Scientists Build Anti-Mosquito Laser | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Build Anti-Mosquito Laser

online.wsj.com

18 pointsshykes16 comments

Is it only me or the whole article reads, smells and looks like an hoax? Consider the evidence: a) "... are tuning the strength of the laser so that it kills mosquitoes without harming other insects or, especially, people." Laser barriers capable of killing people, directly out of the movies. b)"Each time the laser strikes a mosquito, the computer makes a gunshot sound. When the mosquito is hit, it bursts into flame and falls to the ground, and a thin plume of smoke rises." Go to Kongregate and you will find dozens of flash mini-games doing exactly that. c) "Other ideas include devices that disrupt the mosquitoes' senses of sight, smell, and heat; feeding them poisoned blood; infecting them with a genetically altered bacterium; and creating a malaria-free mutant to overtake the natural mosquitoes." I like "poisoned blood" most, because it can kill vampires too. But "Mutant mosquito from the outer space X bacteria controlled mosquitoes from hell" would be a blockbuster...

As long as we're talking science fiction solutions, I'd like to propose a chemical weapon. It would have to be so safe to humans that you could mix powders of it in your drinking water, in quantities sufficient to create iced tea, without any ill effects. It would have to be simple enough that an illiterate peasant could deploy it using technology routinely available in the early 1900s. It would have to be dirt cheap enough to spray into every home in an at-risk region in Africa. It would have to be patent unencumbered, so that anyone could produce it. It would have to be stupidly easy to synthesize in quantity. It would have to have decades of research put into finding a fumigation protocol to defeat those crafty mosquito's pesky tendency to develop immunities. And it would have to be guaranteed to work, for example, by being successfully used to totally eliminate malaria in every continent inhabited primarily by white people.

If only such a magic chemical existed, we wouldn't have to waste time thinking up ways to swat mosquitoes singly with radar-guided laser weaponry. We'd just hire a bunch of folks to go around and spray a bit inside of dwellings, and bam, malaria cases would decrease by 90% within the first season of treatment, saving thousands of lives and removing an enormous economic loadstone from Africa's collective neck.

I know, I know, it sounds like a sucky sci-fi book because if the chemical is so perfect then where is the conflict? Aha, you see, that's where we bring in a group of religious fundamentalists who view it as a totemic embodiment of the devil, and will oppose it automatically, no matter the costs, from the luxury of their malaria-free gardens.

An LD50 of 113 mg/kg isn't exactly what you would call "Safe" - it's about as dangerous as caffeine (192 mg/kg)

But, point (very) well made (if somewhat subtle for a significant portion of the audience...)

Edit: Actually, knowing this audience, perhaps not that subtle. :-)

Took a bit of googling, but what do religious fundamentalists have with ddt?

The Wall Street Journal article ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680870885500701.html ) that the physorg article is based on makes it clearer that the technology is still in the lab phase and not near commercial release. It explicitly states that the scientists involved are not sure how strong the laser needs to be to kill mosquitoes without harming anything else, and describes the laser in their lab as being focused on mosquitoes flying around a aquarium - not the same as the hypothetical laser barriers discussed in both articles.

Isn't that ... Intellectual Ventures Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold?

He'd BETTER wipe out malaria. It'd do his massively guilty conscience some good.

I doubt very much that Myhrvold has a guilty conscience. There is no reason for him to have one, anyway: he's just exploiting the current nature of the patent system. That is called "acting rationally" (assuming that his venture works out, which isn't at all clear).

And the mosquito is exploiting your exposed blood supply and acting rationally. So?

From two years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSIWpFPkYrk

Could this be adapted into a crowd sourced game? Take turns at the helm of micro laser canon to stop Imperial Mosquitoes from taking the blood and lives of the Rebel forces.

Save some money on the AI. Pay to play the game. Prizes, badges, and acheivements. :)

Isn't detecting mosquitos much harder than killing them? How do they solve that? Echolocation? I'd love to win the war against malaria with robats!

Would've loved, say, a dozen of these lasers every time I visit relatives back in Taiwan.

Wouldn't it be better to invest in vaccines, instead? A laser powerful enough to kill a mosquito seems to be powerful enough to cause retinal damage. Am I missing anything obvious?

This thing can selectively kill them by gender which is pretty cool. Vaccines only help against the individual diseases spread by mosquitos, targeting the mosquitos directly is useful too.

I can see that, but note that there are always budget constraints, and it would not be unreasonable to ask whether there are other more cost-efficient ways of killing mosquitos or fighting malaria.

How many malaria-carrying mosquitos are there? Billions? Trillions? What would be the cost of burning them all with lasers? Given that biotech has made quite some progress, a more efficient solution would be perhaps to infect male mosquitos with some disease that does only kills female mosquitos, and when they f*ck the females, they would pass on the disease and remove malaria-carrying bugs from the face of the Earth.

Maybe we should attach lasers to the head of other mosquitos and start a civil war!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com