Yes, This Laser Can Kill Mosquitoes, and Malaria, Too

Two public health questions on tap for the day: 1). Can your disassembled printer or digital camera parts kill mosquitoes? And if so, 2). Why would you care?

Nathan Myhrvold, who used to be Microsoft's chief technology officer, has answers to both those questions. One: Yes, they can. And two: Killing mosquitoes could help save lives lost to malaria -- a disease that kills a child in Africa every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization. While the technology seems like something lifted from some sci-fi Hollywood playbook, it turns out to be pretty effective, as demonstrated at this year's TED conference in Long Beach, CA.

To build his product, Myhrvold's company, Intellectual Ventures, signed onto eBay and started buying up spare parts for projectors, printers and cameras. Their result? A laser that can literally shoot down mosquitoes in mid-flight. And we're not talking about some beam of light that you have to flash onto mosquitos' bodies, relying on your own aim. That would've been crazy (and cool) enough, but what Myhrvold's company has come up with is a laser tool that can independently zap anywhere between 50 to 100 mosquitoes -- per second. (See the video after the jump.)

Not only that, but the Star Wars-style gun can actually tell the difference between a bumblebee, butterfly and a mosquito, thanks to differences in their sizes and wing speed. (I'm not just joking about Star Wars, either -- the technology the lasers employs was first developed under the Star Wars anti-missile program.) It can also tell the difference between male and female mosquitoes (the latter are the only ones that bite). People are calling it the WMD of the future (yup, the weapon of mosquito destruction): at some point, its creators estimate its cost could be as low as $50.

I'm sure there's some case you could make against the wholesale, mass vaporization of mosquitoes. Personally, I don't know what that case is, and would happily defer to anyone else on the subject. Dr. Jordin Kare (the lead scientist on the effort), for one, says there's nothing that depends on mosquitoes, and that "no one would miss mosquitoes."

Whatever the environmental implications are, it's hard to think of one that would outweigh the toll that malaria has taken on people -- one million people a year and counting. As Kare says of his days working on Star Wars, "We like to think back then we made some contribution to the ending of the cold war." Now, as he puts it,"we're just trying to make a dent in a war that's claimed a lot more lives."

Photo Credit: Dittmeyer