Backyard Star Wars (2010)
The article discusses a project to build a photonic fence that can zap mosquitoes midflight using lasers and optical sensors. The idea was conceived by Nathan Myhrvold, Lowell Wood, and Rod Hyde, and was developed to combat malaria and other diseases transmitted by flying insects. The project has resulted in the creation of prototypes that can identify and track mosquitoes, and hit them with laser fire, with the potential for individuals to build their own versions for backyard use.
- ▪The photonic fence uses optical sensors and lasers to spot, identify, and zap mosquitoes on the wing.
- ▪The project was developed to combat malaria and other diseases transmitted by flying insects, such as West Nile virus and dengue fever.
- ▪The prototypes can identify mosquitoes from many meters away, track them in flight, and hit them with debilitating blasts of laser fire.
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| Original publisher | IEEE Spectrum |
| Canonical URL | https://spectrum.ieee.org/backyard-star-wars |
| Publication time | Wed, 27 May 2026 21:25:27 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T21:38:05.389Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T21:38:05.389Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | bQrfmVuHrQZq |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Consumer ElectronicsFeature Backyard Star Wars Build your own photonic fence to zap mosquitoes midflightJordin Kare30 Apr 201012 min readA long time ago, in a suburb far, far away… Illustration: Jude Buffum “So, how would you kill mosquitoes with a laser?” Nathan Myhrvold asked us. Lowell Wood, Rod Hyde, and I smiled. The three of us were meeting with Myhrvold in the fall of 2006, in an office at Intellectual Ventures Management, a company in Bellevue, Wash., that he founded in 2000 to create and invest in inventions.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at IEEE Spectrum.
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