"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."
You may remember that famous line from the Parkay margarine television commercial many years ago. Mother Nature was fooled into believing that Parkay was real butter. Once she realized she was duped, Mother Nature raised her arms, caused a loud rumble of thunder, then announced, "It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature."
Well, many years later, scientists from Geneva University at Switzerland may be doing just that. The researchers can make rain by shooting lasers high up into the sky. They successfully demonstrated the technique in field tests after setting up a mobile laser laboratory near Lake Geneva. The team fired lasers for 133 hours, during which time the pulses created nitric acid particles in the air.
The particles ‘stuck’ to water molecules which turned to droplets. The larger size droplets were not able to re-evaporate and within seconds, but grew to drops a few thousandths of a millimeter in diameter. According to the researchers, the droplets were too small to fall as rain, but the demonstration proved that the technology has a real advantage.
Jérôme Kasparian, a physicist at the University of Geneva, wrote, “We have not yet generated raindrops. They are too small and too light to fall as rain. To get rain, we will need particles a hundred times the size, so they are heavy enough to fall.” Still, the long-term ramifications of such a discovery are huge. For the first time, we may be able to determine where and when rain falls. With the help of this technology, many problems like drought and starvation can be solved.
While ‘cloud seeding’ has existed for some time, it is not considered a safe way of creating rain clouds because it involves filling the air with small particles of dry ice and silver iodide, meaning that along with raindrops falling from the sky, so would chemicals that have far-reaching implications on the environment. But the new laser method is different. It uses natural humidity levels and atmospheric conditions to create water droplets.
Further, the method actually has the potential to stop storms. Instead of creating rain, the lasers could create so many tiny droplets in the air that none of them will grow large enough to fall. “Maybe one day this could be a way to attenuate the monsoon or reduce flooding in certain areas,” Kasparian said. Think of how valuable that would be, especially after the massive regional flooding from Tropical Storm Irene and the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee.
Who knows? Maybe years from now we won't have to worry about Summertime droughts or even flooding from heavy rains. The photo above was taken in East Norwalk during Tropical Storm Irene. Fortunately, we won't need any artificial methods to keep us dry this weekend. We can expect partly to mostly sunny skies with daytime highs in the upper 70s tomorrow and lower 70s Sunday. There is a slight chance of a shower Sunday, but we won't need to worry about shooting it down with a laser beam.
Have a good weekend.
Paul
