Day: January 16, 2023

Move Over Ben Franklin: Laser Lightning Rod Electrifies Scientists

When Benjamin Franklin fashioned the first lightning rod in the 1750s following his famous experiment flying a kite with a key attached during a thunderstorm, the American inventor had no way of knowing this would remain the state of the art for centuries.

Scientists now are moving to improve on that 18th-century innovation with 21st-century technology — a system employing a high-powered laser that may revolutionize lightning protection. Researchers said on Monday they succeeded in using a laser aimed at the sky from atop Mount Santis in northeastern Switzerland to divert lightning strikes.

With further development, this Laser Lightning Rod could safeguard critical infrastructure including power stations, airports, wind farms and launchpads. Lightning inflicts billions of dollars in damage on buildings, communication systems, power lines and electrical equipment annually while also killing thousands of people.

The equipment was hauled to the mountaintop at an altitude of about 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), some parts using a gondola and others by helicopter, and was focused on the sky above a 400-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) transmission tower belonging to telecommunications provider Swisscom SCMN.S, one of Europe’s structures most affected by lightning.

In experiments during two months in 2021, intense laser pulses — 1,000 times per second — were emitted to redirect lightning strikes. All four strikes while the system was active were successfully intercepted. In the first instance, the researchers used two high-speed cameras to record the redirection of the lightning’s path by more than 160 feet (50 meters). Three others were documented with different data.

“We demonstrate for the first time that a laser can be used to guide natural lightning,” said physicist Aurelien Houard of Ecole Polytechnique’s Laboratory of Applied Optics in France, coordinator of the Laser Lightning Rod project and lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Lightning is a high-voltage electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, within a cloud or between clouds.

“An intense laser can generate on its path long columns of plasmas in the atmosphere with electrons, ions and hot air molecules,” Houard said, referring to positively charged particles called ions and negatively charged particles called electrons.

“We have shown here that these plasma columns can act as a guide for lightning,” Houard added. “It is important because it is the first step toward a laser-based lightning protection that could virtually reach a height of hundreds of meters [yards] or a kilometer [0.6 mile] with sufficient laser energy.”

The laser device is the size of a large car and weighs more than 3 tons. It uses lasers from German industrial machine manufacturing company Trumpf Group. With University of Geneva scientists also playing a key role, the experiments were conducted in collaboration with aerospace company ArianeGroup, a European joint venture between Airbus SE AIR.PA and Safran SA SAF.PA.

This concept, first proposed in the 1970s, has worked in laboratory conditions, but until now not in the field.

Lightning rods, dating back to Franklin’s time, are metal rods atop buildings, connected to the ground with a wire, that conduct electric charges lightning strikes harmlessly into the ground. Their limitations include protecting only a small area.

Houard anticipated that 10 to 15 years more work would be needed before the Laser Lightning Rod can enter common use. One concern is avoiding interference with airplanes in flight. In fact, air traffic in the area was halted when the researchers used the laser.

“Indeed, there is a potential issue using the system with air traffic in the area because the laser could harm the eyes of the pilot if he crosses the laser beam and looks down,” Houard said. 

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Italian Film Legend Gina Lollobrigida Dies at Age 95 

Italian film star Gina Lollobrigida, who achieved international film stardom during the 1950s and was dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world” after the title of one her movies, died in Rome on Monday, her agent said. She was 95.

The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t provide details. But Lollobrigida had surgery in September to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall. She returned home and said she had quickly resumed walking.

A drawn portrait of the diva graced a 1954 cover of Time magazine, which in an article about Italian movie-making likened her to a “goddess.” More than a half-century later, Lollobrigida still turned heads with a head full of auburn curly hair and her statuesque figure.

“Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making movies in Italy just after the end of World War II, as the country began to promote on the big screen a stereotypical concept of Mediterranean beauty as buxom and brunette.

Besides “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman” in 1955, career highlights included Golden Globe-winner “Come September,” with Rock Hudson; “Trapeze;” “Beat the Devil,” a 1953 John Huston film starring Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” which won Lollobrigida Italy’s top movie award, a David di Donatello, as best actress in 1969.

In Italy, she worked with some of the country’s top directors following the war, including Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Pietro Germi and Vittorio De Sica.

Two of her more popular films at home were Comencini’s “Pane Amore Fantasia” (Bread Love Fantasy) in 1953, and the sequel a year later, “Pane Amore Gelosia” (Bread Love Jealousy). In each of them, her male foil was Vittorio Gassman, one of Italy’s most leading men on the screen.

Lollobrigida began her career in beauty contests, posing for the covers of magazines and brief appearances in minor films. But her sexy image quickly propelled her to roles in major Italian and international movies.

While Lollobrigida played some dramatic roles, her characters were most popular in lighthearted comedies, like the “Bread Love” movies.

Lollobrigida also was an accomplished sculptor, painter and photographer, and eventually essentially dropped film for the fine arts. With her camera, she roamed the world from what was then the Soviet Union to Australia.

In 1974, Fidel Castro hosted her as a guest in Cuba for 12 days as she worked on a photo reportage.

She was born on July 4, 1927 in Subiaco, a picturesque hill town near Rome, where her father was a furniture maker.

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Pakistan Launches First Anti-Polio Campaign of 2023  

Pakistan Monday launched its first nationwide anti-polio campaign of the year to immunize children under the age of five against the crippling disease. The move follows a surge in new infections in 2022.

While no new case has been reported in Pakistan so far this year, the highly infectious wild poliovirus paralyzed 20 children last year. That compares to just one infection reported in 2021.

National eradication program officials said that more than 360,000 health workers would deliver polio drops to at least 44.2 million children across 156 districts during the five-day campaign. They noted that children would also be administered an additional vitamin A supplement to boost their immunity against infectious diseases.

The 20 polio cases in Pakistan in 2022 were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, mostly in its violence-hit North Waziristan district on the Afghan border.

An official statement quoted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as saying on Sunday the resurgence of cases has raised concerns among Pakistan’s global partners, including the World Health Organization and other stakeholders.

The previous nationwide polio campaign in Pakistan was organized last August but was disrupted by catastrophic floods triggered by erratic summer monsoon rains. Authorities later carried out special polio drives in flood-affected districts and vaccinated children against the virus there.

Pakistan has repeatedly come close to eradicating polio but long-running propaganda in conservative rural areas that the vaccines cause sterility in children, coupled with deadly militant attacks on vaccinators, have set back the mission.

The latest militant attack on a polio team took place earlier this month in Dera Ismail Khan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wounding four policemen escorting health workers.

Officials also blame the 2011 killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden by the United States military in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for dealing a serious blow to national polio eradication efforts.

A Pakistani doctor organized a fake vaccination campaign to help the U.S. troops locate the hideout of the fugitive terror leader and kill him. Pakistani authorities later arrested the doctor and a court subsequently sentenced him to 23 years in prison.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio continues to cripple children. Afghan officials detected two cases in 2022 and have reported no new ones this year.

The global polio eradication program has identified Pakistan, Afghanistan, parts of Somalia and Yemen as areas where outbreaks are very difficult to control, according to Hamid Jafari, the director of polio eradication for WHO’s eastern Mediterranean region.

“These are countries, and in fact some national areas, that are prone to be affected by repeated polio outbreaks., and these are usually complex countries, countries that have fragile health systems, conflicts, other complex challenges,” Jafari explained in a video statement tweeted Monday.

“Moreover, these countries export polio virus. So, when there is an outbreak in these countries, the neighboring countries are affected because of international spread but also distant international spread,” he added.

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