Scientists around the world are testing ways of thwarting mosquitoes with microwaves, rancid odors, poisoned blood and other weapons that disrupt the sense of sight, smell and heat mosquitoes use to find their prey. There's work on genetically altering a bacterium to infect and kill a mosquito, and a project to build a malaria-free mosquito genetically enhanced to overtake the natural kind...
In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light...
On the shelf were five Maglite flashlights, a zoom lens from a 35mm camera, and the laser itself -- a little black box with an assortment of small lenses and mirrors. On the floor below sat a Dell personal computer that is the laser's brain...
A mosquito hovers into view. Suddenly, it bursts into flame. A thin plume of smoke rises as the mosquito falls. At the bottom of the screen, the carcass smolders...
Not only can the laser target a mosquito, it can also tell a male from a female based on wing-beat. That's a crucial distinction, since only females feed on blood and thus transmit disease...
"If you really were a purist, you could only kill the females, not the males," Mr. Myhrvold says. But since they're mosquitoes, he says, he'll probably "just slay them all."
(Let God sort them out... Text and image credit. Via Neatorama's Upcoming Queue.)
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