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Laser-Guided Lightning May Help Prevent Wildfires
- 01100011 6y agoIn case anyone else's first thought was "we've heard this years ago and nothing came of it": > In the past, high-powered lasers were needed to achieve similar results, making the technique dangerous, costly and inaccurate. So does this mean we'll have idiots buying cheap lasers off Aliexpress and sending lightning strikes down on their neighbors?
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoThere is nothing new about this. There has been a huge body of literature about replacing the taser wire with a laser. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser
- m4rtink 6y agoGURPS even has comprehensive rules for using one!
- textgel 6y agoOut of curiosity if the method of grounding lightning clouds is considered a viable one, what would be wrong with a weather balloon and a reel of conductive wire; too much height required? too costly? I'd heard of high altitude parasail kites being used for power generation (tie the kite to a winch and a generator) so it can't be completely impossible. Edit: Or is this the XKCD search and rescue robot justification!
- bigbubba 6y agoMaybe the violent winds of a thunderstorm would be a problem for tethered kites or balloons? I guess it worked for Franklin though.
- h2odragon 6y agoThere was at least one government backed (NOAA?) project, some while back, that was using rockets with ground wires to draw lightning for study.
- Babiker 6y agoWill we ever learn that tampering with nature isn't good in the long run? We keep build systems, organizations, and structures that aren't naturally robust, then we try to bends nature's will to maintain our creations. If a wildfire breaks out, it was the most optimum event to balance natures equilibrium.
- _underfl0w_ 6y agoI'm not the only one imagining the danger in misuse of this technology, right? This seems like figurative deity-level power in handheld form if I understand it right. The type that could direct a lightning bolt to hit your neighbor's fancy new electric car, or a nation state could use to target nuclear or power grid infrastructure. I'm sure the accuracy isn't 100% and requires an existing electrical storm but... still.
- mschuster91 6y ago> The type that could direct a lightning bolt to hit your neighbor's fancy new electric car, or a nation state could use to target nuclear or power grid infrastructure No, that is not possible. The idea is to have a tower made out of metal and use a laser attached, inside or nearby to create a heated, ionized path of particles from the cloud to the tower. This path offers a lower resistance to the ground for the electric voltage difference which means that the lightning strike will prefer to safely follow the already ionized channel and hit the tower than to hit some random tree that ends up ablaze and igniting other trees nearby. It's like taking a helium balloon, attach a grounded metal wire and letting it rise into the midst of the cloud - just with the laser replacing the wire.
- dmurray 6y agoWhich part of this are you saying is impossible to accomplish in an adversarial situation? Is it that you need to have control of where the laser starts out? I can imagine a covert operation sneaking in a helium balloon into the enemy's power grid infrastructure, or tying it to his fancy car, even in a situation where you can't do the same with barrels of high explosives.
- kjsthree 6y agoIt's certainly possible but, as you say, you'd need tie/attach the laser to whatever of your neighbor's property that you want to effect. You can't do this from afar because the lightning strike is coming toward the laser emitter. Expect your door to get knocked in soon thereafter.
- _aleph2c_ 6y agoI think someone could build an innovative electrical power plant using this technology at Relampago del Catatumbo (Venezuela's everlasting lightning storm): https://www.atlasobscura.com/videos/see-venezuela-s-everlasting-lightning-storm https://www.atlasobscura.com/videos/see-venezuela-s-everlast...
- craigds 6y agoThis was my first thought while reading the article - surely if we can intentionally get hit by lightning, we can find a way to harness that energy. https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/ https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-... discusses the idea a bit. TLDR is: it probably isn't worth it :/
- moneytide1 6y agoAn electrolaser is designed to briefly pulse a high power beam that creates a conductive plasma channel (atmospheric conduit). If natural lightening is being coaxed, then we are essentially redirecting natural electrostatic balance into some focused work (Wardenclyffe?). The only "capacitor" I know of large enough to handle this amount of instant power is the one used to "spark" JET tokamak fusion [1]. There are two 775 ton flywheels that can dispense over 3 GJ instantly and "charge" via grid feed rate of around 8MW. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus
- MauranKilom 6y agoLightning does not actually transmit that much energy. Primarily because it's so brief.
- mmcconnell1618 6y agoThat would make it so much easier to get 1.21 Gigawatts into the Flux Capacitor. What else could be powered by wrangling lightning bolts?
- SammyNameTaken 6y agoprevent them in the short term while building up material for the next wildfire
- laverya 6y agoIs preventing wildfires even a desirable thing in the first place? Wasn't one of the major lessons of California's wildfires in recent years that if you don't have a small fire every once in a while, you'll have a HUGE fire instead after brush builds up enough?
- davidbanham 6y agoYes, preventing a wildfire from starting on a 40 degree (celsius) day with no rain forecast for weeks and several others burning simultaneously is a desirable thing. We try and manage the bushland with hazard reduction burns in the cooler months when weather patterns allow. These reduce the available fuel loads so that an uncontrolled fire in the area will be less intense. There will always be fire in our landscape. Our job is to manage it as best we can to protect the trees, the wildlife and the homes that have been built near them.
- EarthLaunch 6y agoThe point about managing when fires happen is a good one. Reducing fire overlaps frees up resources. Still I don't see public responsibility for people who buy homes in fire-prone areas; that should be a private cost (insurance).
- alex_young 6y agoIf we’re going to draw a distinction between homes in and out of fire prone areas, maybe we shouldn’t let people build them in the danger zone in the first place.
- EarthLaunch 6y agoFire risk is a gradient, possible to price but impossible to be certain about. If someone wants to build on a volcano let them, and let them pay for it.
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- m4rtink 6y agoSounds useful! Shame that it breaks Asia in the process...
- aaron695 6y agoAs per Hans Rosling lightning kills poor people. ( IE we will see more now because of the coronavirus ) 170 a year in Thailand according to http://lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/lightningstatistics.html http://lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/lightningstatistics.html
- efitz 6y agoAnyone else thinking what I’m thinking? Let’s grab a raspberry pi and a laser pointer and make a lightning strike weapon!
- blunte 6y agoSo instead of getting swatted, one gets lit.
- woeirua 6y agoIt’s cool but it won’t help prevent that many wildfires... The overwhelming majority of wildfires in the continental US are man made.
- creato 6y agoI found this unbelievable, so I searched for a source. Measuring by number of fires, it is true. However, fires started by lightning burn a larger area: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf I think your post is pretty misleading.
- bagacrap 6y ago88% are human caused and I'll bet a large sum that those fires generally burn lands closer to human civilization. That lightning strikes ignite millions of acres in remote Alaskan wilderness is not relevant, unless you think we should be out there protecting nature from itself.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoIf you watch planet earth, or other nature programs, you will find out that a forest fire is part of the natural forest life cycle. Some seeds, like pine code seeds, grasses, and so on, will only generate after a fire. Then there is succession of plants that grow out. Nature has this figured out. And the forest benefits from fires. Fire kills off parasites, and diseased trees. The new forest will be healthier. I understand preventing fires around human habitation. But it will probably be used to preserve the forest for logging too. Logging is not at all a natural process.
- coryrc 6y agoNot all forests, just ones in drier/hotter regions (Canada's boreal forests don't regularly burn, for example). The forests in the Western USA were purposefully burnt by the inhabitants for thousands of years prior to the ~1950s so I believe we don't know how much or if they relied on fire prior to man inhabiting the Americas.
- idanman 6y agoHere is the Nature Communications article. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19183-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19183-0 Before we get too excited: "In particular, we deliver light-absorbing graphene particles (100–1000 μm in size) to the space between the electrodes using a slowly diverging laser vortex beam (see “Methods” section) propagating through a round hole in the first electrode." This is far from self contained. I know that in the past people seeded clouds [0] to get rain but this is a lot of extra work that's needed. At that point it may be still easier to use the high power laser and guide the discharge. Saying this technology can help reduce wild fires is a bit premature but I wish them all the best of luck. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
- ComodoHacker 6y ago>it is yet to be tested outside a lab