Swiss Laser Lightning Shield!

You may have noticed that the future--that is the future of the past, so now--has been somewhat disappointing. We love to harp on how we were promised hoverboards and robots, and instead we have Segways without handles and glorified vacuum cleaners. It's a tired sentiment, but a fair one.

These things don't hover and describing them boards is generous at best.

Above: Ron DeSantis bloviating
about some nonsense.

And those are just material examples of the twenty-first centuries utter failure as the world of tomorrow. Sociologically speaking, we shouldn't have to still be arguing over whether or not it's ok to ban Nazis from social media or explaining to goons why it's none of their business what bathroom people use. All in all, the past couple of decades have been a tailspin of a debacle of a shit show. So I'm going to take the wins where I can get them and controlling lightning with lasers is a win.

Yeah, you heard me, controlling lightning. With lasers. And get this it's science. The kind of science you might see air-brushed on the side of a van in the 70's.

Pictured: science, evidently.

Finally, idiots will be able to golf
in the middle of a storm.

Researchers working on a mountaintop in Switzerland have successfully diverted lightning strikes by firing lasers at clouds. If I'm understanding this--and I'm not--the laser beams, thanks to a principle called filament propagation can, when shot into a cloud, causes the bolt to follow the direction of the beams filament (again, I have no idea how this works) rather than just striking the ground all willy-nilly. And while the how is making my ears bleed, the what is that this discovery could actually protect people from being struck by lightning.

Benjamin Franklin: America's
horniest renaissance man.

Which, I mean, big deal, right? Like, getting struck by lightning is a phrase used to describe something incredibly unlikely. But lightning does pose a risk to aircraft in flight and can start wild fires, so maybe don't dismiss this Swiss Laser Lighting Shield out of hand, ok? Of course, the obvious question here is why go through all the trouble of using expensive lasers when a Franklin Rod--that's a lightning rod invented by Benjamin Franklin who also, incidentally, discovered lightning. Huh...that sounds a little suspicious now that I say it out loud.

Anyway, it's true that lightning rods have been getting the job done for over two centuries, this approach does more than just attract lightning, it induces it. It doesn't wait for lighting to strike, but tells it when and where. Awesome is the word I think you're looking for. And if reaching into the sky and ripping lighting from the very clenched fist of Zeus himself isn't a win for the twenty-first century, I don't know what is.

"Is that so? Well, we're just asking for a smiting, aren't we?"

-The Greek Pantheon's horniest lightning god