Next time your neighbour is knocking at your door to complain about the bass, just tell him you are putting out a fire from your kitchen. Indeed, two students from the University George Mason in Virginia, Viet Tran and Seth Robertson, have created a new fire extinguisher with no chemicals, water or powder - but with loudspeakers.

The machine is small, not that heavy, the size of a 5L keg, drumming out sounds waves which is more a low hum than really something to listen to. It's like blowing the fire out, because sound waves are basically multiple, regular blasts of air.

 At the beginning the two students tried with high-pitched tones but it didn’t work. "It's low-frequency sounds -- like the thump-thump bass in hip-hop that works," Tran explained.

More than just a cool gadget, this invention could resolve many problems. First of all it’s ecological, no need for chemicals, it’s clean. Secondly it’s practical, just imagine a fire in a forest, it takes a lot of time and round trips for a plane to pick up water from a lake or a sea nearby, while a plane with huge speakers - plus speakers trucks instead of tankers – would be much faster to extinguish a fire.