Giant Blaster: The Scientists Have Learned To Control Lightning With A Laser Beam
A group of French researchers for the first time using a powerful laser managed to provoke lightning discharges and direct lightning strikes along a given path. Of course, such tricks are not something new, in meteorology, guided missiles have long been used for this, leaving a trail of sprayed ionizing substance, or balloons that raise thin metal wire lightning rods into the sky, and other technologies of active lightning protection. But no one has been able to use lasers to control lightning until recently.
A successful demonstration took place only recently, in the Swiss Alps, on Mount Sentis, where a telecommunications tower is installed that receives about a hundred lightning strikes every year. Thanks to this, the top is actively used to study discharges, it is equipped with a mass of necessary tools. It was there that researchers from the University of Geneva and their colleagues from TRUMPF experimented, which provided a powerful laser and specialists to work with it.
The experiments took place during several thunderstorms, from July to September 2021. The laser for them was used much more powerful than in previous attempts to “tame” lightning. It emitted pulses at a kilohertz frequency, thousands of times per second, orders of magnitude more intense than past instruments. This made it possible to create a more stable plasma channel for lightning in the air. Within six hours, the tower on Sentis received four discharges, which spread precisely along the path “marked” by the laser.
Such work showed that the laser created a path at a distance of about 50 meters, forcing electricity to move along it. This is much more than lightning rods, which are several meters long.
