Swiss Researchers Try to Make it Rain With Lasers

formaggio writes "Last year a team of researchers at Switzerland's University of Geneva had come up with an interesting way of making it rain– by shooting lasers high up into the sky. At the time it seemed like science fiction, but now they are one step closer after the team successfully finished tests around Lake Geneva. From the article: 'Records from 133 hours of firings revealed that intense pulses of laser light created nitric acid particles in the air that behaved like atmospheric glue, binding water molecules together into droplets and preventing them from re-evaporating. Within seconds, these grew into stable drops a few thousandths of a millimeter in diameter: too small to fall as rain, but large enough to encourage the scientists to press on with the work.'"

Comments

Flood the Sahara

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there were a way to divert all the clouds from the places that get too much rainfall and flooding, and have them all over the Sahara, as well as the Arabian peninsula. Would make that entire continent more agriculture rich, and solve food distribution issues in the region. While at the same time, giving the heavily rained on regions some respite!

Re:Flood the Sahara

[Xest]

Yes, then that way the dust that blows across the Atlantic from the Sahara to fertilize the Amazon can stop, and whilst Africa becomes a luscious new area of growth the whole of the Amazon can just die off.

Really, fucking around with things that can have such a massive, potentially unknown effect elsewhere isn't a smart idea at all because you can just end up making things worse.

Other parts of the world depend on the Sahara being like the Sahara is, so if you change the Sahara, you change those other parts of the world. In boosting food supplies in Africa you damage the food supplies in say South America, and create a problem there instead.