Scientists Guide Lightning Bolts with Lasers for the First Time
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
1. Lasers heat things up. In this case, they're heating up air.
2. Hot air has lower-resistance than cool air. This is why lightning happens at all: as lightning goes through its path, it heats up the air hotter-and-hotter, which allows for more and more electricity to flow. That is, lightning itself heats up the air which makes the lightning more powerful.
3. This article talks about a device that uses lasers to heat up air ahead-of-time, where you heat up the air along pre-designated "safe" paths to provide a virtual lightning rod composed of this narrow stream of hot air... rather than a metal rod.
One notes that for the rangers stationed in them it would be a hair-raising experience.
Exploding something requires a lot of _power_. Lightning is very, very high power.
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So a dam collapsing demonstrates energy vs power, for example. The floodwaters race across the land slowly, having a small amount of power. But the floodwaters move for hours-and-hours, days and days, maybe a week or longer. That's energy, the ability to move for a long-long time.
Lightning is the opposite. Its an explosive amount of power, but it only lasts for a fraction of a second. Its so short that there's barely any energy involved.
A power-plant (and a battery) needs both. Which is where things get tricky.
No one has is really done yet. I think also in Switzerland, ETHZ tryed it some years ago, but when the lightning hit, he blew up everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser
[1] The whole Iraq adventure was a pointless slurry, but I remember 2004 was when even the Rah Rah people finally quieted the hell down. It seemed like that was when every military unit in theatre was panic buying whatever wacky technology they could find.
I wonder where 'pointless slurry' is meant on the scale of justifications or rationalizations of war? Maybe more favorably than 'quagmire' but less than 'good shoot'?
“pointless” = “without decent justification/rationalization", AFAICT, and “slurry” is about conditions, not justification.
> Maybe more favorably than 'quagmire'
“Slurry” seems to indicate a similar assessment of condition to “quagmire”, but maybe with less implication of stickiness? “Quagmire” doesn’t seem to be address justification, its orthogonal.
first of all the point is not that the laser heats up the air but that it ionizes the molecules of the air. this ionization then naturally causes a dipolar arrangement along "filaments" which then channel the flash.
lightning bolts don't strike down onto the earth out of nowhere - they are prepared by filaments growing up from the earth and down from the cloud and then a discharge happens when those filaments meet or get close enough.
[0]https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/1...
1. Does the protection extend to allowing airplanes to takeoff/land during a storm?
2. Can this be weaponized?
3. Can this protect forests from lightning initiated forest fires?
Lightning is typically not the biggest problem with flying through thunderstorms. To my knowledge, it is the wind shear[1] that is most dangerous. There's also icing and hail that you may have to worry about.
[1] https://www.weather.gov/media/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/llws/thu...
Kinda reminds me of Unreal Tournament's lightning gun, except they use a proton beam instead of a laser to guide the lightning bolt:
> "The Lightning Gun is a high-power energy rifle capable of ablating even the heaviest carapace armor. Acquisition of a target at long range requires a steady hand, but the anti-jitter effect of the optical system reduces the weapon's learning curve significantly. Once the target has been acquired, the operator depresses the trigger, painting a proton "patch" on the target. Milliseconds later the rifle emits a high voltage arc of electricity, which seeks out the charge differential and annihilates the target."
You mean, better than just using the laser to strike your target? Probably not.
I expect the only limit here is human imagination. E.g., Hitler weaponized a microphone.
But thinking about it, doesn't a large area like an airport just have several lightning rods? Seems a heck of a lot simpler in terms of operation and maintenance than a laser.
I would expect that modern airports already offer the maximal protection attainable with lightning rods. Any parts of the airport currently not protected probably does not make sense to protect with this technology.
The axial design clearly has a disadvantage with needing to be near the action on one side or the other.
The problem is that the energy in lightning is contained in a very short period of time, only a few microseconds. Further, to obtain that 1 million joules, one would have to handle a voltage of several million volts.
But even at 1 million joules, the typical lightning strike contains only about ¼ of a kilowatt-hour of power, which is not enough to make much difference on our electric bill.
Imagine Darth Maul and Palpatine dancing in the rain .....
Lasers, mirrors, big coils. It could be great.
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/05/could-we-harne...
Also, an important component in lightning is an upward convective current bringing warm and cooler air together, which cloud seeding would not affect. Clouds or rainclouds themselves don't cause lightning, which is why not all clouds/raincloud types are associated with lightning.
(I can'think of any, but doesn't doesn't mean much.)