![]() Laser Lightning Rods Carve an Easier Path For Electricityīut how does a powerful laser beam help divert bolts of lightning? Walch explains that it all depends on the path that the laser leaves behind. The team not only increased the laser’s power to 500 megajoules, with bursts of energy every 1 trillionth of a second, but also took it to the top of one of Europe’s most lightning strike-prone mountains: Säntis mountain in the Swiss Alps. ![]() To help bring this technology into the 21st century, the researchers stacked the deck. Say Hello to the World’s Most Powerful Magnet.Meet the World’s Most Powerful X-Ray Laser.The 2,600-Year-Long History of Electricity.However, while the rods work well in smaller cases-such as directing lightning away from a house-they fail in larger applications like protecting airports. As they stick out above other targets, these higher points serve as the first line of defense to absorb strikes and send them safely underground. These pointed rods are typically installed at the tallest points of buildings and connect to a buried conductive wire. For the last 300 years or so, scientists have relied on Benjamin Franklin’s original design to safely redirect lightning strikes. While Houard and his team’s laser lightning rod represents a new era of lightning protection, it’s not the first lightning rod to do so. “And you can also easily direct this rod by steering the laser beam.” Lightning Rods Have Remained Fundamentally the Same “In theory, there is no limitation in the length of this if you have sufficient energy in the laser,” says Houard, a physics research scientist at The Polytechnic Institute of Paris. ![]() This rod can protect a much larger area than the traditional lightning rod, and can be used dynamically as well, the paper’s first author, Aurélien Houard, Ph.D., tells Popular Mechanics. “The idea of guiding electrical discharges using a laser and the concept of a laser lightning rod are not new and were documented as early as the 1970s.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |