Sometime in the future, getting it to rain over a specific region may be as straightforward as turning on a water faucet, or, more to the point, firing a laser beam.

Researchers from the University of Central Florida's College of Optics & Photonics and the University of Arizona are developing a way to agitate static electricity in clouds in order to encourage rain and also lightning.

It's already known that lasers can travel extensive distances, according to a study published in the journal Nature Photonics, but scientists have sought how to keep a directed, high-intensity beam from breaking down before reaching its intended destination and stirring the targeted particles in the sky.

The research team has determined if a secondary, lower-frequency beam is wrapped around the primary laser, it will replenish the main beam's energy, thereby keeping it from dissipating.

Cloud water condensation and lightning activity are associated with large quantities of static charged particles.

With that in mind, "when a laser beam becomes intense enough, it behaves differently than usual -- it collapses inward on itself," Matthew Mills, a graduate student in Central Florida's Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers, said in a news release. "The collapse becomes so intense that electrons in the air's oxygen and nitrogen are ripped off creating plasma -- basically a soup of electrons."

After that happens, the plasma immediately tries to spread the beam back out, causing a struggle between the spreading and collapsing forces, the process of which is called filamentation.

"Because a filament creates excited electrons in its wake as it moves, it artificially seeds the conditions necessary for rain and lightning to occur," Mills said, adding other researchers have prompted "electrical events" in clouds, but never lightning strikes.

So far, Mills and fellow graduate student Ali Miri have been able to extend the laser from 10 inches to about 7 feet, although "in principle such 'dressed' filaments could propagate for more than 50 meters or so, thus enabling a number of applications, said professor Demetrios Christodoulides, who is working with the graduate students on the project. "This family of optical filaments may one day be used to selectively guide microwave signals along very long plasma channels, perhaps for hundreds of meters."

Said Mills: "Since we have control over the length of a filament with our method, one could seed the conditions needed for a rainstorm from afar. Ultimately, you could artificially control the rain and lightning over a large expanse with such ideas."