Ball Lightning: what is it?

[LightningPonderer]

Now I'm pretty sure this would go in this part and I sorta have spent a couple hours looking at and typing about ball lightning stuff. Here is what I wrote.

Ball lightning is a very interesting anomaly. The first thought that came to my head when I read about it was that, from the descriptions, it was some sort of paranormal activity from watching so many ghost shows. I then keep reading and researching about this subject and read one article about an eyewitness named Graham K. Hubler. He said that he saw the ball lightning hovering a few feet above the ground and that it was no bigger than the size of a tennis ball, it was moving in a path and went under a pavilion and then dropped down to the ground. It started making noises like those of boiling water and hissing. It then came out of the pavilion and went up into the air. He said that it acted like it was following electric field lines and that it had a charge. My theory is that it was caused by charged particles, not charged enough to create a bolt of lightning, transferring positive and negatively charged particles from the ground to the clouds following an electric field line of the Earth and when it fell to the ground under the pavilion it lost most of its connection to the clouds almost stopped transferring charged particles and it made the noises because it was starting to disperse, but then it came out from under the pavilion and rose back up because its transferring became more powerful. I then started researching more about if earths electric field lines or maybe magnetic field lines could have let this follow a certain path and if so what a map of the field lines would look like. If there was a map and it was marked with the areas of where the witnesses saw the ball lightning if it would match up with those field lines giving strength to my theory. That would help give a basis for research on this lightning. What I think would be a good way to try to figure out how to create ball lightning would be to create a long warehouse along one of these field lines and then create a thing for the roof and ground that would be able to duplicate the positively and negatively charged particles of a thunderstorm and adjusted it to a certain voltage so that it wouldn't be able to create a lightning bolt but enough to create a transfer and would then test different frequencies until I got something that looked and acted like ball lightning. If I had placed the warehouse along the field line correctly then it might move along that line which would prove my theory. The main dangerous part of this would be not being able to know what the ball lightning would do once it dispersed because ball lightning can either just disappear or exploded causing much damage. If I were able to do this then I would open up a whole new door into how lightning works since the warehouse would also be able to create and artificial lightning storm for observance. This warehouse could bring a whole new era to lightning research and would be able to help our understanding of lightning. Also since lightning is a plasma the warehouse would be able to be used for plasma research, if a way was found to create a continuous stream of lightning of high or low frequency. Most likely it would be a lower frequency like I suspect the ball lightning to be since there was no reports of bolts of lightning shooting from the ball. This could also be a whole new anomaly that is not lightning at all but just another form of electricity since it lasts much longer than regular lightning. If it could be captured in nature then it might be able to be absorbed for energy use in cities and towns. These are all theories, but theories are what facts come from. Without theories then there would be no new facts and no way to be able to tell what certain things do under certain circumstances. Upon more research I had started to wonder in what direction the ball lightning was traveling and which hemisphere it was in. Would it travel north and towards the Northern Magnetic Pole in the northern hemisphere and vice-versa?

[Pottus]

When I was 5 years old I can remember witnessing Ball Lightning looking out the window of our apartment building. We were on the top floor and I was watching the lightning when a blue ball dropped down close by the adjacent apartment building. It was about the size of basket ball and moved around randomly for about 5 seconds then there was a loud bang and it disappeared. What was interesting is I had no idea about this phenomenon when I was that age yet I can clearly remember my description of it as "A Ball Of Lightning". It was not until years later I learned that this phenomenon is quite rare and not very well documented. What I believe now is Ball Lightning is an electron but on a macroscopic scale how exactly one is created I think would probably be very closely in line with your theory but with an exception. The process in which Ball Lightning dis-charges is by ionizing the air around it creating a vacuum environment when there is not enough electrons left to keep the balance the vacuum collapses resulting in a loud bang and a dis-charge of the remainder of electrons. So I think most like yes Ball Lightning would form along electrical field lines however after formation I believe air flow would be that which guides Ball Lightning along it's path.

 

Ball Lightning does not explode it implodes.

 

I think this is a very important phenomenon to fully understand; technology derived from Ball Lightning research will undoubtedly yield the Worlds most powerful and efficient capacitor.

[nevaeh.aaric]

Ball lightning is an extremely rare and poorly understood atmospheric phenomenon

that accompanies electrical storms. It manifests as a glowing ball about the size of a basketball,

but sometimes as small as a golf ball or as large as a small car.

It hovers in the air somewhere between a few seconds and a couple minutes,

with an average of 25 seconds, then disappears either silently or with a loud bang.

Some scientists have studied ball lightning for upwards of 20 years and are still uncertain

that it actually exists.The phenomenon of ball lightning is so infrequent that not a single scientifically confirmed video of it even exists, though most scientists accept its existence because reports of it extend all the way back to Ancient Greece. Also supportive is that a majority of the reports that we do have tell a rather consistent tale, instead of being all over the place as we would expect if ball lightning were merely a misdentification of more common atmospheric phenomena. When details vary too widely from the most common reports, it is likely a misidentify, wishful thinking.

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, LightningPonderer, Pottus, and nevaeh.aaric! :) It’s good to see you all throwing around ideas on the subject of ball lightning.

 

As nevaeh.aaric notes, ball lightning is so very rare it’s never been well observed, scientifically, so much so that there’s not even a clear scientific consensus that it’s related to lightning, rather than, say, some sort of burning gas from a non-electric source. My personal opinion is that it is some sort of gas and/or plasma of a common substance such as water or soil, heated by a lightning strike, but this is just a guess.

When I was 5 years old I can remember witnessing Ball Lightning looking out the window of our apartment building.

...

What I believe now is Ball Lightning is an electron but on a macroscopic scale

This hypothesis is a good one to test using some rough approximation. Approximation is an essential science skill – without it, it’s hard to know what’s plausible, and worth putting lots of effort into studying and investigating, and what’s so near impossible as to not be worth such effort.

 

Though the electron can’t, in modern physical theory, be meaningfully assigned a real radius, antique but accurate theory gives a value of about [imath]10^{-22} \,\mbox{m}[/imath]. A basketball size (radius about 0.14 m, round down to 0.1, since we’re approximating roughly) electron, would, therefore, have a mass of about [imath]\left( 10^{-21} \right)^{3} = 10^{-63}[/imath] electron masses (about [imath]9.1 \times 10^{-31} \,\mbox{kg}[/imath], round up to [imath]10^{-30}[/imath]), about [imath]10^{33} \,\mbox{kg}[/imath], which is about 500 solar masses. Such an object would, according to relativity, be a black hole with a radius of about 1500 km. :eek2: Needless to say, such an object would be a catastrophic thing to have anywhere in the solar system, and not the sort of thing one would see drifting harmlessly around an apartment building!

 

You can also consider the giant electron hypothesis in terms of the large body of precise experimental measurements of electrons’ charge and mass, and a bit of common sense reasoning. If electrons [imath]10^{-63}[/imath] times as large as usual existed rarely, one would expect that among the many thousands of electrons precisely measured in the past half century or so, a significant number of ones 1% or 100% larger would have been detected – but none have.

 

Sources: wikipedia articles “ball lightning”, “electron”, “Sun”, and “Schwarzschild radius”. For an IMHO excellent description of the role of approximation in physics, I recommend Lawrence Krauss’s short book “Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed”.

[Boerseun]

Ball lightning is very rare, and the general consensus seem to be that nobody really knows what it is or whether it is actually lightning... like Craig said above.

 

However, if you do an image search for "ball lightning", you get a few pics like the attached one.

 

I don't know if it is lightning or not, what I do know is that I don't want any of these suckers in my home!

[freeztar]

Ball lightning is very rare, and the general consensus seem to be that nobody really knows what it is or whether it is actually lightning... like Craig said above.

 

However, if you do an image search for "ball lightning", you get a few pics like the attached one.

 

I don't know if it is lightning or not, what I do know is that I don't want any of these suckers in my home!

 

That image looks like a perfect example of diffusion. As the initial shockwave travels through the structure, it emerges from the other side in a state of disorder.

 

I wouldn't say that is ball lightening, though it may be a great example of an event that could be interpreted as a "ball".

[Moontanman]

On a show many years ago about UFOs they showed a short film clip of what was obviously ball lightning. They tried to say it was some sort of remote drone UFO but it was a classic case of ball lightning. It was caught on a security cam as it passed in front of the cam and circled a lamp post and disappeared. Judging from he size of the light pole it was basket ball sized or close to it.

[CraigD]

I had firsthand experience with such an account in the late 1990s, while cleaning up the electronic data aftermath of a power failure of one of my company’s data centers. An entire computer floor had lost power when a critical component of its industrial-strength UPS, the static switch that detect when line power drops under voltage and switches in less than 1/60 of a sec to battery power, was visibly fried by an obvious long-duration very-high voltage condition, despite it being protected by industrial-strength devices that should have made this impossible. On the large outside steel door of the building’s generator room, which connects to its battery room, which is near the room with the cabinet with the UPS’s static switch, a circular burn nearly as wide as the door was discovered, looking to me as if a paint-remover heat gun had been carefully used, though nothing of the kind could have escaped detection by the buildings exterior security cameras. The cameras, which recorded only at the slow frame rate typical of such devices, showed nothing unusual – no moving bright balls, no sparks or smoke, only the sudden appearance of a barely-visible-from-their-angle mark on the door.

 

A power system engineer proposed that the door had been hit by ball lightning, which had somehow, without leaving any other visible marks or damaged electronics, generated a current in the wires between the surge suppressors and the fried static switch. Since we were all in the business of making the computer work, not investigating possible meteorological mysteries, we all agreed this was as good an explanation as any, replaced the fried parts, repowered the data center, and practically forgot all about the bizarre circumstances in the ensuing ordeal of getting all the systems past the effects of a sudden power loss.

On a show many years ago about UFOs they showed a short film clip of what was obviously ball lightning. They tried to say it was some sort of remote drone UFO but it was a classic case of ball lightning. It was caught on a security cam as it passed in front of the cam and circled a lamp post and disappeared. Judging from he size of the light pole it was basket ball sized or close to it.

I’d be wary of concluding from camera images looking like bright balls that such balls actually existed, since ball shaped images are a common relic of cameras, or even the naked eye looking through glass.

 

Nonetheless, my guess is that some sort of spherical body that moves erratically, doesn’t last long, and can at least scorch paint actually exists. I suspect, as most serious scientific investigators of ball lightning appear to, that they’re some sort of hot gas and/or plasma. They’re so rare in nature, however, that until someone figures out a way to consistently produce them via some artificial means, they’ll remain mysterious, and explanations of them speculative and very varied. (the wikipedia article “ball lightning” has as good a summary of these many speculative explanations as any I’ve read) :)

[Moontanman]

I've seen the camera type artifacts you mention, I am pretty sure this particular sequence of pics, it wasn't a very fast film and only contained a few images of the ball as it moved, was not a lens flare or other artifact, the cam wasn't moving, it was night with the parking lot lights on. The diffuse ball moved in from off cam circled a lamp post and moved out of cam field of view in just a few seconds. It definitely wasn't a alien space craft but it did fit the description of ball lightning pretty much to a tee. According to the report this happened just before a severe thunder storm rolled through the area as well.

[Jay-qu]

Perhaps it is all in our heads, a consequence of the strong varying magnetic fields creating small currents between our neurons:

Mysterious ball lightning: Illusion or reality?

[Moontanman]

Perhaps it is all in our heads, a consequence of the strong varying magnetic fields creating small currents between our neurons:

Mysterious ball lightning: Illusion or reality?

 

I saw that recently but then you'd have to deal with sightings by multiple witnesses and actual property damage and even deaths by ball lightning, doesn't sound very hallucinatory to me.

[Moontanman]

BTW, I saw what I presume to be ball lightning once, I was 15 and rushing home on my dirt bike at about 1 am to avoid an approaching thunderstorm. I was riding along a mountain ridge in a forest mostly of huge old growth white oak trees. Ahead of me just at the limits if my head lights i saw a glowing ball, not extremely bright, seem to rise up out of the ground directly in the path.

 

It moved slowly enough for me get a good look but i passed under it before i could stop and when I did get stopped and turned to look back it was gone. I noticed no cloud to ground lightning at the time but the sky was full of cloud to cloud strikes at that time. I noticed no effects to the motorcycles engine or physical effects on me, my motorcycle was loud enough that I didn't notice any sound from the glowing ball.

 

I have no idea what it was but i always figured it was ball lightning or some similar process.

[Jay-qu]

They dont pretend that it can account for all sightings of ball lightning - but it does explain why it is somewhat elusive and why people explain what they saw differently. Having multiple explanations for what is commonly called ball lightning is a good thing, because it makes explaining why some ball lightning is destructive and some non-destructive easier. Your account sounds like it could have been a phosphene, interesting ;)

[CraigD]

Perhaps it is all in our heads, a consequence of the strong varying magnetic fields creating small currents between our neurons:

Mysterious ball lightning: Illusion or reality?

I saw that recently but then you'd have to deal with sightings by multiple witnesses and actual property damage and even deaths by ball lightning, doesn't sound very hallucinatory to me.

Peer and Kendl’s hypothesis, described in the Science Daily article, explains multiple witnesses and real lightning damage pretty handily, as the hallucination-inducing magnetic effect is an area effect caused by the usual sort of current-in-plasma lightning. It’s only a tentative hypothesis, though. To gain much acceptance, it needs to be reproducible on demand – not a terribly unfeasible proposition, as present day lightning-control technologies are fairly effective at creating lightning on demand (this 2002 New Journal of Physics article has a nice summary and detailed theoretical description, and references to experiments)

 

To fill in some blanks I sensed in the SD article, here’s my simplified interpretation of Peer and Kendl’s hypothesis:

• Lightning occurs (to explain well, many discharges at a rate of about 1/sec). As lightning is a changing electric current, it induces a magnetic field.
  
• This magnetic field induces currents in various parts of the brains of nearby humans in a way similar to a therapeutic TMS device.
  
• As with TMS, this current causes various neural responses, which the brain and humans incorrectly interpret as an image coming from their eyes. A hallucination (specifically, a phosphene) occurs.
  

An obvious initial objection to the hypothesis is that the literature of TMS and direct (ie: via electrode) electrical brain stimulation describe reported phosphenes unlike description of lightning balls – typically “points, spots, and bars”. This objection can be answered by noting that human perception is very context-dependent – the same neural sensory event is interpreted by subsequent brain function via a complicated, very cognitive yet mostly or entirely unconscious process that takes into account ones surroundings, proximate experiences, and expectations. Thus, a person in a brain research lab may perceive simple geometric patterns, while one watching a violent storm may perceive ball lightning.

 

PS: Peer and Kendl’s 2010 Physics Letters A paper, Transcranial stimulability of phosphenes by long lightning electromagnetic pulses (8 pages), can be read at this arxiv page.

[erich]

I posted this below in 2006, I have seen no additional work on these fusion energy pathways of Stable Plasma Toroids

The links don't work ,so go to the page;

Erich

 

Super Lightening??

http://scienceforums.com/topic/3441-super-lightning/page__p__54340__hl__%2Btoroid+%2Bfusion__fromsearch__1#entry54340

 

P-B11 Plasma Toroid Fusion

http://scienceforums.com/topic/3474-p-b11-plasma-toroid-fusion/page__p__54343__hl__%2Btoroid+%2Bfusion__fromsearch__1#entry54343

or

http://scienceforums.com/topic/3565-a-new-manhattan-project-for-clean-energy/page__p__55842__hl__%2Btoroid+%2Bfusion__fromsearch__1#entry55842

 

 

"I thought you may be interested in this new thread that has evolved from some of my research and correspondence involving fusion power over the last few months.

 

One of the top lightning researcher in the world, Joe Dwyer at FIT, got his Y-ray and X-ray research published in the may Scientific American,

 

http://www.sciam.com...F9683414B7FFE9F

 

Dwyer's paper:

http://www.lightning...F/Gammarays.pdf

 

 

and according to Clint Seward it supports his lightning models and fusion work at EPS, Electron Power Systems

www.electronpowersystems.com/ .

 

He proposes applications as varied as home power generation@ .ooo5 cents/KW hr, cars, distributed power, airplanes, space propulsion , power storage and kinetic weapons.

 

And also provides a theoretic base for ball lightning:

 

Ball Lightning Explained as a Stable Plasma Toroid http://www.sciencene...020209/bob8.asp

 

Clint sent me his new paper on a lightning charge transport model of cloud to ground lightning (If your interested I'll send it,he did not want me to post it to the web yet) and if Joe concurs with it's theory it could mean big press for EPS. Joe suggested some other papers and now Clint is in re-write.

 

It may also explain Elves, blue jets, sprites and red sprites, plasmas that appear above thunder storms. After a little searching, this seemed to have the best hard numbers on the observations of sprites.

 

Dr. Mark A. Stanley's Dissertation

http://nis-www.lanl....ation/main.html

 

 

And may also explain the spiral twist of fulgurites, hollow fused sand tubes found in the ground at lightning strikes.

 

Not to blow my own horn, but I got them talking with my E-mail inquires!

 

 

 

Erich J. Knight

[Moontanman]

Peer and Kendl’s hypothesis, described in the Science Daily article, explains multiple witnesses and real lightning damage pretty handily, as the hallucination-inducing magnetic effect is an area effect caused by the usual sort of current-in-plasma lightning. It’s only a tentative hypothesis, though. To gain much acceptance, it needs to be reproducible on demand – not a terribly unfeasible proposition, as present day lightning-control technologies are fairly effective at creating lightning on demand (this 2002 New Journal of Physics article has a nice summary and detailed theoretical description, and references to experiments)

 

To fill in some blanks I sensed in the SD article, here’s my simplified interpretation of Peer and Kendl’s hypothesis:

• Lightning occurs (to explain well, many discharges at a rate of about 1/sec). As lightning is a changing electric current, it induces a magnetic field.
  
• This magnetic field induces currents in various parts of the brains of nearby humans in a way similar to a therapeutic TMS device.
  
• As with TMS, this current causes various neural responses, which the brain and humans incorrectly interpret as an image coming from their eyes. A hallucination (specifically, a phosphene) occurs.
  

An obvious initial objection to the hypothesis is that the literature of TMS and direct (ie: via electrode) electrical brain stimulation describe reported phosphenes unlike description of lightning balls – typically “points, spots, and bars”. This objection can be answered by noting that human perception is very context-dependent – the same neural sensory event is interpreted by subsequent brain function via a complicated, very cognitive yet mostly or entirely unconscious process that takes into account ones surroundings, proximate experiences, and expectations. Thus, a person in a brain research lab may perceive simple geometric patterns, while one watching a violent storm may perceive ball lightning.

 

PS: Peer and Kendl’s 2010 Physics Letters A paper, Transcranial stimulability of phosphenes by long lightning electromagnetic pulses (8 pages), can be read at this arxiv page.

 

 

While i am aware of what a phosphene is and I can see how such hallucinations can be seen as occurring outside your self, all the phosphene like phenomena i have seen were to me obviously not real and i had no problem discriminating them from objects really in my field of vision the idea that hallucinations could account for the actual physical manifestations of ball lighting is a little hard to swallow, from burn marks to death I think that even though some or even many reports of ball lightning might be phosphenes it seem unlikely that the phenomena can be explained by that theory...

 

It might be an unpopular stance but I think that far to often phenomena that cannot be explained readily are often pigeon holed as hallucinations of some sort, it's always easy to claim the other guy is just hallucinating when something unknown is seen... some might see something like phosgenes and say wow that had to be real because i saw it, others are aware enough to see the differences, and there are some differences between seeing and automatically believing and seeing that something is not real due real differences in the vision and reality. have you ever been hit in the head and saw stars? did you really think they were real just because you could see them? The idea that something as obvious as phosgenes are mistaken for reality on a regular basis seems less than likely to me...