A group of engineers from The French National Centre for Scientific Research, Switzerland’s University of Geneva, and Singapore’s Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR) are working to change that. They’ve created the first successful laser lightning rod, or LLR, which “guides” lightning toward itself regardless of surrounding weather conditions. While the technology isn’t perfect so far, it could help us avoid future injuries and property damage down the road.
Lightning strikes are characteristically chaotic. The Franklin rod, as the conventional lightning rod is known, is a conductive mast that points upward several meters. It typically creates a low-resistance path for electrical charges within a radius equal to its own height. While this path sometimes leads lightning to the rod instead of the ground (or an unwitting passerby), lightning doesn’t always “find” the rod. This limits the rod’s overall effectiveness.
Swisscom’s Säntis communication tower with a Franklin rod. (Photo: Houard et al/Nature Photonics)
The LLR sits atop the Franklin rod and enhances it by creating channels of ionized air. Any time the LLR emits high-power laser pulses into the air, intense light filaments form within the beam, which ionize nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. These ionized molecules release free-moving electrons, creating an electrically conductive space. In a paper published Monday in Nature Photonics, the engineers describe an experiment in which they installed their LLR atop a 124-meter Franklin rod belonging to Swisscom, a European telecommunications company.
The engineers activated the laser each time storm activity appeared on the weather forecast between June and September 2021, closing the area to air traffic to avoid interference on either end. From the very beginning, it was clear the laser extended the Franklin rod’s protection radius by 60 meters—nearly 50% of its original capacity. Continued use showed that the LLR worked in fog, which previous laser-equipped lightning devices haven’t been able to accomplish outside of the laboratory.
As previously mentioned, the LLR isn’t perfect. It was sometimes struck by lightning outside of the laser’s path, and there’s quite a bit of work to go before the LLR extends a Franklin rod’s protection radius enough for the technology to be worthwhile. The engineers are hoping to work toward extending a 10-meter rod’s radius to 500 meters over the long term.
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