Don't try this at home, but beaming a laser into the sky could avert lightning strikes, according to a new study from a team of scientists who experimented with the lasers atop a Swiss mountain where a great big metal telecommunications tower stands.
Physicist Aurélien Houard, from the French National Center for Scientific Research's Applied Optics Laboratory in Paris, and colleagues weathered hours of thunderstorm activity to test whether a laser could guide lightning strikes away from critical infrastructure. The telecommunications tower is struck by lightning about 100 times a year.
That's similar to the number of lightning flashes that strike planet Earth or crackle between clouds every second. Collectively, those strikes can cause billions of dollars of damage to airports and launchpads, not to mention people.
Our best protection against lightning strikes is a Franklin rod, nothing more than a metal spire invented in the 18th century by Benjamin Franklin, who discovered lighting strikes are zig-zagging bolts of electricity. Those rods connect to metal cables that run down buildings and anchor into Earth, working to dissipate lightning's energy.
Houard and colleagues wanted to devise a better way to protect against lightning strikes, fighting electricity with light.
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