For the first time , scientist have contend to fend off lightning , to the relief of anyone afraid of smack and lightning storms but plausibly the chagrin of Zeus . They cope to show that lasers can act as as practical lightning rods , redirect the management in which bolts jump .
The Franklinlightningrod was a major scientific cash advance of its day , preventing millions of fires and electrocutions and demonstrating humanity ’s capacity to curb forces we had long feared as belonging to the gods . Nevertheless , it ’s been 270 year , and it remain 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 newspaper publisher pubpished inNature Photonics , demonstrating thatlaserpulses canchange the direction of a lightning strike .
The lightning rod in action: a green laser shoots into the sky next to a lightning rod ready to divert the lightning boltImage credit: TRUMPF/Martin Stollberg
The squad previously prove optical maser ' capacity toionizeair in testing ground can cause 2 - million - volt sparks to jump along low - compactness channels . To take their idea to a larger point , they placed a laser machine the size of it of a auto near a tugboat on Säntis Mountain , Switzerland . The tower was chosen as , wayward to sayings about lightning never hit double in the same place , it gets hit about 100 times a year – reportedly the most in Europe .
During a six - hr violent storm , the laser pulses controlled the direction of four lightning expelling . One of the bolts , occurring under relatively clear sky , was read using two high - speed cameras . This showed it followed the laser beams ’ course for at least 50 cadence ( 164 understructure ) . All were accompany by increasedX - Raybursts .
“ Although this research arena has been very active for more than 20 years , this is the first field of view - resultant that by experimentation certify lightning channelise by laser , ” the authors save . Two late attempts to achieve something standardised go bad . The authors impute their success to using much debauched laser pulses , repeat on a scale of a thousand times a mo .
While unquestionably nerveless , one may necessitate if this proficiency is all that pragmatic . A optical maser like this will in all probability always be expensive to make and operate . Meanwhile , the telecommunications tugboat in doubt is still standing after all these years because its Franklin perch works exceedingly well on its own .
It ’s sure as shooting true that lightning counselling will not come gaudy . It take the team three years to work up their machine and its power was in the terawatt chain , avowedly for a very unretentive amount of time . This is more than the total electrical energy white plague of Europe .
However , there are sentence when more than stationary rods are ask , such as when people involve to be moving around in an open champaign . skyrocket with telegram bind have been shown to activate lightning , defuse strong electric fields , that could have run to subsequent strikes . However , the rockets are single - use of goods and services and therefore possibly more expensive in the farsighted running than lasers , which the authors debate could also protect vital stationary infrastructure well than Franklin rods .
Contrary to how we might imagine the process , the lightning all started at the top of the tower , with their up path laser hold in , rather than a thunderbolt from the heavens airt to a dissimilar spot on the primer .
Also very utilitarian if you want topower a metre machineto get back to the future .
A edition of this article was first published inJanuary 2023 .
