Image source: Trumpf / Martin Stollberg
The year before last there was a laser on Mount Säntis in Switzerland. In the midst of the picturesque Alpstein landscape, a glowing green pillar towered into the sky. Your job: save lives. Because the Swiss laser is probably the most unusual lightning rod to date.
Lightning is anything but a rare natural phenomenon. Between 40 and 120 lightning strikes worldwide every single second. This causes billions in damage every year. And there is also a danger to life and limb for people. More than a thousand die every year as a result of a lightning strike.
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The first working laser arrester
The researchers from the University of Geneva have set out to prevent this. They installed the car-sized laser last year at an altitude of around 2,500 meters on the Säntis. From there, the laser fired more than 1,000 pulses per second during several thunderstorms. In total, the laser was active for more than six hours full of storms and lightning. The researchers presented their results in the journal Nature Photonics.
The laser on the Säntis. (Image source: Trumpf / Martin Stollberg)
The idea of using lasers as lightning conductors is not new. As early as 2004 and 2011, attempts were made to deflect lightning with focused light. However, all previous attempts have failed.
The laser set up on the Säntis thus represents the first successful attempt at a laser arrester. During the test period, he was hit a total of sixteen times – four of the flashes following the path of the fired laser.
The researchers suspect the reason for the successful experiment to be the higher frequency of the laser. Because the laser rate of the 2021 experiment is a hundred times higher than in previous experiments.
This is where the laser is housed. (Image source: Unige)
How the laser deflects lightning
There are physical reasons why lightning can be guided with a laser. When a laser pulse is shot into the sky, it changes the refractive index of the surrounding air. This then acts like a series of increasingly converging lenses and thus bundles the impulse even more strongly.
Eventually this bundling becomes so strong that the air around the impulse ionizes. This creates a path for the lightning bolt, along which the electrical discharge can flow more easily.
As is well known, the lightning finds the easiest way down and follows the path – the laser becomes the lightning rod.
Now that the researchers have been able to rate their experiment as a success, an important step forward has been taken. At some point, laser-based lightning rods will be used to protect airports, launch pads and other infrastructure.
However, there are still some restrictions to be observed. The experiment could only be carried out in a closed airspace. If an airplane had entered the airspace, the experiment would have had to be stopped immediately.
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Do you think laser lightning rods are the future? Will we soon be shooting light into the sky everywhere to protect us from thunderstorms? Or is all this still a distant dream of the future? Write us your opinion in the comments!
