Can A Laser Control Weather? Scientists Have Found A Way

a reply to: HardCorps

I don't see anything about producing precipitation but the idea is that it may be possible to create a "virtual" lightning rod in order to mitigate lightning damage.

However, unless the thunderheads are really low it's got a long way to go.

Similar to the principle of noise-canceling headphones, the energy loss of the primary laser beam and the energy supply from the dress laser beam cancel each other out. In the lab, the researchers were able to extend the range of filament lasers tenfold – from about 10 inches to 7 feet.

phys.org...

originally posted by: smurfy

originally posted by: HardCorps

a reply to: aboutface



Since DOD put up the money for research I can see them building a second more powerful version of their own.

After all the Air Force as been putting laser weapons in planes for a couple of decades now.

bet a new more powerful version would just give them a geekgasm!

The USS Ponce, (yes that is the correct name) was deployed just this year with a LASER weapon, I think others are to follow. It's the same set-up I'm near sure.

No it's a completely different laser system. Soon all nuclear powered vessels will have FEL laser systems.

Reminds me of Wilhelms Reich's Cloudbuster

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: HardCorps

I don't see anything about producing precipitation but the idea is that it may be possible to create a "virtual" lightning rod in order to mitigate lightning damage.

However, unless the thunderheads are really low it's got a long way to go.

Similar to the principle of noise-canceling headphones, the energy loss of the primary laser beam and the energy supply from the dress laser beam cancel each other out. In the lab, the researchers were able to extend the range of filament lasers tenfold – from about 10 inches to 7 feet.

phys.org...

They have been able to produce precipitation, conceptually.

Indeed, we observed that introducing filaments in a cloud chamber saturated with water vapor results in the spectacular condensation of a cloud, which is very well visible with the bare eye. Surprisingly, the same effect can also be seen in sub-saturated conditions. Such unexpected droplet stability and growth, in spite of relative humidity that is insufficient to balance the surface tension, is the sign of a specific mechanism at play in the context of laser-induced water condensation. We expect that this mechanism implies both photochemistry initiated by the high intensity of the incident laser pulses and oxidative chemistry due to the concentration of electrons up to 1015 cm-3.

These mechanisms, which trigger laser-induced nucleation in sub-saturated atmospheres, are not restricted to laboratory experiments. We have also observed condensation in the real atmosphere. For that purpose, we launched the Teramobile beam vertically into the atmosphere over the city of Berlin, Germany. We used a second, low-power laser beam as a probe overlapping with the filaments and detected its backscattering in a lidar configuration. Although the atmosphere was sub-saturated (90-93 percent relative humidity), switching the Teramobile laser on increased the backscattering from the filaments by a factor of 20. This effect can be unambiguously attributed to the formation of new particles and demonstrates the effect of the laser.

And lightning,

Simulations performed by Matthew Mills at the University of Central Florida have shown that by scaling the new laser technology to atmospheric proportions, the range of the laser filaments could reach 50 meters (165 feet) or more.

As the filaments travel through the air, they leave a channel of plasma in their wake – ionized molecules stripped of their electrons. Such plasma channels could be used as a path of least resistance to attract and channel lightning bolts. Ultimately, this technology could be used to control lightning bolts during a thunderstorm and steer them away from buildings.

There are certain people out there who would love to play god any way possible and at all costs. Mitigating lightning damage is the selling point to us silly humans, when at some point lightning will strike twice in the same spot. Repeatedly, and with an agenda.

There will only be so many times our military could take out a target and call it an act of God.

Based on our successful results at the laboratory scale, we organized a field campaign during the summer of 2004 at the Langmuir Laboratory of the New Mexico Tech, on South Baldy peak (3,200 m altitude). This permanent station dedicated to lightning studies is equipped with a network of radiofrequency antenna capable of locating the electric activity of clouds with nanosecond-precision date stamping.

The network detected micro-discharges synchronized with the pulses from the Teramobile laser, showing that the conducting filaments generated by the laser pointed toward the thundercloud have behaved like a metallic tip directed towards a loaded electrode: They have initiated corona discharges at their tip. Our result provides observable evidence that allows us to optimize the laser parameters in future field campaigns. It therefore constitutes a significant step toward the control of lightning by lasers.

Weather modding is real, as is the control of lightning. The laser can achieve both. They just need more fine tuning and a better delivery system.

SOURCE

a reply to: eisegesis

There will only be so many times our military could take out a target and call it an act of God.

Trouble is, the target would be the location of the laser. The laser would create an ionized channel by through which the lightning would travel. So, to use this as a weapon one would have to:

a) Place the machine near the desired location.
b) Wait for a thunderstorm to approach.
c) Fire the laser and maybe it would induce lightning that would hit what you want it to.

reply to: Phage

How about we call them disposable predator drones with advanced weather weapon capabilities?

a reply to: eisegesis

Ok.
Still have to wait for a thunderstorm.

a reply to: Phage

Filaments are not the only source of electrification at play in the clouds. Due to internal air mass movements (especially convection), particles such as water droplets or ice crystals undergo collisions at speeds up to 20 m/s, in which they get charged. The segregation of different particle types within separate clouds regions results in overall electric fields across the cloud. The influence of these charges also initiates fields up to 10 or 15 kV/m at ground level and 50 kV/m several hundreds of meters above. Such huge fields are at the root of lightning—one of the most spectacular and potentially destructive atmospheric phenomena known to humans.

If they have demonstrated a way to make water vapor, pending the delivery mechanism, they could certainly achieve the collision of particles using lasers?

CATS
CALIPSO

While CALIPSO can deliver 20 pulses of laser per second, using, as McGill described it, a whopping 110 milliJoules of energy in each of those pulses, CATS will fire 5,000 laser pulses per second, with only about 1 milliJoule for each pulse. The greatly simplified CATS power and thermal requirements are a huge plus for space-borne applications.

They already have the means of starting from scratch. They whip up the ingredients for a perfect storm with the composition of the atmosphere. The lasers can create clouds and then seed them with vapor all electrically charging them in the process.

The negative contribution of the free electrons to the refractive index, as well as negative higher-order Kerr indices, balances the self-focusing. The resulting dynamical balance guides light over distances that largely exceed the Rayleigh length, up to hundreds of meters in the atmosphere. These ionized light strings, which are electrically conducting, can be generated at distances up to a few kilometers from the laser source by an adequate choice of the laser parameters, and then directed to any position in the atmosphere by sweeping the beam using a steering mirror.

Maybe their capabilities are underwhelming to us right now but the R&D labs sure are putting in lots of overtime.

a reply to: eisegesis
I think you mean cause water vapor to condense. A few very tiny droplets of water is not a thunderstorm.

In conclusion, the recent progress of the ultrashort-pulse laser technology could greatly facilitate the practical applications of these results and techniques. Although lighting control or triggering rain on a real scale remain science fiction for now, the spectacular results that the Teramobile team has achieved, both in the laboratory and in the atmosphere, have brought these dreams of humankind closer to reality.

www.osa-opn.org...

I believe that this research funding is related to the anomaly microwave pulse somewhere near a US Air force base which created Super Typhoon "Haiyan" which caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the Philippines

a reply to: HardCorps

the old dude was convinced that setting off the 'Bomb' would set fire to the earth's atmosphere. ending all life on our planet ---------------- And he still pushed the button--------------

you're kidding.


:speechless:

a reply to: soficrow

His professor may have told him that but it isn't true.

Edward Teller and Hans Bethe had performed calculations which showed that the atmosphere would not "ignite." Oppenheimer agreed with them.

It is impossible to reach such temperature unless fission bombs or thermonuclear bombs are used which greatly exceed the bombs now under consideration.

www.fas.org...

Maybe it's just my imagination but $17 million sounds pretty cheap for something like this.

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
Maybe it's just my imagination but $17 million sounds pretty cheap for something like this.

Not if it was done as a Grad School project.
the prof would be paid my the University and everyone knows post grads are akin to slave labor.

17 mil. Would only fund a working prototype once they have proof of concept then the whol;e project would be moved to this place

U.S Army Research Office

Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2211