{"id":478221,"date":"2023-06-06T19:05:32","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T22:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=478221"},"modified":"2023-06-06T19:05:32","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T22:05:32","slug":"laser-beam-deflects-lightning-in-the-swiss-alps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/laser-beam-deflects-lightning-in-the-swiss-alps\/","title":{"rendered":"Laser beam deflects lightning in the Swiss Alps"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_479136\" style=\"max-width: 710px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-479136 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RPF-notas-laser-raio-2023-03-700.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"1050\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RPF-notas-laser-raio-2023-03-700.jpg 700w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RPF-notas-laser-raio-2023-03-700-250x375.jpg 250w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/RPF-notas-laser-raio-2023-03-700-120x180.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">TRUMPF\u2009\/\u2009Martin Stollberg<\/span>A laser beam (<em>green<\/em>) is fired into the sky next to the 124-meter-high telecommunication tower on S\u00e4ntis Mountain<span class=\"media-credits\">TRUMPF\u2009\/\u2009Martin Stollberg<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>European scientists have managed to deflect lightning from a thunderstorm for the first time using short, intense laser pulses. The laser was fired from a device the size of a car next to a 124-meter-high telecommunications tower in the Swiss Alps in the summer of 2021. During storms that occurred in a 10-week period, the device fired a thousand laser pulses per second, intercepting four rays of lightning more than 50 meters from the tower and diverting them to the antenna&#8217;s lightning rod, preventing them from striking in unwanted places. The laser beams, monitored by high-speed cameras, change the properties of the air and open a discharge path for the electricity that forms in the clouds. &#8220;It&#8217;s like drilling a hole through the air,&#8221; Aur\u00e9lien Houard, a physicist from the Applied Optics Laboratory at \u00c9cole Polytechnique, Paris, who led the project, told the journal <em>Nature<\/em>. Metal lightning rods attract lightning and safely dissipate the charge, but they do not deflect lightning and they have a limited range. If improved and made cheaper, laser beams could reach higher in the sky, point in any direction and provide an alternative anti-lightning system for sensitive buildings such as airports and hospitals (<em>Nature<\/em> and <em>Nature Photonics<\/em>, January 16).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have managed to deflect lightning for the first time using short, intense laser pulses","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1651],"tags":[254,235],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-478221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","tag-optics","tag-physics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478221"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479141,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478221\/revisions\/479141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478221"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=478221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}