(CNN) - Is there anything laser can't do?
From cutting diamonds to preserving endangered sites, all the way to building terrifying weapons and turning your eyes from brown to blue, there is apparently no end to the list of applications for laser.
Swiss physicist Jean-Pierre Wolf is working on yet another impressive addition to that list: using focused laser beams to affect the weather.
It sounds like black magic, but it's actually a cleaner version of cloud seeding, a form of weather modification that has been used for several years -- most famously by China in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, when they launched rockets to seed the clouds and prevent rainfall during the opening ceremony.
But it's hard to tell how effective cloud seeding actually is, and it involves the spraying of chemicals into the atmosphere, something which it surely doesn't need.
Laser is therefore a completely clean alternative to traditional cloud seeding: it's light, and nothing but light.
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