Rapid-fire laser diverts lightning strikes | Hacker News Reader

Rapid-fire laser diverts lightning strikes

nature.com

113 pointsyipbub47 comments

Now imagine, using this, to print circuits on the outside of a plasma, and driving current through it, allowning the plasma to form its own temporary coils, containing it. Basically on demand magnetic fields, in a fusion containment device, to push back deformed plasma containers.. whack the mol

We can barely predict plasma even in the simplest cases. But one day, yes. Sounds like an interesting idea for an SF novel right now.

(I might use it. :)

"You may have the handkerchief i carry"

(PS: I will pirate your novel with this comment in mind :)

I don’t care how well we can explain it, that’s magic

It's even got runes.

Magic is technology which we can wield but not understand.

This proposal is technology which we can understand but not wield.

I'd suggest it's "anti-magic".

Isn't that Helion in a nutshell?

No? Helion doesn't use lasers, just old school electromagnets.

They do use the currents in the plasma to help confine it, but by having plasma be in a really simple shape that lends itself to that (a torus) not by "printing circuits" on it. They then take two of these and accelerate them towards eachother while making the toruses smaller (and denser) by activating electromagnets with very precise timing.

Still, it's the closest we're going to see... for now. It's definitely an interesting branch of research.

> A high-speed camera clearly showed one strike following the straight line of the laser beam, rather than taking a branching path.

Why isn't the picture posted!

Probably because "following the straight line of the laser beam" should have a "for a bit" at the end; the lightning only goes (relatively) straight for a short distance so it doesn't look very impressive.

You can see the picture they are talking about here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01139-z/figures/3

And this one shows two other examples of similar strikes along with the laser drawn on top: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01139-z/figures/2

What do you mean it doesn't look impressive?

If you can attract the lightning to a lightning rod to prevent it from hitting other targets like sporting fields with lighting equipment and bipedal fleshy beings from getting struck, then seems like a very impressive thing to me.

fig 2. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01139-z

It is! The link goes to a “News and Views” summary (more background, less data) rather than the original article. Check out Figure 2 of the original article to see lightening being diverted https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01139-z/figures/2

Here’s the reference if you want to read the whole thing (it’s open access)

Houard, A., Walch, P., Produit, T. et al. Laser-guided lightning. Nat. Photon. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01139-z

I'm surprised that this phenomenon has only recently been confirmed. Electrolasers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser) have been thought about for 30+ years. The idea if you create a laser-induced plasma channel for the weapon's energy path. The same idea seems like it'd work with lightning. In fact, it seems like some research for guiding lightning with LIPCs has been done since 10 years ago (https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.3690961).

I feel like this is one of those "in mice" kind of studies, where the headline reads like "Cure Found For Cancer" and then the study was "one type of toenail cancer in mice and only female genetically engineered brown mice raised on the space station."

There's still something really cool about lasers shooting at and controlling lightning though. Just doesn't sound like it's happening anytime soon.

  Stelios Tzortzakis, a laser physicist at the University of Crete, Greece, who was not involved in the research. “If it’s useful or not, only time can say.”


  Over 10 weeks of observation, the team spotted the laser channelling 4 lightning events during 6 hours of thunderstorms. A high-speed camera clearly showed one strike following the straight line of the laser beam, rather than taking a branching path.

If I remember correctly, and this is going Waaaay back to the show "Discovery 2000" (when naming things 2000 was futuristic):

There was a show/discussion about police cars being armed with ultraviolet lasers and electric probes on the beampath, in order to short-circuit a car's electric system. That's because, according to the TV show, a UV laser creates an ionized channel that is relatively easy for electricity to travel.

There's obvious questions here... Like what's the breakdown voltage of this UV channel? How much voltage is applied? What's its feasibility of being mounted on a vehicle?

But given this recent article, it seems that yes, it is more than just a negligible effect, given it can steer lightning.

Aside: I think you mean this show: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Tomorrow_(TV_series)

I knew it in its “Beyond 2000” incarnation.

Man, I loved that show -- a modern day version of "World of Tomorrow"

Isn’t this caused by the ionized air produced by the laser vaporizing the air molecules? The laser hitting the air produces ionized air along its path. Ionized air is conductive. The line of conductive ionized air brings down the lightning.

With such title, this automatically becomes the kind of content where I want more photos and videos, and less words. I hoped to find some cool sample of the effect but... only a green laser pointing to the sky. Oh well then, I'll read the text and imagine it myself!

What happens when planes fly by? Would they track planes and not fire when they detect them and rely on traditional lightningrods or let it fly anyway?

There is a cylinder of restricted airspace that is activated beforehand

For testing purposes.

For theoretical future operational purposes I'd imagine they'd still want to be able to use this when planes are flying. But could likely track planes and adjust the beam slightly to avoid them, or just disable the system for the rare couple of seconds when a plane is in the exact wrong place (in front of the beam).

It makes sense to do that for a testing site and wait for lightning to happen. How does it work for general purpose?

They can’t just say “in three microseconds we’re restricting airspace —get out now! Ooops, too late!”

New favorite accident for 3letter intelligence companies around the globe

If further confirmed, this calls for a new art installation like Lightning Field (1977) https://publicdelivery.org/walter-de-maria-lightning-field/

Incredible technology but moreover, that is the coolest "mad scientist" esque lab I've ever seen! Victorian era brick building next to a futuristic rod and lab?!

However, it's kinda obvious this could lead to an incredibly cool weapons system.

So now pilots flying near thunderclouds need to worry about lasers too?

Benjamin Franklin would be proud

I don't know much about lasers. Why are these phased and not continuous?

Higher power delivery potential in a pulse without causing LASER breakdown.

A picosecond pulse emitted 1000 times a second is 1 1:1e9 duty cycle. You'd need a billion times the laser to send that power level continuously.

I wonder if this could be the first step in harnessing lightning energy.

Wasn't this already achieved in 1955? Or was it 1985?

In 1985, you had to time with hitting 88mph too, so it made it much more difficult. Although, they had the advantage of knowing the future of exactly when it would strike.

Some quick math shows that even if we harvested every single lightning strike in the US and converted it all to electricity, it will account to roughly 0.6% of all electricity generation of the US. I doubt it’ll be useful as a means of energy generation

Ah, but what if you call it locally-harvested organic free-range electricity? Might be worth a lot more, economically speaking.

I don't need to power all of the US. I just need it to reanimate my creature, or to energize my flux capacitor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvesting_lightning_energy

"A single lightning strike, while fast and bright, contains very little energy by the time it gets down to earth, and dozens of lightning towers like those used in the system tested by AEHI would be needed to operate five 100-watt light bulbs for the course of a year."

As I understand it, most of the energy from a lightning strike is turned into heat.

Clearly the solution is aerostats tethered by transmission cables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rocket

"A lightning rocket is a rocket that unravels a conductor, such as a fine copper wire, as it ascends, to conduct lightning charges to the ground. Lightning strikes derived from this process are called "triggered lightning.""

I like the idea of a longer lasting solution, though the tethers would need to be high-temp superconducting cables. The wires in triggered lightning vaporize and the energy is mostly lost to heat.

Though given high temperature superconductivity, we can probably do better than cables into the atmosphere.

Maybe harnessing it to make cool artwork

Can this be weaponized?

TRUMPF is indeed on the forefront of directed energy weapons, lovingly known as distance welding. https://twitter.com/BaainBw/status/1585525065428369408

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser

Reply on news.ycombinator.com