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READING PASSAGE 8
Striking Back at Lightning With Lasers
Seldom is the weather more dramatic than when thunderstorms strike. Their electrical fury inflicts death or
serious injury on around 500 people each year in the United States alone. As the clouds roll in, a leisurely
round of golf can become a terrifying dice with death - out in the open, a lone golfer may be a lightning bolt’s
most inviting target. And there is damage to property too. Lightning damage costs American power companies
more than $100 million a year.
But researchers in the United States and Japan are planning to hit back. Already in laboratory trials they have
tested strategies for neutralising the power of thunderstorms, and this winter they will brave real storms,
equipped with an armoury of lasers that they will be pointing towards the heavens to discharge thunderclouds
before lightning can strike.
The idea of forcing storm clouds to discharge their lightning on command is not new. In the early 1960s,
researchers tried firing rockets trailing wires into thunderclouds to set up an easy discharge path for the huge
electric charges that these clouds generate. The technique survives to this day at a test site in Florida run by the
University of Florida, with support from the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), based in California.
EPRI, which is funded by power companies, is looking at ways to protect the United States’ power grid
from lightning strikes. ‘We can cause the lightning to strike where we want it to using rockets,’ says Ralph
Bernstein, manager of lightning projects at EPRI. The rocket site is providing precise measurements of
lightning voltages and allowing engineers to check how electrical equipment bears up.
