Star Wars Mosquito Laser?

Anyone Not think this is just Bull? :

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680870885500701.html

Uhh, yes?


Perhaps it is a bit ambitious to hope to wipe out malaria, but lasers can definitely be controlled by a computer to kill mosquitos.

Yea, I'm sure it can be done in the lab.

But one has to wonder what kind of laser can instantly cremate a mosquito, yet be safe to animals and not start random fires! ;D ;D ;D

Even with pinpoint focus, it takes hundreds of milliwatts to zap bugs.

So, you're walking along and a mosquito flies by your face - the last thing you see before you go blind is a bug bursting into flames! Nice.

Kage said:

Yea, I'm sure it can be done in the lab.  

But one has to wonder what kind of laser can instantly cremate a mosquito, yet be safe to animals and not start random fires! ;D ;D ;D

Even with pinpoint focus, it takes hundreds of milliwatts to zap bugs.

So, you're walking along and a mosquito flies by your face - the last thing you see before you go blind is a bug bursting into flames!  Nice.  

Click to expand...

A decent powered YAG laser or the like - maybe even a pulsed CO2 laser would be best. Pulsed lasers achieve extremely high peak powers that could instantly vaporize a mosquito, but only ablate a few layers of skin if it were to hit a human by accident (I'm sure it would have to be properly installed with safety clearances and whatnot) but it's pretty doable.

Yeah... I posted that yesterday.... maybe I put it in the wrong Section...  : :'(

http://www.laserpointerforums.com/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1237216279/0#0

Jerry

It kills mosquitos that fly between a laser and a screen, so unless you stick your head in there it's quite safe.

You didn't read it, did you?

MarioMaster said:

Pulsed lasers achieve extremely high peak powers that could instantly vaporize a mosquito

Click to expand...

Bear in mind they don't need to be vaporized to be killed, either.

Spoz said:

Perhaps it is a bit ambitious to hope to wipe out malaria

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Even if you only killed 1% of the mosquitoes in Africa, that saves 10,000 lives every year.

you mean like this?!?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSIWpFPkYrk

Kenom said:

you mean like this?!?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSIWpFPkYrk

Click to expand...

[smiley=thumbsup.gif]
I laughed so hard I that I think I may have had an aneurysm.

"I was bitten so many time by the mosquitoes that both my legs had to be removed... I turned hysterical and tried to kill my childern..."

ROLF
LMFFAO


BTW I went ahead and ordered one to test out. I'll keep everyone posted on the results

sure...but its going to be very costly. I can imagine one day lasers can do just that....but it'll obliterate everything else in its perimeter.... :-/

What I'm thinking is rather analogous to shooting a buckshot of 1/2mm pellets filled to the brim in an 24 pound cannon at a sensor tracked group of fruit flies...kinda like metal storm? huh? huh? told you its gonna get costly ;D

a high enough powered laser will burn any black bodied insect in the air, but pinpointing something that small traveling often in all three directions at once is too much for the response times of the servos that operates the turret even if the algorithm can keep up with the nanosecond intervals. In addition, unless the sensors can operate at the same harmonic frequency with the wings of the mosquitoes, it more than likely will not pick up either heat nor motion signatures. Now if they made the sensor that sensitive any thing that floats in your air, including dust...may be targeted...burning holes in your black clothing, furniture, and eye sockets in your movie star posters
Another alternative is to increase the beam diameter...but since coherent light behaves differently than a conventional flashlight, a cluster of diodes may have to be used...and just think of the server room power supply you'll have to use with that! :

Cost and power of the laser aside.....

"To locate individual mosquitoes, light from the flashlights hits the tank across the room, creating tiny mosquito silhouettes on reflective material behind it. The zoom lens picks up the shadows and feeds the data to the computer, which controls the laser and fires it at the bug."

If this reflective material is necessary to targeting the mosquitoes, then it becomes less practical outdoors, making it a personal home device... but firing a laser powerful enough to incinerate a mosquito (indoors) poses risks for the person(s) who live in the house (eye injury?). And how are you going to keep the other 4 MagLites on all the time? >.< Seems like it may be pretty far off yet...

In any case, I bet these would be fun to tinker with if they did in fact become personal devices...

-Shammi

You know, since those little bastards produce such a whining sound I would of thought that having a few sensitive microphones tuned to listen to them would be much more effective at tracking them.

The system works just fine, it is not incredibly costly nor very difficult. It detects the mosquitos shadow on the screen and the laser is more than capable of tracking it. Questioning whether it works or not was stupid in the first place, as reading the article explains everything.

Murudai said:

You know, since those little bastards produce such a whining sound I would of thought that having a few sensitive microphones tuned to listen to them would be much more effective at tracking them.

Click to expand...

It would be nice to base that concept on everything between the harmonic frequency of a fruit fly to just below that of a honey bee...that would cover everything to mosquito, beetles, et al. but with a system that sensitive prepare to rebuild your amplifier system from the ground up if.. say your bowling ball rolled its way off the cabinet and on to your crisp, tile floor...