Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Shoot the Frickin’ Mosquitoes with Frickin’ Laser Beams

This is an inven­tion that would make Dr. Evil proud.  I’m pretty damn happy about it, too!  Are you tired of mos­qui­toes in the sum­mer?  Well, if you were in a sub­trop­i­cal or trop­i­cal area where mos­qui­toes carry deadly dis­eases, you’d be more than just annoyed by the lit­tle bug­gers.  You’d want them to burn, burn, BURN!

Well, thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion, some very smart peo­ple have cre­ated a sys­tem that detects mos­qui­toes based on the fre­quency of their wing­beats, and then zaps them out of the sky with lasers.

I’ve always thought of tak­ing a shot­gun to shoot fly­ing bugs out of the sky.  Of course, I’ve also thought about tak­ing a shot­gun to creepy crawlies, too.

This is a much bet­ter solu­tion.  Far less mess, and best of all, they can use it to set up a lit­eral pro­tec­tive wall around an abode.  No mos­qui­toes get­ting in.  It’s Star Wars / SDI (Strate­gic Defense Ini­tia­tive) tech­nol­ogy applied to some­thing cooler than shoot­ing down Soviet warheads!

Enjoy this footage shot at some­thing like 6000 frames per second.

Be sure to check out Intel­lec­tual Venture’s other anti-malarial solu­tions.  The lasers are cool, but there’s more to it than that.  How­ever, the minute Home Depot or Cana­dian Tire stocks mos­quito zap­ping lasers for use here in Canada, I’m get­ting some.