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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I read about this invention years ago–it was apparently concocted as one of Bill Gates’ efforts to help humanity, so this is relatively old news.
Supposing one of these shoot-down techniques were successful. The only mosquitoes remaining would be the ones that were big enough to survive the strike. Result: a new population of mega mosquitoes would evolve, and you’d need a baseball bat to take them out.
They already have mega-mosquitoes up north LOL. Ever been in a northern forest? The critters are big enough to trap and make a fur coat.
Exactly Monna, Trebla has apparently never been to Alaska in the Summer! We’re gonna need a bigger laser!
Regarding “mega mosquitoes” up north: Has anyone actually been bitten by one? These sound like crane flies.
No Donald Crane flies prey on ordinary mosquitoes. In Alaska the Mosquitoes are BIG travel in BIG swarms and threaten to drain you of blood.
Donald Klipstein – I lived in northern BC (just south of the Alaska panhandle) for almost 20 years and donated much blood to the mosquito cause. And yes, I do know the difference between crane flies and mosquitoes – northern mosquitoes aren’t as big as crane flies and they are voracious blood-suckers.
The other nasty little guys up where I lived were black flies and the ubiquitous “no-see-ums.” No-see-ums are tiny little bugs that take a huge bite: you don’t notice them until there is blood dripping down your arm.
A rail gun that shoots tiny pellets could instead target their probosces. The limited range, and not being immediately fatal, will solve many of the problems.
Only a physicist could conceive that the system under investigation solely contains mosquitos.
In the real world of environmental polycultures, you have to address the specific issue of ‘specificity of targeting’.
I can develop you 100 drugs that target a particular enzyme beautifully. If 99 of them also zap other proteins causing untold harmful side-effects, they don’t get beyond very initial animal trials, do they? Well, apart from the odd one in a million which has no effect in any animal but has lethal effects in humans (thalidomide, take a bow).
I wouldn’t let you anywhere near any mosquito-zapping device which wasn’t provably harmless to a long list of other things……..
What about multiple laser with different spacing all firing at the same time. The power would be high enough at the intended spot but all other spots have a much lower power density.
I thought the date today is February 22.
Mosquitos are one thing but what about using lasers to destroy the evil Carbon pollution?
Have free-flying drones drifting through the skies globally cleansing the earth by zapping Carbon atoms.. I guarantee those poor 3rd world farmers suffering in that Carbon pollution outdoors in their fields or behind the very thin walls and roofs of their homes will not be troubled much longer. Makes a change from bombs! Think how grateful they will be. The evil oil barons won’t be buying diamonds any more either as the diamonds will have been zapped.
What could go wrong with that?
Apologies if this was already mentioned (and if it is utterly stupid), but what about multiple very low-strength beams originating from different points, but converging on the target? If they miss, low-strength pulses continue to space/other with (ideally) no damage to anything they hit.
Given other options for mosquito control, this seems a bit of a stretch. I’m still waiting for sharks with frickin’ laser beams… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7bYNAHXxw
I’m glad someone else did the “sharks with frikin laser beams on their heads” gag. It preserves my dignity.
What about GMing giant carnivorous Killer Mosquitos to take-out the locals? Let nature do the work. What could go wrong with that?
David Chappell
February 22, 2016 at 2:29 am
“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..”
Having done a number of projects in Africa, I had a routine of de-mosquitoing my room before nightfall. Knowing where they hide during the day, I flushed them out with a towel and gave the room a light spray. I know what Dave Chappell means about them disappearing before your eyes. The anopheles is a small mosquito and can do this trick very readily and I undertook to study the phenomenon. After some observation, I finally noticed that when you focused on them they seemed to be able to see that you were looking right at them. They would simply drop a few feet down and fly to a dark landing spot nearby while your eye was tracking in the direction of their flight prior to the drop. Poof, they were gone.
perhaps quantum entanglement?
1939 – DDT discovered by Paul Müller.
1947 – In 13 southern states, over 4,650,000 houses were sprayed with DDT.
1948 – Paul Müller awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
1949 – Malaria eradicated from Italy.
1951 – Malaria eradicated from the U.S.
1955 – The World Health Organization (WHO) makes plans to eradicate malaria worldwide.
1970 – WHO announces that malaria has been eradicated in 37 countries.
1972 – EPA bans DDT in the U.S.
1976 – WHO gives up on eradicating malaria.
ferdberple February 22, 2016 at 6:50 am
1939 – DDT discovered by Paul Müller.
1947 – In 13 southern states, over 4,650,000 houses were sprayed with DDT.
1948 – Paul Müller awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
19
4962 – Malaria eradicated from Italy. Had been substantially eradicated in the 30’s by free distribution of quinine, vector control, draining of marshes. WWII damage and breakdown of services led to resurgence.1951 – Malaria eradicated from the U.S.
1955 – The World Health Organization (WHO) makes plans to eradicate malaria worldwide.
1959 – The first resistance to DDT detected in India. In areas previously sprayed with DDT a fully resistant population develops in a few months.
1970 – WHO announces that malaria has been eradicated in 37 countries.
1972 – EPA bans DDT in the U.S. for agricultural use. At this time the vast majority was being used on cotton crops not on mosquitoes. By this time 19 species of malarial vector mosquito species were found to be DDT resistant worldwide.
1976 – WHO gives up on eradicating malaria. Mainly due to increased resistance of the mosquitoes to pesticides, ex-endemic areas had been reinvaded by malaria.
1984 – About 450 species of insect documented to be resistant to DDT
Eradication of the P. falciparum takes suppression of the parasite for about three years, so eradication was possible in some areas. With DDT on first application you’ll get about 7 years of mosquito suppression, second time around about 7 months. Consequently if DDT didn’t work first time around you need to go elsewhere.
The arrival of Zika in Brazil last year initially caused little alarm, as the virus’ symptoms are generally much milder than those of dengue. It didn’t become a crisis until late in the year, when researchers made the link with a dramatic increase in reported cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect that sees babies born with unusually small heads and can cause lasting developmental problems.
So, provide dark landing spots fitted with flypaper. Oh, no, this will upset PETA. Better think again.
Standing water? What is wrong with paraffin? SG = 0.8, will float and prevent them breathing.
So does a drop of liquid soap. This is a common tactic in developing countries. I have seen it used on ponds.
I wonder how many relevant patents he holds? And, how many of them cover “obvious” technologies? /sarc off
Anything laser device has to clear laser safety classification. I’ve been doing this with a class 1 device that has at it’s heart a class 4 photon generator. Not a fun or fast process.
Ultimately, to bring down mosquitos it has to be a focused system with a agile beam director that has a significant aperture diameter, say 30mm or so. A galvo disco mirror system might be good enough for the “gimbal” system. The light needs to be pulsed, directed, and focused on the target. That means detection and tracking. That means it might be active – that is there is an illumination laser in the system to provide contrast, higher detectability, better background discrimination, and sufficiently good tracking to wack it. Perhaps there will be a ultrasonic “sonar” detector that detects the intrusion of and rough location of a mosquito and then cues off to optical tracking. Starts to sound like a HEL weapons system. It is focused, therefore the lethal depth of focus is limited, which is good for safety. Mosquito lethality is apparently now a field of investigation. I would imagine it comes down to the adsorption mechanism and energy deposited. I imagine there has to be some way to decide what is a valid target as trying to zap sphinx moths and such would be futile.
Laser safety is pretty complex, look it up. Pretty much anything past 1450 nm or so is “eye safe”, or as sometimes said “eye safer”. NIR (700 – 1400 nm) makes it to the retina, and frankly I wouldn’t want invisible coherent radiation like that flying around me when I’m at the barbie. I wear LEP all day as it is and I’m glad to take it off. Forget visible.
If we want to get rid of mosquitoes, I think we get the most bang for our buck by stopping the killing of bats by wind turbines.
+10,000
The summers when we’ve had wrens nesting on our porch have been the best years for mosquitoes. Those guys would make about 2000 visits a day carrying a beakful of insects.
This idea of killing mosquitoes is the wrong approach. Social engineering is the answer. Get the social scientists together to communicate to the mosquitoes the great contributions they (mosquitoes) have made to society and they should coexist peacefully with mankind. Offer safe spaces for the mosquitoes and have the media drone on about how the mosquitoes need to be respected and accepted as an alternate viewpoint for diversity. Then claim genocide and speciesism for anyone even thinking about zapping a poor little defenseless insect. Shame any and all swatters. Make the people understand that mosquitoes’ lives matter and their need to accept that ASAP before it’s too late. Stephan Lewandowsky can take the lead on this. Maybe even show that mosquitoes are the only thing that is saving us from the dreaded Global Warming!
I won’t include a sarc tag here as it makes as much sense as some policy directives that are in motion in today’s world.
🙂
Does PETA know about this?
Killing mosquitoes with a lightning bolt ….now where have I heard that before ?
Alarmist Justin Gillis in the New York Times:
“Scientists say it will take them years to figure that out, and pointed to other factors that may have played a larger role in starting the crisis. But these same experts added that the Zika epidemic, as well as the related spread of a disease called dengue that is sickening as many as 100 million people a year and killing thousands, should be interpreted as warnings.
“Over the coming decades, global warming is likely to increase the range and speed of the life cycle of the particular mosquitoes carrying these viruses, encouraging their spread deeper into temperate countries like the United States.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/world/americas/in-zika-epidemic-a-warning-on-climate-change.html?ref=topics
It seems more of a regulatory and safety problem than a technical one, although safety is also a technical problem. The public may also be afraid of lasers. It must be very satisfactory to go all SDI on the mosquitos and shoot them out of the sky but there are other techniques with satisfactory results, such as the blue(ish) lamp with an electric coil on the perimeter. Gives off a very satisfactory sound at least.
All I want are some frickin’ frogs with frickin’ laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads.
If you focus the laser beam so it is only energy dense at the point of impact, then you don’t need to worry about downrange hazards, as the beam will be diverging and not sufficiently energy dense to damage anything after a few dozen feet. If the beam was large enough at the point of delivery into the system, you could conceivably reduce the hazardous energy downrange significantly more. Think about when you were a kid, you used a magnifying glass to set a dry leaf on fire with the sun. When focused to a tiny spot, there was a lot of energy on that spot. When it was defocused, it wouldn’t burn. Same concept. I’d LOVE, love, love, a mosquito targeting laser in my backyard. Extra points if they actually burst into tiny puffs of flame upon impact with the beam spot.
Once in a while, you buzz a dry leaf or paper and start a fire.
Fun!
DDT.
Around 1958/59 I read a science fiction story about an automatic ant-aircraft gun that used radar to locate and identify targets. I used to fantasize about a version that would shoot down the flies that were such a nusiance in Australia. Nice to see that the idea is approaching practicality.
I’ve thought of this notion , but to be safe the laser beam would have to be focused at the distance to the fly ( that’s our pest at 2500m ) , and perhaps spread first to limit the focused length .
That might be possible reflecting the expanded beam off of a DLP .