“Only one strike, on 21 July, happened in clear enough conditions for the researchers to film the path of the lightning from two directions using high speed cameras several kilometres away.”
The team fired laser pulses at thunderclouds over a Swiss mountain for more than six hours between July and September. The laser diverted four upward discharges, and one was filmed following the beam for about 50 metres. The tower beside it gets struck about 100 times a year anyway. A Cardiff professor calls the laser’s cost “very high” next to a simple rod. Four bolts in a summer is a lab result, not a lightning protection system.