![]() They float in mid-air, like they don't have any mass. The problem is ball lightning doesn't seem to obey physics laws as we know them. ![]() Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and the Humboldt University, both in Berlin, have used underwater electrical discharges to generate luminous plasma clouds resembling ball lightning that last for nearly half a second and are up to 20 centimeters across. Recent laboratory experiments are just beginning to shed light on the nature of ball lightning, a phenomenon that has baffled scientists for centuries. It is also possible that some photos are fakes.īut 10,000 witnesses can't all have optical illusions, can they? Many of the properties observed in ball lightning accounts conflict with each other, and it is very possible that several different phenomena are being incorrectly grouped together. The strange ball lightning phenomenon, in which a fiery sphere floats through the air near the surface of the Earth, usually during a thunderstorm and ranging in diameter from a centimeter to a meter, is photographed very rarely, and details of witness accounts can vary widely. Finally, it hit the back wall of the room, where it made a small crackling sound and left bright trails of static electricity dancing all over the wall. It bounced off the transformer, then skirted along the underside of the cable that connected the pole to the house, came off at a dip in the cable and passed right through the window he was looking through. A lightning bolt struck a transformer on a telephone pole near the house, and he noticed a light-green luminous sphere, about the size of a tennis ball, suddenly appear on top of the transformer. In the early 1960s, young Eddie Sines (who later became an electronic engineer) was watching a summer's day storm, while staying at his grandparents' house in Maryland, US. Other colors, such as blue or white occur as well. Many witnesses reported them as being red to yellow in color, sometimes transparent, and some containing radial filaments or sparks. Its shape has been described as either spherical, ovoid, teardrop, or rod-like with one dimension being much larger than the others. There are many historical accounts of spherical lightnings, or "ball lightnings." Although they were once thought to be very rare, a 1960 paper reported that 5% of the US population reported having witnessed ball lightning and another study analyzed reports of 10,000 cases.īall lightning has the strange tendency to float (or hover) in the air and take on a ball-like appearance.
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