The popular songs of Let it rain, let it rain … , the ritual dances to attract the rain, or the “weddings between frogs” that are celebrated in India to “call” the water of the sky in times of drought will fall into oblivion. thanks to a successful experiment carried out in Berlin (Germany) that makes it possible to make it rain using laser beams .
The Swiss Jérôm Kasparian and his team of physicists from the University of Geneva induced the formation of clouds in their laboratory and then caused raindrops to fall by emitting short pulses of infrared laser light in an air chamber with saturated water at -24ºC .
The laser generated clouds by extracting electrons from atoms in the air , which promote the formation of hydroxyl radicals. These convert the sulfur and nitrogen dioxides found in the air into particles that act as seeds to grow the water droplets, explained the scientist.
In a second phase, the experiment was tested outside, shooting the laser into the Berlin sky on different nights with different atmospheric conditions. The scientists were able to verify that the raindrops were forming, although they did not directly observe the cloud formation. The research has been published by the specialized journal Nature Photonics .
