{"id":17612,"date":"2015-09-21T04:48:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T11:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/laser-lightning-rods-channel-electricity-through-thin-air"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:22:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:22:59","slug":"laser-lightning-rods-channel-electricity-through-thin-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/laser-lightning-rods-channel-electricity-through-thin-air","title":{"rendered":"Laser \u2018Lightning rods\u2019 channel electricity through thin air"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/laser-lightning-rods-channel-electricity-through-thin-air.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By zapping the air with a pair of powerful laser bursts, researchers at the University of Arizona have created highly focused pathways that can channel electricity through the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>The new technique can potentially direct an electrical discharge up to 10 meters (33 feet) away or more, shattering previous distance records for transmitting <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/electricity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"textTag\">electricity<\/a> through <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/air\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"textTag\">air<\/a>. It also raises the intriguing possibility of one day channeling lightning with laser power.<\/p>\n<p>Described in a paper published in The Optical Society\u2019s new open-access journal <i>Optica,<\/i> the current system may have near-term, lifesaving applications in areas such as the remote detonation of land mines, the researchers speculate. The laser system could easily pinpoint an active land mine and then carry an electric pulse strong enough to safely discharge harmful explosives from afar.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2014-08-laser-lightning-rods-channel-electricity.html#jCp\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By zapping the air with a pair of powerful laser bursts, researchers at the University of Arizona have created highly focused pathways that can channel electricity through the atmosphere. The new technique can potentially direct an electrical discharge up to 10 meters (33 feet) away or more, shattering previous distance records for transmitting electricity through [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69514,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17612\/revisions\/69514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}