A Better Mosquito Zapper

Nathan Myhrvold, former head of Microsoft Research and all around over achieving über-geek, has built a better mosquito zapper.  It uses – and I’m not making this up – lasers to shoot down the little buggers in mid-air.  Intellectual Ventures, his patent-banking startup, has amazing video footage of this in action.  Shot at 6000 frames per second, you can actually see a little puff of smoke as the mosquito drops out of the sky, wings spinning off broken.  Check out the third video on the page.

And bring your coffee – the videos aren’t the only part of Intellectual Ventures’ site moving in slow motion.  I guess none of their 20,000+ technology patents involves optimizing WordPress.

In keeping with the Thomas Jefferson’s quote, “to invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk,” Nathan’s crew built the super-zapper using parts found on eBay.  They estimate their mosquito Death Star could cost as little as $50 per unit if built in volume and the lasers could take down 50 to 100 mosquitoes per second.

Take that, evil blood-suckers!