Humans fire laser to sky, sky responds with lightning

[Benm]

Short Sharp Science: Humans fire laser to sky, sky responds with lightning

Perhaps thats a good way to stop those kids from pointing lasers around

.. not that it would actually work with an ordinary red laser, but thats just a technicality, right?

 

[HIMNL9]

Well, is not so easy, but it's logic to imagine ..... i mean, when you're in an ambient filled with electric charges differentials, like a storm or pre-storm situation, and "make a ionized air path" shooting a high power laser between two of those electrical charges zones ..... :na:

 

[Benm]

Sure thing, with a laser that is designed to ionize something in the atmosphere, like these sodium-exciting guide star lasers. I'm not sure if it would be possible using a bluray laser, i suppose that mostly depends on pollutants present.

 

[HIMNL9]

Well, it may also depend from the power of the laser ..... i mean, they are using a 30W laser, after all ..... and UV is more ionizing than red, so, probably shooting a 30W BR beam through electric differential zones, it's the same as asking for a shoot in reply

 

[blrock]

How I would love to have a 20W red/orange....

 

[Benm]

Well, it may also depend from the power of the laser ..... i mean, they are using a 30W laser, after all ..... and UV is more ionizing than red, so, probably shooting a 30W BR beam through electric differential zones, it's the same as asking for a shoot in reply

Perhaps. The wavelength used there is specifically tuned to ionize sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere to produce the guide star. Bluray lasers do not ionize the normal components of air (oxygen, nitrogen, argon, co2 or water), but they could potentially ionize organic pollutants.

Creating an ionized channel like that would most likely be a great conduit for any lightning strike about to hit, but it may take a huge amount of power to do that.

I doubt it would be common for this to occur with telescopes though, since there is little point in looking at the stars when there is a thunderstorm overhead.

 

[Bluefan]

The laser appears to be red or close to it, that definately won't ionise sodium. It is probably tuned to a sodium transistion, this will only excite the atoms and let them radiate, it won't ionise them.

 

[Benm]

The laser is orange-yellow, and it does ionize sodium vapour in the atmosphere. The wavelength is essentially the same as that emitted by low pressure sodium lights.

Most elements will not be ionized by such low enery photons, but alkali metals like sodium are quite easy to ionize (low energy to dislodge one electron), which makes them both very reactive and useful as guide stars.

 

[Cheech]

Blasting Lasers into the Sky To Make Lightning | Discoblog | Discover Magazine

"A group of European researchers working at South Baldy Peak have finally realized this longstanding goal by successfully bringing about lightning by zapping lasers into thunderclouds in a recent experiment. The ultrashort laser bursts (only around a hundred femtoseconds) ionize some of the molecules in the air, forming a plasma, and these channels of plasma act can guide lightning strikes like the wires on a rocket.

While impressive in concept, laser lightning isn’t yet the awesomely impressive display that could replace the laser light show at your local planetarium. For one thing, the bolts only went cloud to cloud rather than between the sky and the ground. Also, the success rate for the laser wasn’t all that great; only a statistical analysis of all the strikes throughout the storm could clearly show that the lightning was really due to the lasers. But the researchers say that now that they know it works, it’s just a matter of tweaking the conditions to get bigger and badder and more reliable lightning. As you might expect, they say what they really need is a more powerful, longer zap—in this experiment the lasers had only a few millijoules of energy spread over a hundred or so femtoseconds; if they researchers had use of a laser that could lay down a few joules over a couples leisurely nanoseconds, they could cook up some real blast-a-hole-in-the-ground bolts from the blue.A group of European researchers working at South Baldy Peak have finally realized this longstanding goal by successfully bringing about lightning by zapping lasers into thunderclouds in a recent experiment. The ultrashort laser bursts (only around a hundred femtoseconds) ionize some of the molecules in the air, forming a plasma, and these channels of plasma act can guide lightning strikes like the wires on a rocket.

While impressive in concept, laser lightning isn’t yet the awesomely impressive display that could replace the laser light show at your local planetarium. For one thing, the bolts only went cloud to cloud rather than between the sky and the ground. Also, the success rate for the laser wasn’t all that great; only a statistical analysis of all the strikes throughout the storm could clearly show that the lightning was really due to the lasers. But the researchers say that now that they know it works, it’s just a matter of tweaking the conditions to get bigger and badder and more reliable lightning. As you might expect, they say what they really need is a more powerful, longer zap—in this experiment the lasers had only a few millijoules of energy spread over a hundred or so femtoseconds; if they researchers had use of a laser that could lay down a few joules over a couples leisurely nanoseconds, they could cook up some real blast-a-hole-in-the-ground bolts from the blue."


This all sounds plausible to me. I live in Florida "lightning capital of the world" if anyone wants to donate knife edges and 405 diodes for a experiment.

like this but bigger

 

[HIMNL9]

^ a discretely efficent "electric gate" ..... must try it at home .....

(j/k ..... by the way, that's a real 2.5 million volts "taser" ..... not the handheld ones :crackup

 

[Bluefan]

This all sounds plausible to me. I live in Florida "lightning capital of the world" if anyone wants to donate knife edges and 405 diodes for a experiment.

You're trying to get megawatts of peak power out of laser diodes. Even if you could magically knife edge them into a beam not the size of a few meters then good luck finding somebody to donate the millions of laser diodes needed.

 

[Benm]

Why on earth would you want to use diodes? You need short, intense pulses for this kind of stuff. Perhaps you could build the words biggest nitogen laser and try that