Next-gen lightning protection uses lasers to redirect lightning

The standard way of protecting buildings (and their occupants) from lightning is pretty simple: You stick a lightning rod on the roof, and then some kind of conducting channel that takes the huge discharge of electricity and dumps it into the ground. This is a tried and tested method that is used by most of the world’s tall buildings. In the case of something vital like lightning protection, I’m usually a firm believer in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — but that was before I read about a new lightning protection system that uses lasers to redirect the lightning, so that it ignores the building entirely, instead taking a totally new route to ground or perhaps into a futuristic energy harvesting device.