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Faraday-caged drone triggers and directs lightning strikes | The team is now working on how this flying lightning rod might capture and store lightning energy.
In a world first, Japanese researchers flew a lightning-proof drone in a thunderstorm, using it to induce and direct natural lightning strikes. The team is now working on how this flying lightning rod might capture and store lightning energy.
Not that we'd recommend you try; according to the UK's Met Office, a typical lightning bolt is about as thick as your thumb, 2-3 miles (3-5 km) long, and the air around it heats up to about five times hotter than the surface of the sun. A "lightning-resistant" metal Faraday cage that re-routes lightning around the drone when it's struck, and directs that massive current flow radially, to cancel out the strong magnetic field effects that can be generated. The challenges involved should be fairly obvious; where the world's most powerful EV fast-chargers can deliver a full battery from zero within a few minutes, a lightning strike throws several times that much energy down the ground wire within the blink of an eye.
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