It’s a wild promise, and one that my colleague James Temple dug into for his most recent story. (You should read the whole thing; there’s a ton of fascinating history and quirky science.) As James points out in his story, there’s plenty of uncertainty about just how well this would work and under what conditions. But I was left with another lingering question: If we can prevent lightning-sparked fires, should we?

I can’t help myself, so let’s take just a moment to talk about how this lightning prevention method supposedly works. Basically, lightning is static discharge—virtually the same thing as when you rub your socks on a carpet and then touch a doorknob, as James puts it.

When you shuffle across a rug, the friction causes electrons to jump around, so ions build up and an electric field forms. In the case of lightning, it’s snowflakes and tiny ice pellets called graupel rubbing together. They get separated by updrafts, building up a charge difference, and eventually cause an electrostatic discharge—lightning.

Starting in about the 1950s, researchers started to wonder if they might be able to prevent lightning strikes. Some came up with the idea of using metallic chaff, fiberglass strands coated with aluminum. (The military was already using the material to disrupt radar signals.) The idea is that the chaff can act as a conductor, reducing the buildup of static electricity that would otherwise result in a lightning strike.

The theory is sound enough, but results to date have been mixed. Some research suggests you might need high concentrations of chaff to prevent lightning effectively. Some of the early studies that tested the technique were small. And there’s not much information available from Skyward Wildfire about its efforts, as the company hasn’t released data from field trials or published any peer-reviewed papers that we could find. 

Even if this method really can work to stop lightning, should we use it?

Lightning-caused fires could be a growing problem with climate change. Some research has shown that they have substantially increased in the Arctic boreal region, where the planet is warming fastest.

But fire isn’t an inherently bad thing—many ecosystems evolved to burn. Some of the worst wildfires we see today result from a combination of climate-fueled conditions with policies that have allowed fuel to build up so that when fires do start, they burn out of control.