Slashdot Mirror
New Laser System Targets Mosquitoes
An anonymous reader writes "In the Cold War the so-called 'Star Wars defense system' proposed using lasers to destroy incoming Soviet missiles. In a 2007 brainstorming session aimed at combating malaria, Dr. Lowell Wood, the architect of that system, proposed modifying his original idea to kill mosquitoes. The cover of today's Wall Street Journal contains an article that highlights this initiative as well as a few others, like using a giant flashlight to disrupt mosquitoes' vision and using the insects to vaccinate, in the war against malaria. The system is intelligent enough to avoid noncombatants like humans and butterflies and can even tell the difference between females, the blood-drinkers, and males. My favorite quote: 'We'd be delighted if we destabilize the human-mosquito balance of power.'"
TFA is a bit thin on details, I wonder how the performance of this system compares to one of the numerous CO2+odor attractant trapping systems already in use. Frickin lasers(pew pew pew) are certainly cooler; but the whole exercise is rather silly if a simple mechanical system that runs on propane and pheromones is more efficient.
If you read David Brin's "Earth", you will note that there is an explanation of how "Star Wars" technology was modified to control infestations of africanized bees(killer bees) in local apiaries. The book was published in May of 1991.
The premise was that honey bees flapped their wings at a lower frequency. Targeting the higher frequency enabled the device to precisely target only the invading killer bees.