Lightning prefers to travel down a conductive path (which is why lightning rods work in the first place), so a giant laser beam will naturally guide it to the smaller metal rod underneath.

Lightning rods protect buildings by providing a low-resistance ... This doesn't mean we can randomly call down lightning at will or suck all the risk out of clouds when necessary.

But a laser could reach that far, intercepting distant lightning bolts and ushering them down to ground-based metal rods. Houard and his colleagues tested this idea atop the Säntis mountain in ...

Like a Franklin rod, a lightning bolt would then follow the air channel down the laser path to dissipate safely into the ground. In 2021, Houard, Walch, and colleagues tested their laser lightning ...

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Brazilian researchers captured on camera the brief moment when lightning rods on buildings released an upward discharge to attract incoming lightning. By Nicholas Bakalar Benjamin Franklin ...

S., the U. S. lightning rod industry continues. According to Department of Commerce figures issued last week, lightning rod business was $923,000 in 1928, $1,232,000 in 1929. Sales at present are ...