With a drone that hunts lightning

The story, perhaps apocryphal, tells that in 1752 Benjamin Franklin made Your famous experiment of the kite with the help of his son William. The experiment consisted of “hunting” a ray through flying gadget and driving it to the ground through the rope, moistened for this purpose.

More than 270 years later, they are no longer comets that we send to catch these atmospheric electric discharges.

A drone to hunt rays. A Japanese researchers team has created A rayproof drone, an important feature since its function is precisely attracting these electrical discharges towards it. A system expressly designed to unleash and guide the rays in a storm thanks to a guided air vehicle from land.

A flying lightning rod. The main use of this device would be to act as a steering wheel lightning. The mechanism can be coupled to any commercial drone and deploy in contexts in which the discharges associated with a storm could represent a risk.

According to Explain the team Responsible for the development, only in Japan the costs associated with the impact of the rays range between 100,000 and 200,000 million yen (between 610 and 1,220 million euros) per year. And it is that the rays not only imply a risk for people (and animals), also to buildings and infrastructure.

Faraday cage. Surviving a ray is not easy, so perhaps the most important piece in this drone is a Faraday cage. These types of devices They are based on the fact that the resulting electromagnetic field inside a equilibrium driver is null.

This means that no burden is able to cross and enter this cage. Thanks to this, the drone is protected from lightning, a download that is not something almost everyday is less impressive: A “typical” ray Download about 30,000 amps with 300 million volts.

Putting the ingenuity to the test. The team was testing its mechanism between December 2024 and January this year. In one of the tests, they detected thanks to a field mill an increase in the force of the electric field in a cloud, occasion they took to display the device at a height of 300 meters.

The drone carried a cable that linked it with the earth through a switch at the ground level. When activating the switch, the equipment observed an important current circulating through the cable, accompanied by a “significant” increase in the force of the electric field.

The team confirmed the passage of more than 2,000 volts between the cable and the earth, just before the burst of the ray. The experiment had been a success.

A single use. The drone survived the impact, the cage that protected him, no. According to detailed the team responsible for developmentthe protective device was partially melted by the impact of lightning, but the drone inside the cage was able to continue its flight without major problem.

Capturing energy. The team responsible for this flying lightning rod even speaks of the possibility of taking advantage of the energy of the rays captured by the artifact. For now we continue to be able to channel and control the enormous energy that these natural events emanate in a single moment.

Maybe we will be able to completely tame this force of nature. If we succeed, having a versatile device that allows us to go to the right point will surely be very useful.

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Image | Takenbytablo / NTT