In a recent article we wrote about cloud-seeding as method of creating artificial rain and snow, but that is not the only one; rain-making lasers are set to be the modern rain dance if some physicists have their way.
With the impending problem of global water scarcity and water shortages due to a growing global population and ever-changing climate conditions, scientists are pulling out all the stops to try to ensure that we have sufficient of the life-sustaining water that every living thing on earth depends on.
Rain-Making Lasers – the Modern Rain Dance
Although there have been many different studies conducted on cloud-seeding over the past five decades, optical physicist Jérôme Kasparian at the University of Geneva, Switzerland says that it is still not certain that cloud-seeding actually works. Another concern is that the silver iodide used in cloud-seeding may not be good for the environment.
Realising that there must be a more environmentally-friendly method, Kasparian and his colleagues started experimenting with lasers. This consisted of firing a laser in short pulses into the air; this method of laser-firing will result in nitrogen and oxygen molecules ionising around the beam, creating a ‘plasma channel’ of ionised molecules which could act as natural condensation nuclei.
Tests were first conducted in the laboratory, where they managed to induce droplets of between 50 and 80 micrometres wide to form along the plasma channel. The results of these tests were published in in Nature Photonics.
Next the modern-day rainmakers took the tests outside. Following up on previous tests done in 2008 when the team demonstrated that a laser beam fired from their high-powered ‘Teramobile laser’ into thunder clouds would trigger an electric discharge. THIs time round, they fired the laser over a few nights, in different humilities. It seemed that low humidity did not induce droplets, but high humidity did.
Testing is still being done in order to scale up the technique by sweeping their laser across the skies in the hope that they can create condensation over a wider area. Whether rain-making lasers ever become the modern rain dance method we do not know, but the research could have other meteorological uses according to Thomas Leisner, an atmospheric physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
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