PARIS, Jan 22 — Scientists said Monday they have used a laser beam to guide lightning for the first time, hoping the technique will help protect against deadly bolts — and one day maybe even trigger them.
A team of scientists from six research institutions have been working for years to use the same idea but replace the simple metal pole with a far more sophisticated and precise laser. But for future applications “it would be even better if we could trigger lightning,” Houard told AFP.Lightning is a discharge of static electricity that has built up in storm clouds, or between clouds and the ground.The air becomes “partially conductive, and therefore a path preferred by the lightning,” Houard said.
They lugged a car-sized laser — which can fire up to a thousand pulses of light a second — up the 2,500-metre peak of Santis mountain in northeastern Switzerland.After two years building the powerful laser, it took several weeks to move it in pieces via a cable car.The telescope focused the laser beam to maximum intensity at a spot around 150 metres in the air — just above the top of the 124-metre tower.
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