Though the old saying goes that lightning never strikes twice, once is more than enough to start a fire or inflict damage to property and, of course, any unlucky humans that might be in the dangerous and erratic path of a bolt.
Luckily some scientists believe they may have found a strategy to protect high-risk buildings and objects from the impacts of lighting — and they’re using lasers to do it.
An experiment led by a research team led by physicist Aurélien Houard of École Polytechnique in France attempts to divert lightning strikes in order to avert such damage.
Digital Trends reports that the team was able to aim “pulses from a high-repetition-rate terawatt laser toward thunderclouds” near a Swiss mountain. The result was the ionization of air molecules that created a conductive channel of plasma which the electrical discharge of the lighting followed for a reported 50 meters.
In essence, it means that lightning can be rerouted for longer distances — possibly hundreds of meters — compared to what was previously possible with traditional metal rods, which could only shift lighting a few meters.
And there’s more lightning to work with than you might think. According to the group’s scientific paper, published in Nature Photonics, satellite data suggests that the total lightning flash rate worldwide, which includes both cloud-to-ground lightning and lightning within clouds, “is estimated to be between 40 and 120 flashes per second.”
The group hopes that these advancements help provide the foundational technology needed for more advanced lightning protection in applications like “airports, launchpads, and large infrastructure.”