Scientists Used Lasers To Divert Lighting Bolts In The Sky
If you’ve ever wanted to play Zeus hurling bolts of lightning (and who hasn’t) we may be close to the next best thing.
STEPHEN LUNTZ
Freelance Writer
Jan 16, 2023 10:00 AM
A green laser beam seen against the Säntis Mountain weather station, a frequent site of lightning strikes. Image Credit: TRUMPF/Martin Stollberg
Lasers can act as virtual lightning rods, redirecting the direction in which bolts jump – although we’re a long way from being able to call down the wrath of science on unbelievers like a creature of myth.
The Franklin lightning rod was a major scientific advance of its day, preventing millions of fires and electrocutions and demonstrating humanity’s capacity to control forces we had long feared as belonging to the gods. Nevertheless, it’s been 270 years, and it remains the basis of our lightning protection: maybe it’s time for an upgrade.
That is what Dr Aurélien Houard of ENSTA Paris and co-authors propose in a new paper, demonstrating that laser pulses can change the direction of a lightning strike.
The team previously demonstrated lasers' capacity to ionize air in laboratories can cause 2-million-volt sparks to jump along low-density channels. To take their idea to a larger stage, they placed a laser machine the size of a car near a tower on Säntis Mountain, Switzerland. The tower was chosen as, contrary to sayings about lightning never striking twice in the same place, it gets hit about 100 times a year – reportedly the most in Europe.
More:
https://www.iflscience.com/scientists-used-lasers-to-divert-lighting-bolts-in-the-sky-67089
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Demo during heavy storms at top of a Swiss mountain involved firing powerful laser pulses at thunderclouds
A lightning bolt strikes over a popular neighbourhood of Bogota in 2022. The new discovery paves the way for laser-based lightning protection systems at airports, launchpads and tall buildings. Photograph: Guillermo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images
Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Mon 16 Jan 2023 11.00 EST
Scientists have steered lightning bolts with lasers for the first time in the field, according to a demonstration performed during heavy storms at the top of a Swiss mountain.
The feat, which involved firing powerful laser pulses at thunderclouds over several months last year, paves the way for laser-based lightning protection systems at airports, launchpads and tall buildings.
“Metal rods are used almost everywhere to protect from lightning, but the area they can protect is limited to a few metres or tens of metres,” said Aurélien Houard, a physicist at École Polytechnique in Palaiseau. “The hope is to extend that protection to a few hundred metres if we have enough energy in the laser.”
Lightning bolts are huge electrical discharges that typically spark over two to three miles. The charge carried in a bolt is so intense that it reaches 30,000C, about five times hotter than the surface of the sun. More than a billion bolts strike Earth each year, causing thousands of deaths, 10 times as many injuries, and damage that runs into tens of billions of dollars.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/16/scientists-steer-lightning-bolts-with-lasers-for-the-first-time
