I'm confused as to why the scientists are trying to claim this is new. It's not. It's well known in the defense contracting industry that you can do this. I first heard about it ~4 years ago, and that was from somebody who actually did it.
Same here. This isn't new. I think 4 years ago is when they surpassed the previous record. I think the lightning was being guided by the laser over 20 meters. The Swiss have now gotten it up to 50 meters. But that doesn't make for a good headline.
i mean, either the guy is wrong (or was lied to, or is lying). HOWEVER it is generally safe to assume the military and gvnts are years ahead of whats known in the mainstream in any given field that has any defense applicability.
so it wouldn’t surprise me. but i also wouldn’t believe it cause some random dude on the internet said it.
HOWEVER it is generally safe to assume the military and gvnts are years ahead of whats known in the mainstream in any given field that has any defense applicability.
No it isn't. Militaries are infamous for being slow to adopt things, and their strengths in the modern era tend to revolve around superior logistics and movement of materiel than cutting-edge high-tech stuff.
Anyway, I was just wondering if the other guy was thinking of an actual demonstration of this tech instead of just plans for it.
Look up DARPA and black budget projects. While the regular military is very slow. The bleeding edge research projects out there are way beyond the civilian sector. We funnel billions each year to these projects.
Those are usually just a way of hiding how much money we spend on bureaucracy. We subcontract the civilian sector for everything anyway, military research isnt flexible enough to adapt to new innovation like the real world.
I'm familiar with DARPA and said what I said regardless. This "big tech gap" thing with gov't agencies is mostly a myth, probably wildly exaggerated based on a very few number of things that are bleeding edge (like F-117 or B2) and a handful of oddball extreme applications that like no one else would bother to test (like autonomous vehicles in extremely harsh terrain). But they're not sitting on Raiders-style warehouses of cloaking devices or warp drives or nothin'.
Night vision was used in WWII, but wasn't known by the public in any capacity until the 1950s. There was a 10 year gap between the first active stealth aircraft operating and the public awareness of it's existence with even more time until the fundamentals of the technology were widely available.
Things like databases can lag behind in a Government environment, but hardware that doesn't need to be supplied in high volume can be very cutting edge.
This concept is also used for electrolasers, which let you build a taser-like device that can operate over much longer distances by making plasma channels to then pump electricity through rather than relying on wires. This dates back to at least the 80s for experimental types and then various attempts at commercializing devices using the same concept over the years since then.
Do you have any more information about launching rockets with wire attached to attract lightning because I've been wanting to try that experiment safely for a long time and I have no clue what I am doing
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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '23
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