Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, is steering company funds to Intellectual Ventures, a private company that buys and licenses patents and inventions. Gates himself participates in the firm's brainstorm sessions. Next on the list: killing hurricanes. Warm surface water fuels big storms, so Intellectual Ventures proposes to suppress them by dumping cool water from massive floating bowls of unspecified size, deployed by airplane in front of a storm's path. It would take a water surface temperature drop of 4.5 F to diminish a hurricane's force, says Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, and hundreds of bowls would have to be deployed over hundreds of miles. "I actually don't think it's feasible," says George Mellor, a Princeton professor who envisioned a similar system years ago. "But it's worth researching, and, hey, if Bill Gates is investing ..." 

INTELLECTUAL VENTURES
Employees: 500-plus Funding: $5 billion in venture capital from investors (including Microsoft)Revenues: Company officials told a newspaper earlier this year it has made more than $1 billion in licensing fees since inception. 

Other Ideas from Gates's Idea Factory

Mosquito Laser Defense Researchers at a recently opened Intellectual Ventures lab in Bellevue, Wash., are building the ultimate bug zapper. The "photonic fence" combats malaria by surrounding houses or villages with a perimeter guarded by lasers that shoot mosquitoes from the air. The computer-guided laser can track the flight of individual mosquitoes, and distinguish harmless males from biting females by measuring the frequency of their wing beat. Crucially, the laser beam is weak enough that humans can pass through the perimeter unharmed. The system has been successfully tested in the firm's labs. 

Super-Strength Semiconductors Intellectual Ventures recently purchased the entire patent portfolio of Transmeta, a trailblazing manufacturer of low-power microprocessors. Transmeta was purchased in 2009, but the company that bought it was only interested in microprocessors for video displays, and sold 140 other patents to Intellectual Ventures. The technologies could lead to powerful, efficient computer chips to use in expendable remote sensors, medical devices inside human bodies and nano-scale manufacturing.