Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Group sent a drone into the stormy skies of Shimane Prefecture this past December. It was dangling a conductive wire in an attempt to summon lightning bolts.
While it does sound exactly like something a bored teenager would do that would result in a valuable life lesson about how one should perhaps avoid lightning rather than summon it, it’s all part of a larger project to divert lightning strikes from densely populated areas.
The drone flew 984 feet into the air, nestled itself within a storm cloud, and got zapped with lightning while mostly living to tell the tale. Its protective covering melted a little bit, but it kept flying thanks to the ingenious idea of surrounding the drone in a Faraday cage.
Play video
This Drone Can Absorb Lightning Strikes
For those who forgot everything they learned about high school science the second they graduated, a Faraday cage is a structure designed to guide electricity around whatever it surrounds, safely diverting electricity away from, say, a drone flying in a storm.
Every minute, the Earth is hit by 6,000 lightning bolts. Those strikes cause all sorts of disasters, from power grid meltdowns to forest fires. So, it’s probably a good idea to come up with some strategies for diverting lightning away from densely populated areas or areas susceptible to fires.
A drone specifically designed to take a bullet for the betterment of the human race and the planet Earth seems like it might actually be able to save some lives and preserve some infrastructure.
While we already put boring rods on buildings designed to do all of that already, NTT wants to upgrade to drone-guided lightning redirection. Even cooler, NTT is already thinking several steps ahead by trying to come up with ways of not only diverting lightning from sensitive areas but harnessing it.
That’s probably impossible, at least for now. A drone nestled within a Faraday cage can get struck all it wants, but coming up with a battery capable of capturing the energy of the lightning is almost literally like trying to capture lightning-in-a-bottle.
It’s just way too much to ask for current battery technology. But, after a few earth-shattering scientific breakthroughs in the field of battery research and development, who knows? Maybe one day, a tropical city that gets bombarded with lightning may one day be able to power its streetlights with lightning strikes.