Fruit flies on my bananas will not do. I'm gonna get me a deep bowl to put that fruit in and fill the bowl with nitrogen gas. The heavier-than-air nature of pure diatomic molecular nitrogen will keep the fruit immersed and won't harm (in fact will preserve) the fruit. The flies, bless their little souls, will be able to fly just fine in the N2 gas, but they won't breathe so well and will expire peacefully.
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 12 2012

Balloon Notions Balloon_20Notions
As mentioned in an annotation [Vernon, Oct 12 2012]

Liquid nitrogen cocktail http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19878511
[Phrontistery, Oct 12 2012]

Nitrogen filled garage Nitrogen_20filled_2...ibit_20corrosion_2e
[AusCan531, Oct 13 2012]

Fill your home with nitrogen http://www.halfbake...e_20with_20nitrogen
My more extensive version - should probably link this. [nineteenthly, Oct 13 2012]

Carbonic maceration http://en.wikipedia...Carbonic_maceration
Prior art. [spidermother, Oct 16 2012]

Xenon is denser so would disperse relatively slowly. Expensive though.
-- xaviergisz, Oct 12 2012


sodium hexafluoride.
-- FlyingToaster, Oct 12 2012


Nitrogen is actually a bit lighter than ordinary mixed-gas air. For details on that, see my "Balloon Notions" Idea (linked).
-- Vernon, Oct 12 2012


Fill your entire dwelling with it, as i suggested. Also, it won't stay in the bowl. Carbon monoxide must be almost exactly the same density as nitrogen and diffuses unpredictably through air.
-- nineteenthly, Oct 12 2012


You'd just end up with /dead/ fruit flies on your bananas, no?
-- ytk, Oct 12 2012


A clear dome on top with an arm-sized airlock.
-- pocmloc, Oct 12 2012


Carbon dioxide is heavier, though. And it's relatively easy to extract from combustion gases.
Adding a lid would help reduce the amount required.

Perhaps in future we could store lots of perishable items in a protective atmosphere rather than[1] at 4 degrees as we currently do.

[1] (or as well as)
-- Loris, Oct 12 2012


Just make your home airtight, fill it with Halon and wear breathing apparatus all the time. Then you'll have no fruit flies and your house will never burn down - you can probably get a discount on your fire insurance for having a Halon-filled house.
-- hippo, Oct 12 2012


//Just make your home airtight, fill it with Halon and wear breathing apparatus all the time.//

Well, nineteenthly already proposed that with nitrogen, which has the advantages of being cheaper and legal.
-- Loris, Oct 12 2012


a lot of things still spoil aerobically although few will do so if sterilized in the first place. Anything that is alive, fruit and vegetable will spoil in an anaerobic setting.
-- WcW, Oct 12 2012


This appears to be my greatest blunder, comparable in magnitude to Einstein's intentional ignoring of the Cosmological Constant in his GR equations. Of course, as Vern points out, a volume of pure nitrogen would rise, not sink, in air, sending my idea out the window. I am truly humbled.
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 12 2012


Nonsense, just have two bowls, the usual fruit bowl plus an inverted bowl over the top for the nitrogen. Perhaps omit the first bowl per se and have little hooks inside the inverted gasbowl for hanging the fruit on.
-- pocmloc, Oct 12 2012


[pocmloc] to my rescue. Why didn't I think of that? I keep forgetting that the true purpose of the HB is not to be right, but to be half right.
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 12 2012


Ours is not to reason; why ?
-- FlyingToaster, Oct 12 2012


In my home they are known as beer flies, and tolerated only because they drink so little. It's become a bit of a sport, fishing them out and reviving them.

If you get to them quickly enough they recover after a few minutes, but if you wait too long the simultaneous antiseptic and anesthesic properties are terminal.
-- normzone, Oct 12 2012


Needs more badgers.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2012


If you put a badger over the bowl, and ran his breath through a cooling apparatus, you could separate out the carbon dioxide, and use that to fill the bowl. Any fruit flies that expired in the bowl could be fished out and fed to the badger.
-- baconbrain, Oct 12 2012


each fruit bowl should have a frog pedestal.
-- FlyingToaster, Oct 12 2012


//Ours is not to reason; why ?// [ Marked-for-tagline]
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 13 2012


You could simply store your fruit in the garage. [link]
-- AusCan531, Oct 13 2012


Lateral thinking leads to an elegant solution.

The fruit bowl is a clear dome with a shelf round the edge on the inside and a central hole for access to the fruit. It is suspended from the ceiling, and the suspension link includes a thin pipe.

Hydrogen and oxygen are produced by electrolysis. The oxygen is released into the house. The hydrogen passes down the pipe and fills the dome. It will rapidly diffuse out of the aperture, but is constantly replenished. There will only be a narrow region around the aperture where the hydrogen concentration is between the HEL and the LEL. The dome is purged of other, heavier gases and becomes an anerobic environment where insects cannot respire, and due to low density have difficulty flying in.

Could be used as a meat safe, too.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 13 2012


Looks like [87th] got his head stuck in that airless bowl and stopped typing. Someone go check up on him?
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 13 2012


We are fine. Simply a minor interfacing problems with your primitive data systems.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 13 2012


// Maybe the bread bin could be adapted to have a badger compartment ? //

[Marked-for-tagline]
-- 8th of 7, Oct 13 2012


An oxygen-free atmosphere causes fermentation in fruit (link).
-- spidermother, Oct 16 2012


We simply immerse our fruit into an ever boilling vat of hot wax, providing a barrier to all but the most determined fruitivores.

After the wax is nearly solidified, we roll the fruit around in a bed of powdered weaponised anthrax and ricin, just to make sure.

Then, we dip once again into a different vat of low-viscosity nitro-glycerine to deter any larger fruit-fancying creatures possessed of a hearty constitution.

Finally, and *very* *very* carefully, we leave the fruit in a bowl where it will, as all fruit is ultimately destined, rot quietly away in the corner - comforted in the knowledge that *nothing* is going to get to eat it.
-- zen_tom, Oct 16 2012


// An oxygen-free atmosphere causes fermentation in fruit //

And why is this considered a problem?
-- Alterother, Oct 16 2012


I provide mere information, not condemnation. I once left some grapes in a deep bowl for several days, and was pleasantly surprised to find some some rather good, modestly alcoholic wine in the bottom. But the grapes had turned to mush.
-- spidermother, Oct 21 2012


Have a "fly tube" with an excess number of flies trapped in it (does not have to be see thru, so people will never know). These flies breath up the oxygen and emit CO2. The CO2 is sent to the bowl, leaving your fruit clean of flies, with no extra energy needed.
-- pashute, Oct 21 2012


Yes, but what do those flies in tube eat?
-- sqeaketh the wheel, Oct 21 2012



random, halfbakery