Mosquitoes Shot Down by Targeted Laser

The human race has finally reached an answer to the age old question in Verna Aarderna‘s book for children: mosquitoes buzz in the ears of people who do not have lasers.

Professional eccentric millionaire (billionaire?), Nathan Myhrvold‘s Intellectual Ventures Laboratory has delivered a live demo of a “laser gun” designed to track mosquitoes in flight and then burn them with the searing blue-white heat of a thousand thousand photons.

Although the prototype at TED was restricted to showing its skeeter-tracking abilities only, using a harmless green laser for safety reasons, IVL made a video of their gun in action, and we’ve got a segment after the jump:

Ideally, Myhrvold would like the gun to be used to control mosquito populations in malaria stricken areas of the world.  We consider this to be a worthy endeavor, but we can’t help adding this single phrase to your enjoyment of the video.  “Curse you, Red Baron!“

Alternate title: What Life Would be Like If Your Cat Had Laser Vision.

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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