Scientists guide lightning with lasers fired at thunderclouds

A group of scientists say they successfully steered bolts of lightning using laser technology during a storm in Switzerland, demonstrating a potential new method to protect infrastructure from lightning strikes.

The scientists published their work in the journal Nature Photonics on Monday, writing that this first-ever demonstration used laser-induced filaments that successfully guided lightning to the ground. The experiment took place on Säntis Mountain in northeastern Switzerland during the summer of 2021, where they set up a high-repetition-rate terawatt laser next to a telecommunication tower that is stuck by lightning about 100 times a year.

“Metal rods are used almost everywhere to protect from lightning, but the area they can protect is limited to a few meters or tens of meters,” Aurélien Houard, a physicist at École Polytechnique, told The Guardian. “The hope is to extend that protection to a few hundred metres if we have enough energy in the laser.”

Between July and September, scientists waited for thunderstorms to roll in near their experimental setup so that they could fire fast laser pulses at thunderclouds. Over the course of their experiment, they fired laser pulses for nearly 6 1/2 hours at thunderclouds, while the tower was hit 16 times by lightning.

Out of the 16 lightning strikes, only four of them occurred when the scientists were using the laser pulse technology. Their results showed that the lasers shifted the course of all four lighting strikes, but was only able to get footage of one of the lightning events since there were not clear skies during the other storms.

There were about 198 million total lightning events in the United States last year, according to Vaisala’s annual lightning report. Nineteen people died in 2022 as a result of being struck by lightning in the U.S., according to the National Weather Service.

Many large buildings and outdoor spaces install lightning rods to divert lightning away from the location. Lightning rods intercept a lightning strike to provide a conductive path for the electrical charge to disperse the energy safely into the ground, according to the National Weather Service.

This new research using lasers to divert lightning aims to bring alternative methods of lightning protection besides the traditional lightning rod into the field. Similar to the lightning rod, the lasers provide an easier path for the lightning to safely disperse its energy into the ground and can be used for longer distances depending on the strength of the laser.

“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,” the abstract states. “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.”