Laser Triggers Electrical Activity In Thunderstorm

esocid writes "A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm. At the top of South Baldy Peak in New Mexico during two passing thunderstorms, the researchers used laser pulses to create plasma filaments that could conduct electricity. No air-to-ground lightning was triggered because the filaments were too short-lived, but the laser pulses generated discharges in the thunderclouds themselves up to several meters long. Triggering lightning strikes is an important tool for basic and applied research because it enables researchers to study the mechanisms underlying lightning strikes. Moreover, triggered lightning strikes will allow engineers to evaluate and test the lightning-sensitivity of airplanes and critical infrastructure such as power lines. Research into laser-triggered lightning has been going on for some years. Until now, no experiment was able to produce a long enough plasma channel to affect the electrical activity inside clouds."

Re:Let me be the first...

[mrmeval]

How cool would a "lightning bomb" be? A bit of bother dropping several thousand of them during a storm the the bewildered havoc they could wreck!

I'm wondering if one of those microwave pseudo-EMP devices are directional enough to trigger a more massive plasma channel.

Re:Electricity source?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do you control and store such power? You know, it can be really hard to stop a spark that has traveled thousands of meters just to reach the earth...

Re:Electricity source?

[RobertM1968]

Well, the other issue comes from storing that much electricity delivered in such a short period of time...

I think the problem may be the methods being used... I would think it more logical to try to drain such energy from the sky on a slower basis than to try to capture a lightning bolt...

But then again, I am no scientist...

Actually, it has been thought of and tried alot.

[WindBourne]

The problem is not lack of( lightening strikes all over the planet every minute). The problem is getting it to hit in the same place over and over as well as being able to handle the amount of power that comes with it. If this can be used in areas that get lots of strikes, it may be possible to direct them to a collection spot. Btw, some good spots for collections would be mountain tops. Here in colorado, being on top a 14er in the mid-afternoon can be challenging. We actualy get a lot of fried texans and Californians each year (caused by an inability to understand that when you are above tree-line, you are the most electrically conductive item there).

If I'm not telling the truth....

[ppanon]

I remember in the 80's seeing a TV show on directions in space-based weapons research for the SDI/Star Wars program. While both lasers and particle beam weapons were considered, each had their drawbacks. Lasers were subject to attenuation from clouds and atmospheric dust, whereas particle beam weapons were subject to bending from the Earth's magnetic field, as well as dispersion from electrostatic repulsion of the ions. One suggested possible approach was to use a (relatively) lower-power laser to ionize a plasma channel as a conduit for the ionized particle beam (although I expect that would only be effective in atmosphere and therefore would require a lot of LEO satellites). So laser-seeded lightning isn't a huge stretch in that direction - a bigger question would be why hasn't anybody tried it before?

But this article got me thinking about politicians and religious fundamentalists who lie through their teeth while exclaiming "If I'm lying, may God strike me down with lightning/where I stand". A set of geosync laser platforms powerful enough to create an ionized channel between storm clouds and people who have uttered that phrase just seems long overdue.