This is something that definitely caught my attention. An invention that could help fix and change parts of the world that need rain. But is there a downside for man being able to manipulate weather?
This is quoted directly from the article on www.PopSci.com HERE
Weather control freaks may get their next rainmaking tool in the form of an infrared laser. Scientists have successfully created small clouds by firing a laser both inside a lab and under the autumn skies of Berlin, Germany, New Scientist reports.
The concept works because laser pulses strip electrons from atoms in the air and promote formation of hydroxyl radicals. Those in turn make sulfur and nitrogen dioxides into particles which can form the basis for water droplets — not unlike how current cloud seeding methods use silver iodide crystals as the “seeds” for water droplets.
But rather than seeding the air with crystals delivered by airplanes or artillery rockets, the Swiss, German and French researchers used a laser which could generate 220-millijoule pulses within 60 femtoseconds, where one femtosecond is one millionth of one billionth of a second. That’s as much power as what 1,000 power plants could generate, according to Jérôme Kasparian at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
