Explanations for ball lightning

Try this one, water has the property of "ph", whereby there is an out of balance of an hydrogen atom charge. In a lightning flash there is a discharge of electrons, but for the sake of this hypothesis let suppose that hydrogen atoms are displaced and the mass containing enough entropy enables them to be kept in motion, this motion emitting light, and covalence holding them together.

A thought that came to me in a flash?

The balls of light I heard about is not exclusively associated with lightning.

I haven't seen it myself but did go and look for it a few times. Unfortunately they seem to be shy of light.

Someone said it was hydrogen or methane. but being lighter than air they would rise and not stay on the ground?

Hi Hendrick,

I think the best explanation is probably the one that suggests vaporized sand (silica), created by an ordinary lightning strike hitting the ground, reacts and interacts with oxygen in the air which results in a very hot sphere (like a smoke ring, but spherical). The movement of this plasma mass is affected by any magnetic properties (currents) which happen to be in the vicinity.

You didn't find it cause you didn't have your divining rod with you.

Cheers

The old people always talked about the ball off light they saw when driving with horse and cart. As a Small child I found it very spooky. When I was bigger I did investigate (without a divining rod) but never could find one. Not even a trace that lightning struck.

I have never seen a ball of lightning. The closet I saw was a lightning running down a fence (with wooden stands) and eventually jumping ton the ground.

The i also saw where a bolt of lighting struck the land, it left a jelly like blob.

I suppose there may have been a ball visible when it happened.

Thanks for the info.

Do Gost Buster use a dividing rod?

My grandmother used to tell us the same story. I wonder if ball lightning had a propensity for horse drawn wagon wheels? Maybe if you got yourself a wagon you'd see some of that stuff.

"it left a jelly like blob"

Was it hard like glass? I understand when lightning hits the ground it bores "tubes" into the earth. Analysis has shown these tubes to be filled with hardened glass. I guess the sand melted when the bolt hit then later hardened. Then too, I guess it depends on the sand content of the earth at that point.

Anyway these tubes are called "fulgerides". Just FYI.

"Soil contains silicon oxide and carbon," Associate Professor Abrahamson explained. "The lightning reduces this to silicon metal, which is how we make silicon industrially."

"The silicon vapour is then ejected back out of the soil, forming a vortex ring — "like a smoker's puff" — which forms a sphere." [a very hot plasma sphere which lasts a relatively long time and can travel great distances]

Be interesting if these things could be artificially created, contained and sustained. Might be some really good uses for them.

Maybe Ghost Busters also need a wagon wheel. Or maybe hold the wheel in outstretched arms like a divining rod.

"it left a jelly like blob"

It was about 2 halve lives ago - and my recall memory button is not that good anymore.

The appearance at the surface was like a soft grey/white paste.

I did not touch it. It could have been hard.

I returned a few years later but could not find the spot again.

Since you went back to look for it, there must have been something fascinating about it. Enough so that it occurred to you to go back. Sorta like, one of these days I'm gonna go back and see if that weird thing is still there.

I do things like that a lot myself.

John

I can recall seeing a programme which featured ball lightning being created by a professor in (I think) a UK university. He was using massive electrodes, more like steel plates, the lower one was in a tank of water whilst the upper one was suspended such that it could be swung & strike the lower on by grazing across the top. He was consistently producing small balls of lightning about 1cm diameter which then skittered across the surface of the water.

I have logicked this one out from an different direction long ago. The great Earth we have ourselves planted on has a great lot of silica around in many forms. That and other crystalline forms of minerals are subject to stress and shift of force on them, from the Moon and such.

My vote is that these "Great Balls Of Fire" are Piezo electric energy released in a static electricity form. Just how it forms the Ball instead of a Bolt though is the part that has me stumped.

.

Only seems to occur though when "ordinary" lightning is around. Research suggests it must precede the ball variety. Interesting analogy though.

There does seem to be some evidence that ball lightening is associated with fault lines, especially if there is quartz bearing rock in the ground. Several faults are known for occasional appearances of ball lightning. And the strength of these balls is enough to kill. Furthermore, the balls seem to travel along the direction of the fault.

I have seen Ball lightning. It appeared as a incandescent ball that I estimate to have been about 10 inches in diameter. It made a hissing sound and bounced along a telephone wire from pole to pole for about 3 poles to the end pole and then if flashed brighter and went out with a loud BANG. There were 5 of us that saw it.

This was durring the summer of 1942 at the Canandaigua Fair grounds in upper New York State. I do not remember there being any observable storm in the area. I was 17 at the time. It danced, I don't think it was in contact with the wire.

Ps 3 days later a high wind or tornado hit the same area, tipped over the ferris wheel that fell on an eating tent and severed a childs finger.

Hi,

I was told 20 years ago by old people (very reliable wine growers) that they saw once this very unusual type of lightning.

It was during a thunderstorm with abundant other lightnings.

It entered their living room by coming out of the chimney, had a tour around the living room and left for the outside then going down a stair for minimum 10 more meter.

Diameter was estimated 30 cm.

Velocity and direction of movement was changing.

Color was yellow to white.

It did not hit any parts of the room.

There were no burning marks or other traces of going around.

Time of sighting was estimated 10 to 30 seconds.

I do not think that this can be a silicon plasma.

Water is much more likely - think about evaporation temperature!

This ball-lightning cannot be hot in a classical sense else it would have burnt the whole house.

So the light is very likely generated by an excited plasma. Plasmas are incredibly complicated: there is energy in the electrons and the ions that move if driven by magnetic and electric fields, there is pressure, there are many resonances.

The most critical question would be how to store enough energy for this long time.

I do not think that there is an accepted explanation nor a plausible may be hypothesis.

Maybe somebody can search the universities of California for the physics professor Chen, his knowledge on plasmas is most profound , but I have no idea if he is still working. (Last saw his work in mid 90ies on helicon plasma sources used in coating.)

RHABE

Hey, are you sure they're not photon torpedoes fired from the USS Enterprise instead?

Whaooo! I thought my grasp on reality was a bit loose! Like it.

Back in the early 80's in Dearborn, Michigan an unbelievable storm hit. The sky went green and the wind was nothing like I have since experienced. Trees were spit down the middle llike a banana being peeled, as if the winds force was directionally straight down. This was not a tornado or a series of tornados. The aftermath of that storm left probably 40% of the trees fallen. You could not drive anywhere as block after block looked the same with tree littered across the road like fallen dominos. During that storm I was watching out our back kitchen window, my mother was under the pool table in the basement screaming at me to get down there, when I saw 2 lightning balls one after the other hit our driveway not too far from an upside down VW beetle body we had in front of the garage. There were no burn marks left on the cement when I investigated after the storm had passed.

Now I'm jealous! You clearly get the more psychedelic storm there then we do.

My mother used to be an airhostess and witnessed something similar whilst flying over Borneo in the 70's. There was a storm raging and the aircraft was hit my lightning. A ball of static (as she describes it) flew from the front of the plane, up the middle of the cabin, and disappeared out the rear of the plane. She reported that it was a glowing globe of static and made a hissing noise. No damage to any of the passengers or the aircraft occurred and they landed safely several hours later.

http://drfong.blogspot.com/2006/12/strange-weather-ball-lightning.html

http://www.nidsci.org/pdf/ball-lightning.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/ritson/earth/ball/

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040917.html

http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/bl.html

http://www.bibleufo.com/balllight.htm

Having looked at the evidence and concluded that this is real, the question of where when and how are still debatable. Some balls are malefic and some benign. Some are small little things that come and go either silently or hissing and popping, others are large as busses and don't harm anything.

The Alien invaders with UFO control people want to mix in. If there is an angle there it is the old Cat and ball of twine game, we are the cats. An interesting thing is the ability to go around objects. Another one is that some of them go through walls and such un harmed. Since they are real and do not behave predictably and some people die one must do a Sherlock Holms thing on them and look into the physics of the thing and then this ability to avoid or not objects and people.

My own investigative instincts are pointing to multiple sources and multiple techniques of generation and either control or behavior.

Ball lightning, wow, so that's what it was. It was about 1989 during a very bad storm, lots of lightning. Upstate New York, Loweville area.

When there it was just above a light pole, about 4 feet in diameter, white, not moving at all. Floating, it stayed there for about 15 or 20 seconds, seemed like a lifetime.

I was driving the car and would have had to drive directly under it. It scared me so much I stopped the car in the middle of the road.

It grew brighter but not larger and went out with the sound of thunder. I can't tell if the ball caused the thunder or if it was another flash somewhere else, but when it was gone, so was the power to all the houses in the area.

It scared me so much, I turned the car around and went another way.

It is quite OK to not believe in things going on. I happen to know people who do not believe in acupuncture and Chinese Herb medicine.

Despite the fact that there is almost 5 thousand years of history behind these un founded claims of efficacy. I solute you non-believers, kind of like that beer commercial.

No theory to put forth however I did see ball lightening when I was a child.

I was playing on the floor under the kitchen table and lightening struck our hot water heater(located in a closet open to the kitchen). These balls of blues , reds , greens etc. where bouncing around the kitchen like balloons. I can remember hearing my mother yelling, "Don't touch them!"

From what I have been able to glean from various sources and my own experience (100KV+ discharges do produce interesting effects) Ball Lighting can be thought of as the soap bubble of the electromagnetic world.

The materials involved in the generation of the Ball have some effect on the colours and behaviour as does the type of discharge and the energies involved.

There are noticeable differences between electrostaic and DC discharge created balls as well as what you use as an electrode.

I have never been able to produce anything bigger than a few mm in diameter myself though. Must get bigger generators

Reminds me of a friend who was explaining how when he shorted out the output transistors on the underside of his power amp while he was working on it, it exploded into a ball of floating plasma as the filter capacitors discharged. Various materials like molten, lead and tin may have been involved.

It might well have been your friend floating around. Was the ball red?

Ahh, a ball of blood plasma.