When Benjamin Franklin fashioned the first lightning rod in the 1750s following his famous experiment flying a kite with a key attached during a thunderstorm, the American inventor had no way of knowing this would remain the state of the art for centuries.
The equipment was hauled to the mountaintop at an altitude of about 2500 metres, some parts using a gondola and others by helicopter, and was focused on the sky above a 124-metre-tall transmission tower belonging to telecommunications provider Swisscom, one of Europe’s structures most affected by lightning.
“An intense laser can generate on its path long columns of plasmas in the atmosphere with electrons, ions and hot air molecules,” Houard said, referring to positively charged particles called ions and negatively charged particles called electrons.“We have shown here that these plasma columns can act as a guide for lightning,” Houard added.
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