serious threat.
If there’s enough energy to zap a bug, there’s enough energy to take out your retina.
We got rid of malaria mosquitoes in America without the use of lasers. The biggest factor in getting rid of Zika mosquitoes is getting rid of poverty. Cheap energy goes a long way to getting rid of poverty.
We got rid of malaria mosquitoes in America
============================
And then made it illegal to use the same solution to eradicate Malaria in the rest of the world. For years the World Health Organization listed bed-bugs as a vector spreading Slim’s Disease in Africa. What we now know as HIV/AIDS. Imagine the panic if this link is ever proven.
Now scale that up to enough lasers to make this nutter scheme effective. Tens of thousands of lasers firing at random in random directions all across the world.
Regarding Fed Berple’s comment about the anti-malaria solution being illegal worldwide after it was successfully used in America: If he is talking about DDT, it is still legal for mosquito control in all except a couple dozen countries, most of which don’t have malaria.
Yes, it poses a huge threat, to pilots or drivers. Burn, blind, or dazzle (if it hits a windshield, it scatters the light, hurting and causing you to see spots, but not blinding you), it’s all incredibly dangerous to someone operating a motor vehicle..
Your stupidly complex interlock (note, on a clear day, a laser powerful enough to burn a mosquito has a range measured in miles) would just make the entire system useless anywhere near an airport.
Can we please just bring back DDT?
Much of the eradication of malaria in NA involved drainage. DDT alone could not rid the continent of a vector borne endemic disease. Too bad windmills don’t kill mosquitoes.
Lasers? Maybe. But in Texas, they use a number of defensive, and offensive, weapons on mosquitos.
Many use natural gas or propane devices, which attract the pests with CO2, then kills them.
My neighbour has a pesticide mister attached to his house, which releases a mosquito toxin on a timed schedule. Harmless to everything else (I HOPE!)
The old standby is a UV light and a zapper.
There are also mosquito bits and dunks, that kill larvae, and not much else.
Ultrasound seems to work for some.
Some try to get bats to live in the area.
And probably a lot more I don’t know about.
“Les Johnson
February 21, 2016 at 11:53 pm
The old standby is a UV light and a zapper.”
Kills everything, including good bugs, except a mozzie. Mozzies are attracted to CO2 not UV, so a waste of power and space.
Ummm …. so why do I have to keep cleaning their bodies off my zapper ? Kansas mosquitoes just suicidal ?….(8>))
Good one, Les. I had a zapper in my backyard in Georgia, amid the pines. It zapped in a very satisfying manner. Unfortunately, I needed a finite number of mosquitoes to keep them away from my backyard deck.
Did April 1st come early this year? This is the 2nd joke article I’ve seen.
The other one was an article about the zombie plague, spread vectors and treatment.
The mosquito that carries Zika (and other diseases) is Aedes aegypti. It likes indoors, and bites throughout the day. An insecticide like Raid, used occasionally, along with screens and closed doors and windows, would mostly control it.
The use of IRS (Internal Residual Spraying) with DDT would eliminate the bug.
the difference between Raid and DDT is that Raid works for hours or days at best, DDT works for months. mosquitos love to hang upside down from the ceiling and underside of cupboards, tables, etc., where they are nearly impossible to spot. All too often it is the walls and floors that get sprayed, while the more likely spots are missed.
I’m not aware of any diseases carried by the Scottish Midge but even a Laser would struggle against them.
http://www.scotlandinaweek.com/midges-in-scotland.html
Fair point, I once visited Pitlochry in midge season… 🙂
The islands in Poole Harbour are pretty horrendous too, but I’m up for anything that can sort out our Greek variety. ‘Himself’ is a mozzie-magnet and our terrace is pretty much out of bounds for him in an evening.
The idea of using laser beams to destroy the wings is not new and came up more than 10 years ago, another alternative for use at home was an attempt to remove the wings by adapting the frequency of noise to the wing speed.
So the plan is to blow the wings off the little blood suckers so they can have an easier job of sneaking up on us? Uh, yeah, great plan. What was wrong with DDT again?
Wingless mosquitoes can’t fly to good places to lay their eggs.
I prefer low-tech stuff that works. Stuff like this fly killing salt gun.
But I kill mosquitoes with a UV fly killer and some of those electric tennis racket things (I have several about the house)!!
I like the Bug-A-Salt gun. Here’s another idea: A squirt gun filled with extra-high-proof liquor, 150 proof or more. Organic solvents penetrate bugs’ skins and pickle them to death.
That’s a waste of good liquor.
Let’s see. It seems this African-chimp-hosted-privately-patented Zika virus began as the cause-for-hundreds-of-Brazilian-babies-to-be-born-with-small-heads. Which was quickly dispatched as another lie by the Net. But not before the U.S. allocated a billion or so to “. . . combat the dreaded Zika virus.” Didn’t “AIDS” start in Africa? Near a volcano, I think they said. Then came the three-year-public-was-forewarned-(How do you predict a pandemic three years in advance?)-swine flu for which the WHO issued a Level 6 alert (a Level 6 warning would automatically have allowed the declaration of martial law by the WHO in order to “stamp out” an emerging pandemic. Can you say mandatory jabs?) that appeared from somewhere and went nowhere after they failed to get the pandemic started. Then there was Ebola (that also “appeared again) on the Dark Continent) that turned out to be a hoax. Now comes Zika, yet another earth-threatening disease that BigPharma is working feverishly on to roll out enough “vaccines” and, with the help of the WHO, save humanity just in the nick of time. One has to wonder if these “disease panics” are strawmen hiding a hidden agenda for the boys’ behind the curtain. You’d think they could come up with something else. Or at least vary their agenda to give the appearance that some thought was going into their false flag vaccine schemes, scams, and lies.
Ummm. You need to check yourself into a mental hospital my friend.
While killing all the mosquitoes with laser may solve one problem it may cause another one if it is done effectivley. The birds feeding on them will see i big drop in available food in areas where humans live.
The law of unintended consequences is one that can never be repealed.
My thoughts also Mark and Jerker. Build a bat house near your deck, let the swallows nest nearby, put trout in nearby pond to eat larvae – mosquitoes controlled. Don’t know if bats, birds and fish would carry the zika virus but I doubt it since they would be eating them, not getting bitten by them.
“The birds feeding on them will see i big drop in available food in areas where humans live.”
Birds will just have to learn to eat what’s available — people. It’s adapt or die.
Speaking of Dawinism will mosquito evolution somehow confront us with mosquitoes that are immune to laser attack? Will they be less or more annoying than the current ones?
And more seriously, in my youth I worked a bit on Air and Missile defense systems. I suspect that detecting, tracking, and blasting the little nuisances without collateral damage may be a bit more difficult than most folks assume.
The systems already exist. Several. They blast with blue light and it causes them to fall to the ground where they die later. No one knows why.
I don’t care.
“The birds [and bats] feeding on them will see i big drop in available food in areas where humans live.”
The birds and bats are just going to have find another food source — people perhaps. It’s adapt or die.
Likewise, the mosquitoes would quite likely develop some sort of defense against laser attacks.
In my youth, I worked a bit with air and missile defense systems. I think that even if the problem of precisely aiming tiny lasers can be solved, the problem of detecting, tracking, and targeting mosquitoes may prove to be a bit more challenging than most folks assume. e.g. Don’t be too surprised if your MSD (Mosquito Defense System) attacks your patio plants whenever the wind blows the leaves around.
Don’t fret, the Chironomidae will pick up the slack. Upsides: They don’t bite, they do the same job of mozzies in the water, and when the populations achieve a certain point (you’ll love this) they actually harass mosquitoes away from their breeding grounds!
I was scanning comments for exactly one like Jerker’s….what happens to the food chain if we eradicate or even seriously thin the numbers of mosquitoes? Birds, amphibians, spiders (the good ones) fish, dragonflies, bats…all eat mosquitoes. And then how does them dying of starvation affect the predators that eat THOSE things?
Is that a joke?
Where can I buy miniature versions of the Israeli patriot missiles.
This seems to have potential. It’s not an Israeli Patriot missile.
But it’s a bacteria with the word israel in the title. And it kills mosquito larvae.
What about GM mosquitoes?
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600821/inside-the-mosquito-factory-that-could-stop-dengue-and-zika/
For a couple of years after about 2000 I worked with high-powered industrial lasers, both CO2 for welding/cutting steel and YAG for marking, smaller welds, medical etc.
A fundamental property is that for many applications, success comes from a good focus. The mm wide, parallel sided beams that exit the lasers need to be optically focussed to a tiny dot with large energy density.
For example, we had a farmer from the western plains who wanted to harvest his wheat with a laser. He thought he could sit in the air conditioned comfort of his home while sweeps with a horizontal laser beam would neatly bring down the wheat. No, it would not, because there is not enough energy in the parallel beam he was thinking about. And if you focus, you might cut a few metres either side of the focal point, depending on energy.
OTOH, another customer who made confectionery wanted a way to cut bite sized pieces from industrial sized slabs of coconut ice, because knives soon gummed up and lost effectiveness. Yep, the laser is fine because you are close to the focus point with its high energy density.
As for the mossie, I’d need to see the proposal, but I can envisage failure from the various distances they are away from the laser. You can focus a beam relatively quickly, but usually it is a mechanical movement at far less of the speed of an electronic signal.
Geoff
My impression from the TED video is they are using piezo electric adaptive mirrors to aim the beam. Very small movements, but very fast and responsive. Similar technology to radio frequency crystal oscillators.
Part of the TED video is a close range tracking demonstration.
Tracking with mirrors is faster than focussing on a moving target.
Yup Edgerton figured that out years ago when doing high speed photography of artillery round trajectory etc.. He used a stroboscope and spun mirrors and film at very high speed. The targeting was accomplished electronically by timing the light source negating the need to move the mirror quickly in response to the target or the film for that matter. Very clever. Nowadays, moving optics and film are not at issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Eugene_Edgerton
http://video.mit.edu/watch/how-a-high-speed-camera-works-3237/
A lens that’s a sack of liquid like in our eyes could change focus quickly.
Eric,
I made one 12 months ago. I originally was using it to disrupt a crow’s nest. I used a construction laser. It worked well and had the idea to deal with mosquitoes and black flies. You don’t have to kill the mosquito to disrupt them. I looked into the IP landscape and considered filing but decided that I cold not get around the likelihood of injuring a human retina accidentally. Though I think it works ok, and there are schemes to make a product, the down side of a product liability suit loomed too large for my liking.
So, I come up with a better solution. 🙂
The USPTO will publish any new filings after the provisional time window of 12 months…. so keep your eyes peeled!!
🙂
I need an electrical engineer, and a good software engineer.
DDT.
tobias…my feeling exactly. We have a perfectly acceptable way of eradicating mosquitoes with out going star wars on them….no matter how fun that may be.
Agreed. Human life is more valuable than fake stories about sea bird egg shell thinning. I recall the television commercial about the evils of DDT when I was a youngster. It was a travesty that the “science” was faked to create a propaganda campaign to move public opinion against DDT. Well those “worthless brown people” in Sri Lanka were disposable people.
The problem with mosquitos in my neck of the woods is that, as soon as you think you’re tracking them nicley, the buggers disappear into a parallel universe..
All those little boys who used a magnifying glass to burn the wings off a fly can now claim they were doing science.
The mosquito laser will sell better with an audible pop and sizzle on success. Else why give up my electric fly swatter.
About AC, read deeper to the product’s target verification.
My friend has just purchased, on line, an image recognition device… just need a picture of a mosquito and “ZAP”
Another cockamamie TED Talk – will it never end? They had the answer to mosquito control seventy years ago it was called DDT. I can see this crazy contraption killing billions of useful things like moths etc while ignoring mosquitoes – kind of like those backyard blue bugzappers you never see anymore because they killed everything but mosquitoes, which never went near them.
Unfortunately indiscriminate use of DDT rendered it useless because the mosquitoes rapidly built up resistance. Removing it from agricultural use and restricting it just to regulated use in the home restored its effectiveness to an extent. Spraying with B.Th. is a more effective and safer alternative. Regarding the laser attacks on pilots I don’t know why they just don’t issue the protective glare shields to the pilots. We used them and shields made from the same material in my laser lab for decades!
Because the shields are frequency specific. How many do you want to put on the windshield? Or on the goggles for the pilots?
Phil – Your comment about restricting the use of DDT restoring its efficacy doesn’t make sense. Resistance to something (anything) is achieved by administering small doses. That is how, for example, allergy therapy is conducted – administer small doses of the allergen in order to reduce the reaction. It is also why we now have to deal with antibiotic-resistant superbugs – because people did not take the full dose of their antibiotics and kill the bacteria causing the problem, the particular bacteria they were trying to combat became resistant to that antibiotic.
So it is counter-intuitive to suggest that reducing the use of DDT to intermittent (household-only) attacks on the mosquito population would somehow restore its effectiveness. Rather, like antibiotic therapy, you should first eradicate the problem (get rid of all malaria-infected mosquitoes) and THEN reduce the use of DDT. But that is not what happened, so millions of people in Third World countries have died needlessly.
D. J. Hawkins February 22, 2016 at 7:09 am
Because the shields are frequency specific. How many do you want to put on the windshield? Or on the goggles for the pilots?
Basic problem is the use of 532nm laser pointers, such limited frequency goggles are available which would eliminate the problem.
Monna Manhas February 22, 2016 at 7:56 am
Phil – Your comment about restricting the use of DDT restoring its efficacy doesn’t make sense. Resistance to something (anything) is achieved by administering small doses.
No, resistance to DDT in insects is the result of a single mutation in a particular gene. The indiscriminate use of DDT in agriculture made the general population of mosquitoes resistant. Use of it in just the treatment indoors would have not have the same effect. Once the resistant gene has built up in the population it will persist for a long time because it has no evolutionary cost.
So it is counter-intuitive to suggest that reducing the use of DDT to intermittent (household-only) attacks on the mosquito population would somehow restore its effectiveness. Rather, like antibiotic therapy, you should first eradicate the problem (get rid of all malaria-infected mosquitoes) and THEN reduce the use of DDT.
When used in conjunction with widespread use of quinine, public health initiatives, removing marshy, swampy areas and not using it in agricultural contexts such as in Italy post WW II for about three years you have a chance of eradicating the parasite. If you don’t achieve that in that timeframe DDT has failed and is useless for future treatment. A similar strategy in South Africa was successful, subsequent treatment using pyrethrins kept malaria in check, when an outbreak involving pyrethrin resistant mosquitoes occurred emergency use of DDT got it under control. DDT is routinely used in various African countries in indoor spraying and bed nets to control malaria.
You have attempted a goal shift here. Why do you assume that these will be the same frequency as laser pointers? Why wouldn’t different manufacturers choose different frequencies? Cutting lasers, for example, frequently use infrared wavelengths.
The lasers are targeting mozzies, not other flying things. They (already) use sound to locate them then blast away. The ones available that I read about are in the form of an open rectangular space, say 8×4 ft, and take out any mozzie that flies through. The highest hit rate I found was 2000 per second.
zap.. Zap…zap…ZAP
Just listen to that serenity
A “Star Wars approach” to the Battle on Zika
http://www.intellectualventures.com/insights/archives/a-star-wars-approach-to-the-battle-on-zika