September 2, 2011 05:48 am EDT

Scientist creating rain-making lasers, Weezy and Fat Joe await royalty checks

We've heard of "making it rain," but actually making it rain -- with lasers, no less -- now, that's something to write home about. A team of researchers at the University of Geneva is coming ever closer to creating real-deal downpours by shooting beams from their Teramobile mobile femtosecond-Terawatt laser system into the sky above the Rhone River. While logging nearly 133 hours between the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010, the team observed that the beams actually triggered the creation of nitric acid particles, which bound water molecules together creating water droplets. Those droplets proved too small and light to actually be categorized as rain, but the discovery has apparently spurred the scientists on. Previous efforts to make it rain, known as seeding, have used rockets and jets to shoot silver iodide and dry ice into the sky. No word yet on when the scientists expect to successfully "wash the spider out."

Scientist creating rain-making lasers, Weezy and Fat Joe await royalty checks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 01:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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