Scientists use laser to guide lightning bolt for first time

Amazing stuff! Benjamin Franklin got a jolt out of this. It took about 20 years to achieve this result.

"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.
Lightning strikes between 40-120 times a second worldwide, killing more than 4,000 people and causing billions of dollars worth of damage every year. ...

Now, in a study published in the journal Nature Photonics, they describe using a laser beam—shot from the top of a Swiss mountain—to guide a lightning bolt for more than 50 meters.

"We wanted to give the first demonstration that the laser can have an influence on lightning—and it is simplest to guide it," ...

When scientists previously tested this theory in New Mexico in 2004, their laser did not grab the lightning.

That laser failed because it did not emit enough pulses per second for lightning, which brews in milliseconds ..."

From the abstract:

"Lightning discharges between charged clouds and the Earth’s surface are responsible for considerable damages and casualties. It is therefore important to develop better protection methods in addition to the traditional Franklin rod. Here we present the first demonstration that laser-induced filaments—formed in the sky by short and intense laser pulses—can guide lightning discharges over considerable distances. We believe that this experimental breakthrough will lead to progress in lightning protection and lightning physics. An experimental campaign was conducted on the Säntis mountain in north-eastern Switzerland during the summer of 2021 with a high-repetition-rate terawatt laser. The guiding of an upward negative lightning leader over a distance of 50 m was recorded by two separate high-speed cameras. The guiding of negative lightning leaders by laser filaments was corroborated in three other instances by very-high-frequency interferometric measurements, and the number of X-ray bursts detected during guided lightning events greatly increased. Although this research field has been very active for more than 20 years, this is the first field-result that experimentally demonstrates lightning guided by lasers. This work paves the way for new atmospheric applications of ultrashort lasers and represents an important step forward in the development of a laser based lightning protection for airports, launchpads or large infrastructures."

Scientists use laser to guide lightning bolt for first time

Laser-guided lightning (open access)

Fig. 2: Snapshots of the lightning event of 24 July 2021 (L2) recorded in the presence of the laser.