An international team of researchers says a system of small lasers can be used to guide lightning to specific targets.
Basically the scientific (and flesh and blood) version of Magic's "chain lightning" card. Or Thor's hammer, if you like.
“We found that high-intensity lasers are not needed to produce this result. Even low-intensity ones, such as laser pointers, can be sufficient." He tells France Press Andrey Miroshnichenko, researcher at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia.
The team says it has already tested the concept in the lab using devices known as hollow lasers. Devices that can create a laser beam that is "full" at the edges and "empty" inside. A sort of light tube. These lasers can cause a sort of “short circuit” in storm clouds and trigger chain lightning by heating microparticles in the air.
Thor's laser
The high-powered hollow lasers made the process not only expensive but also difficult to control and dangerous. This new research, detailed in an article published in the journal Nature Communications last month, shows how the idea could work just as well using low-intensity laser pointers.
Through “the use of a laser beam of a few hundred milliwatts of power,” the “discharge threshold” of electrical charges in the air could be reduced by 30%, the team writes in the paper, allowing lightning to be guided “along a predetermined path in the air. “
A light rail to guide chain lightning
“We can imagine a future where this technology can induce electrical discharges from passing lightning, helping guide it to safe targets and reduce the risk of catastrophic fires,” says the co-researcher Vladlen Shvedov of the Australian National University.
