Scientists Guide Lightning Strikes Using Lasers for 1st Time

Lightning discharges from a thundercloud over trees in Montlouis-sur-Loire, France, on May 22, 2022. (Guillaume Souvant/AFP via Getty Images)

Scientists have found a way to potentially prevent lightning strikes from damaging infrastructure or causing injuries and deaths, according to a report published Monday.

During a storm in the Swiss Alps, a group of researchers successfully guided bolts of lightning to the ground using laser technology, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Photonics.

“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,” researchers said in the paper’s abstract. “We believe that this experimental breakthrough will lead to progress in lightning protection and lightning physics.”

While metal rods are commonly used to protect from lighting, their scope is limited “to a few meters or tens of meters,” and researchers hope to “extend that protection to a few hundred meters if we have enough energy in the laser,” Aurélien Houard, a physicist at École Polytechnique who is the corresponding author of the paper, told The Guardian.

Metal lightning rods provide a path for the lightning’s energy to be dispersed safely into the ground. Lightning rods are installed near large buildings and outdoor spaces to divert strikes away from them.

‘Virtual Lightning Rod’

A laser system is intended to function like a virtual lightning rod, Houard told SWNS.

“A powerful laser aimed at the sky can create a virtual lightning rod and divert the path of lightning strikes,” he said. “The findings may pave the way for better lightning protection methods for critical infrastructure—such as power stations, airports and launchpads.”

The researchers set up a high-repetition-rate terawatt laser at the Santis mountain in northeastern Switzerland, near a telecommunication tower that is struck by lightning about 100 times a year.

The laser system, which is about the size of a large car and weighs five tons, can fire up to a thousand pulses per second, according to Study Finds. As such, it is the first of its kind and is one of the most powerful in its class.

Between July 21 and Sept. 30, 2021, researchers used the system to fire intense laser pulses at thunderclouds for a total of 6.3 hours of thunderstorm activity that occurred within 3 km of the telecommunication tower.

“The tower was hit by at least 16 lightning flashes, four of which ... occurred during laser activity,” the report reads.

The lasers were able to guide the four lighting strikes, but the two high-speed cameras set up by the researchers were only able to capture one of the events due to poorer weather in the other three events. The cameras showed that the lighting strike followed the laser path for most of the 50 meters.

“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,” researchers noted. “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.”

America’s National Weather Service reported that 19 people died in the United States due to having been struck by lightning in 2022.

Vaisala, a company headquartered in Finland that provides weather and environmental measurements, said in its annual lightning report for 2022 (pdf) that there were about 198 million total lightning events in the United States that year.