Has Ball Lightening been explained?
David Hajicek
recently started reading this group.
I have always been fascinated with ball lightening, as I thought I witnessed
this once as a child. I have read of people trying to duplicate and explain
this event, but have not seen much in the way of results.
Can ball lightening be created at will these days? Is there a theory that
explains the longevity of the phenomena?
Thank you in advance.
Dave Hajicek
Hans Aberg
<haj...@skypoint.com> wrote:
>Can ball lightening be created at will these days? Is there a theory that
>explains the longevity of the phenomena?
A few years ago, I saw on the Discovery TV channel (I think) a Japanese
team that was able via a microwave-oven like set up to produce plasma that
behaved as the ball lightening phenomenon has been described: The plasma
ball was able to move right through a ceramic plate without affecting the
latter. -- But if the plasma was not hot enough, the plate would break.
So that (I think) certainly gives some input on the ball lightning
question, even though it does not demonstrate the existence of the latter.
One problem is that ball lightning in nature, as described, is a rare,
short-lived phenomenon, that does not lend itself (currently) to objective
study.
Hans Aberg * Anti-spam: remove "remove." from email address.
* Email: Hans Aberg <remove...@member.ams.org>
* Home Page: <http://www.matematik.su.se/~haberg/>
* AMS member listing: <http://www.ams.org/cml/>
J. J. Lodder
No, and not really.
The latest fashion in explaining the longevity
is based on the supposed creation of fractal clusters
of vaporized soil material, which them burn slowly in the air,
with chemoluminicence.
Perhaps some balls, but it can clearly not explain all phenomena,
such as ball lightning having been seen inside an airplane.
Best,
Jan
Deepak Gupta
> explains the longevity of the phenomena?
>
As far as I understand there are many theories around to expalin the Ball
Lightning (BL). And people are still working to make these theories
expalin all the features of BL including their formation,
apearence, lifetime and chemical composition.
There are many attempts also to make BL in Laboratory. But as I feel, no
single experiment expains all the features of BL. Here also people use
various methods, like microwave, high-voltage pulse discharge, chemical
reactions etc. I'm well aware of two big review papers in Physics Reports
on BL.
A good starting point to know more about BL also is
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/ballgtn.html
and
http://www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/~bdaye/balligh.html
and
there are many more....
Deepak K Gupta
Ace Schallger
<nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
> David Hajicek <haj...@skypoint.com> wrote:
> > Can ball lightning be created at will these days? Is there a theory that
> > explains the longevity of the phenomena?
> No, and not really.
You are obviously not fully versed about this subject. Ball Lightning
can indeed be formed at will. I and others (James Corum, Ph.D
physics, and his brother Ken Corum, for example) have a significant
amount of videotaped experiments to support this. Popular reports
even in such journals as Nature will claim that no scientists have
successfully reproduced BL when in fact that is not true at all. A
number of researchers have reproduced BL events. I began research into
BL in 1972 and there is quite a broad range of 'theories' and, in fact,
when I first began research in this area there were at least forty (40)
different theories. The fractal clusters theory is only one of many
and the general problem of BL theories is that a specific theory will
be put forth to explain some aspect of BL but will essentially ignore
other important characteristists. The fractal clusters theory is an
example of a narrow explanation to cover a narrow aspect of the general
phenomenon. Consequently, it is a wholly unsatisfactory theory and
cannot be taken seriously as a significant attempt to account for BL.
Ball lightning is a difficult or almost impossible phenomenon to study
in nature and one must rely upon anecdotal information and from a few
rare photos and from the physical damage caused by a ball lightning
phenomenon. Sometimes there are important clues in even very old
reports. A BL event was reported in Scientific American in 1886.
Here it is:
"Curious Phenomenon In Venezuela"
Cowgill, Warner; Scientific American, 55:389, December 18, 1886
During the night of the 24th of October last, which was rainy
and tempestuous, a family of nine persons, sleeping in a hut a few
leagues from Maracaibo, were awakened by a loud humming noise and a
vivid, dazzling light, which brilliantly illuminated the interior of
the house.
The occupants, completely terror stricken, and believing, as
they relate, that the end of the world had come, threw themselves on
their knees and commenced to pray, but their devotions were almost
immediately interrupted by violent vomitings, and extensive swellings
commenced to appear in the upper part of their bodies, this being
particularly noticeable about the face and lips.
It is to be noted that the brilliant light was not accompanied
by a sensation of heat, although there was a smoky appearance and a
peculiar smell.
The next morning the swellings had subsided, leaving upon the
face and body large black blotches. No special pain was felt until the
ninth day, when the skin peeled off, and these blotches were
transformed into virulent raw sores.
The hairs of the head fell off upon the side which happened to
be underneath when the phenomenon occurred, the same side of the body
being, in all nine cases, the more seriously injured.
The remarkable part of the occurrence is that the house was
uninjured, all doors and windows being closed at the time.
No trace of lightning could afterward be observed in any part
of the building, and all the sufferers unite in saying that there was
no detonation, but only the loud humming already mentioned.
Another curious attendant circumstance is that the trees around
the house showed no signs of injury until the ninth day, when they
suddenly withered, almost simultaneously with the development of the
sores upon the bodies of the occupants of the house.
This is perhaps a mere coincidence, but it is remarkable that
the same susceptibility to electrical effects, with the same lapse of
time, should be observed in both animal and vegetable organisms.
I have visited the sufferers, who are now in one of the
hospitals of this city; and although their appearance is truly
horrible, yet it is hoped that in no case will the injuries prove
fatal. <end of Scientific American article>
This remarkable event gives a number of powerful clues about BL. A
loud humming is indicative of an oscillatory process associated with
the phenomenon. What can be oscillating with respect to a plasma?
The radiation aspects of this are especially intriguing since in 1886
none of the present menagerie of particles had yet been discovered and
our knowledge of gamma radiation, x-rays, alpha particles, beta
particles, and neutrons was yet to come forth in a scattered manner
over the next 48 years. Yet, here we have powerful evidence of some
rather intense radiation associated with the phenomenon that cannot be
dismissed or waved away with the hand. That is one of the things that
is exciting about this particular report.
Ball lightning research is also a little bit like a bastard child and
few people have attempted to make a career of it because it is
generally tough to get gov't funding without a clear cut idea of what
the potential payoffs might be - though a number of pretty decent
scientists have expressed great interest in it (Pyotr Leonidovich
Kapitsa, the Russian Academician had a great interest in BL).
Another interesting report found on the net at:
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/sf034/sf034p16.htm
AGGRESSIVE BALL LIGHTNING
August 17, 1978. Caucasian Mountains, Russia. Victor Kavunenko and four
other mountaineers were camped for the night at an altitude of 3900
meters. He reported as follows:
"I woke up with the strange feeling that a stranger had made his way
into our tent. Thrusting my head out of the sleeping bag, I froze. A
bright yellow blob was floating about one metre from the floor. It
disappeared into Korovin's sleeping bag. The man screamed in pain. The
ball jumped out and proceeded to circle over the other bags now hiding
in one, now in another. When it burned a hole in mine I felt an
unbearable pain, as if I were being burned by a welding machine, and
blacked out. Regaining consciousness after a while, I saw the same
yellow ball which, methodically observing a pattern that was known to
it alone, kept diving into the bags, evoking desperate, heart-rendering
(sic) howls from the victims. This indescribable horror repeated itself
several times. When I came back to my senses for the fifth or sixth
time, the ball was gone. I could not move my arms or legs and my body
was burning as if it had turned into a ball of fire itself. In the
hospital, where we were flown by helicopter, seven wounds were
discovered on my body. They were worse than burns. Pieces of muscle
were found to be torn out to the bone. The same happened to Shigin,
Kaprov and Bashkirov. Oleg Korovin had been killed by the
ball---possibly because his bag had been on a rubber mattress,
insulating it from the ground. The ball lightning did not touch a
single metal object, injuring only people." <end report>
Here again we have an account of a very intense phenomenon that
requires more than a cursory once over. I'm of the minority
persuasion that the researcher who comes to a full understanding of BL
will have found a treasure trove of new physics.
There are published models for BL but they generally do not gain very
much interest from the scientific press. Yet I believe they are far
more likely to yield valuable fruit than, say, the study of string
theory or speculations on black holes.
Ace Schallger.
Dirk Bruere
news:270620010228336807%phys...@att.net...
> Some poor soul uncited by Dirk Bruere wrote:
> > Some other poor soul wrote:
> > > Can ball lightning be created at will these days? Is there a theory
> > > that explains the longevity of the phenomena?
> > No, and not really.
> You are obviously not fully versed about this subject. Ball Lightning
> can indeed be formed at will. I and others (James Corum, Ph.D
> physics, and his brother Ken Corum, for example) have a significant
> amount of videotaped experiments to support this.
Is it the 'free roaming' kind of BL people normally refer to, or the uwave
or other tricks to simulate a spherical discharge?
....
> Sometimes there are important clues in even very old
> reports. A BL event was reported in Scientific American in 1886.
Here's one more tiny piece of anecdotal info, told to me by someone why had
seen several (he was an E European farmer). He claimed that the BL he had
seen occurred when a lightning discharge crossed itself. The BL was formed
at the intersection.
Dirk
Urs Schreiber
concerning ball lighning in general and a certain event in particular:
> This remarkable event gives a number of powerful clues about BL.
This raises a few natural questions. All I know about ball lightning I know
from this posting of yours, so bear with me. :-)
> A loud humming is indicative of an oscillatory process associated with
> the phenomenon. What can be oscillating with respect to a plasma?
Yes, what? Are there any models that explain a humming noise?
> The radiation aspects of this are especially intriguing since in 1886
> none of the present menagerie of particles had yet been discovered and
> our knowledge of gamma radiation, x-rays, alpha particles, beta
> particles, and neutrons was yet to come forth in a scattered manner
> over the next 48 years.
Just to make sure I understand you correctly: The intriguing thing is that
the date of 1886 excludes the possibility that the described event was
somehow caused by human technology?
> Yet, here we have powerful evidence of some
> rather intense radiation associated with the phenomenon that cannot be
> dismissed or waved away with the hand. That is one of the things that
> is exciting about this particular report.
Is it only this one report that suggests intense radioactivity associated to
ball lightning? Am I correct that intense radioactivity in lighning is
something that can hardly be explained from our current knowledge of how
things work? Do you thus expect this to be one example from the "treasure
trove of new physics" that you expect to be associated to ball lightning?
Are there more plausible mechanisms that might explain the "radiation
sickness" syndromes the report mentions?
[Moderator's note: as we dig deeper into this, let us avoid taking
uncorroborated anecdotal reports too seriously, since that way lies
madness, or at least overly speculative posts. - jb]
Hans Aberg
<phys...@att.net> wrote:
>> > Can ball lightning be created at will these days? Is there a theory that
>> > explains the longevity of the phenomena?
>
>> No, and not really.
>
>You are obviously not fully versed about this subject. Ball Lightning
>can indeed be formed at will. I and others (James Corum, Ph.D
>physics, and his brother Ken Corum, for example) have a significant
>amount of videotaped experiments to support this.
>number of researchers have reproduced BL events.
This is interesting. Do you have some more details on these at will
created BL experiments?
>Sometimes there are important clues in even very old
>reports. A BL event was reported in Scientific American in 1886.
>Here it is:
>"Curious Phenomenon In Venezuela"
>Cowgill, Warner; Scientific American, 55:389, December 18, 1886
...
>Another interesting report found on the net at:
>http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/sf034/sf034p16.htm
>AGGRESSIVE BALL LIGHTNING
>August 17, 1978. Caucasian Mountains, Russia.
I find these reports interesting, because they are so detailed.
>Ball lightning research is also a little bit like a bastard child and
>few people have attempted to make a career of it because it is
>generally tough to get gov't funding without a clear cut idea of what
>the potential payoffs might be
...
>... I believe they are far
>more likely to yield valuable fruit than, say, the study of string
>theory or speculations on black holes.
Well, speculations about black holes are important, because one start to
suspect that (nearly) every galaxy may have one, and in order to properly
compute on that involves picking together GR & QM, which in its turn will
be of fundamental importance on how to understand any kind of physical
phenomenon (if there is a single physical theory to fall back on). But
with respect to string theory I am more sceptical, because if one cannot
plug in values and compare it against measurable physical data, it will
not be of much value as a physical theory.
But as for the ball lightning phenomenon, at appears to be some kind of
plasma. A connection that might make it interesting to gov't funding might
be to explore the connection with the plasma used in fusion reactors under
development:
If ball lightning somehow is able to contain plasma for a fairly long time
(several seconds, or perhaps minutes) without a strong magnetic
containment field, it is worth to explore to why that can happen both from
the theoretical and practical point of view.
A fusion reactor might become considerably more efficient if it is
possible to create a ball lightning structure that contains its own
plasma, and then one only need a relatively weak magnetic field in order
to contain the movements of the ball lightning.
J. J. Lodder
> In article <1evjq8b.1r0...@de-ster.demon.nl>, J. J. Lodder
> <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
>
> > David Hajicek <haj...@skypoint.com> wrote:
>
> > > Can ball lightning be created at will these days? Is there a theory that
> > > explains the longevity of the phenomena?
>
> > No, and not really.
>
> You are obviously not fully versed about this subject. Ball Lightning
> can indeed be formed at will. I and others (James Corum, Ph.D
> physics, and his brother Ken Corum, for example) have a significant
> amount of videotaped experiments to support this. Popular reports
> even in such journals as Nature will claim that no scientists have
> successfully reproduced BL when in fact that is not true at all. A
> number of researchers have reproduced BL events.
snip, sorry.
There is one comment that needs to be made.
Experimentalists who produce sphere-like discharges in experiments
have an unfortunate tendency to say that they have produced
'ball lightning', without providing evidence that the phenomena
they produce in their experiments are indeed the same
(or even related to) real ball lightning as observed in the outdoors.
More neutral terminology, such as 'spherical discharges'
would be preferable.
The claim that sphere-like discharges can be produced in the lab
in various ways is no doubt correct.
The connection with real ball lightning remains to be shown.
Until it has, 'not really' is correct,
Jan
Ace Schallger
<nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
> There is one comment that needs to be made.
> Experimentalists who produce sphere-like discharges in experiments
> have an unfortunate tendency to say that they have produced
> 'ball lightning', without providing evidence that the phenomena
> they produce in their experiments are indeed the same
> (or even related to) real ball lightning as observed in the outdoors.
> More neutral terminology, such as 'spherical discharges'
> would be preferable.
Well, I think that might be a matter of your opinion if you haven't
seen all of the data. The Corum brothers experiments and their high
speed videotapes yielded some very interesting insights and they report
the balls rotating and going through stages. Their balls were able to
actually pass through plate glass and that happens to be a common motif
in ball lightning reports. So I think that the phenomenon they
produced (and also which I and my experimentalist reproduced) was
exactly like ordinary BL but unfortunately the mechanism we used to
produce it with was a fairly large scale (bigger than the average
hobbiest might use) specially tuned Tesla coil system. The
electromagnetic environment is just too chaotic for the BL events to
last very long so the next phase of our development is a completely
different set up using a large battery bank and a large inductance to
produce a high current discharge. BL events were reported frequently
by submariners in WWII class submarines. It was possible to hook up a
fully charged battery bank to a generator that wasn't turning. To
disipate the energy and to avoid burning out the insulation on the
generator a special spark gap was designed. At the instant of the
discharge across the gap a special 'blow out coil' was automatically
activated to push the spark out onto copper tips from the initiation
region which has silver inserts to facilitate the formation of the
discharge. Frequently a ball the size of a large orange would detach
and float around inside of the submarine and then after several seconds
would typically detonate like a '.45 cal. pistol discharging'. Dr.
James Tuck, a principle researcher at Los Alamos, attempted to
reproduce BL using similar equipment. He reported in a conversation I
had with him about 1972-73 that while they never saw one form, they did
catch one on film.
> The claim that sphere-like discharges can be produced in the lab
> in various ways is no doubt correct.
> The connection with real ball lightning remains to be shown.
I have no idea what might constitute 'proof' for you but the data I
examined was very convincing.
> Until it has, 'not really' is correct.
As an opinion - only.
Ace Schallger.
Ace Schallger
Dirk Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Is it the 'free roaming' kind of BL people normally refer to, or the uwave
> or other tricks to simulate a spherical discharge?
No tricks these BL events but they are small (1-2 cm), have a very
short lifetime (on the order of 90 ms) and you cannot predict in
advance where they will form. So even though we can videotape them
they are not all that suitable for investigation.
> Someone whom Ace Schallger forgot to properly cite wrote:
> > Sometimes there are important clues in even very old
> > reports. A BL event was reported in Scientific American in 1886.
> Here's one more tiny piece of anecdotal info, told to me by someone why had
> seen several (he was an E European farmer). He claimed that the BL he had
> seen occurred when a lightning discharge crossed itself.
Well some lightning photos of BL show them forming in a constricted
region and some will form long chains of 'bead lightning'.
Ace Schallger
J. J. Lodder
> But as for the ball lightning phenomenon, at appears to be some kind of
> plasma. A connection that might make it interesting to gov't funding might
> be to explore the connection with the plasma used in fusion reactors under
> development:
>
> If ball lightning somehow is able to contain plasma for a fairly long time
> (several seconds, or perhaps minutes) without a strong magnetic
> containment field, it is worth to explore to why that can happen both from
> the theoretical and practical point of view.
Indeed, this has come up as a crackpot scheme for a fusion reactor,
on basis of postulated fusion reactions in natural ball lightning.
All 'plasma' explanations of ball lightning suffer from the same
fundamental weakness:
Decay times of any postulated plasma are far to short to explain
observed phenomena.
A related problem is that the energy content
of plasma spheres must be too high to be compatible
with most observations.
So called 'Ball lightnings' in lab experiments have some form
of energy supply, as microwaves for example.
A plausible (and generaly acccepted :-)
way to feed a natural ball linhgtning
with the necessary energy has not been proposed yet.
As far as I am aware of course,
Jan
Ace Schallger
<nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
> Hans Aberg <remove...@matematik.su.se> wrote:
> > But as for the ball lightning phenomenon, at appears to be some kind of
> > plasma. A connection that might make it interesting to gov't funding might
> > be to explore the connection with the plasma used in fusion reactors under
> > development:
> >
> > If ball lightning somehow is able to contain plasma for a fairly long time
> > (several seconds, or perhaps minutes) without a strong magnetic
> > containment field, it is worth to explore to why that can happen both from
> > the theoretical and practical point of view.
> Indeed, this has come up as a crackpot scheme for a fusion reactor,
> on basis of postulated fusion reactions in natural ball lightning.
No need to use the pejorative term 'crackpot' here because you paint
people like James Tuck of Project Sherwood and numerous other
scientists who have been drawn to the notion that BL as stable natural
plasma might give us the key to a winning reactor design with an ugly
brush. Such language has no place in these discussions particularly so
if you are unversed on the subject. Perhaps you think they are
crackpot because they haven't resulted in a working fusion reactor?
Well, let me clue you in...neither has the approaches used by the
community of plasma physicists who have been very well funded over the
last 50 years. PPPL used to get about a third of a $billion annually.
That has been cut over the last few years as legistlators have grown
wise to the fact that there seems to be no bottom to that money pit.
> All 'plasma' explanations of ball lightning suffer from the same
> fundamental weakness: Decay times of any postulated plasma are far to
> short to explain observed phenomena.
It seems you are putting the cart before the horse. The phenomenon
*is* associated with a plasma but it is not simply a plasma. Our
theories concerning all the ways we know to keep a plasma active are
inadequate to account for the anomalously long lifetimes reported for
BL events and our theories are also inadequate to explain the energy of
BL. BL has been observed by passengers on a commercial flight to come
down the aisle and then exit the aircraft through the metal skin and
then bounce along the wing before dropping off into space. A great
deal of what we think we know about physics drops off on this side of
the sheet metal as soon as a BL successfully penetrates it. Obviously
BL cannot be described as simply a plasma but there are strong hints of
structure, dynamics and process. That is not a weakness of BL but
rather points to inadequacies of our understanding of certain plasma
related phenomena. It is likely that there is an underlying phenomenon
of which a plasma may be a secondary aspect or effect.
> A related problem is that the energy content of plasma spheres must
> be too high to be compatible with most observations. So called 'Ball
> lightnings' in lab experiments have some form of energy supply, as
> microwaves for example.
Certainly in the lab that is true. Microwaves can keep a plasma active
and buzzing around but that doesn't mean that a microwave plasma is the
same thing as a natural ball lightning. The fact that BL has killed a
few people like Georg Wilhelm Reichmann (I think I earlier erroneously
said 'Georg Ritchie' - my goof) and others and has caused notable
physical damage of some magnitude beyond what our normal conception of
a plasma can be estimated to effect doesn't put BL in the realm of
pseudophysics but rather mocks our understanding of plasmas as
pseudophysics.
> A plausible (and generaly acccepted :-) way to feed a natural ball
> linhgtning with the necessary energy has not been proposed yet.
And just the conception that it needs to be fed emerges from an
intellectual dependence upon conservative processes. It may no more
need to be 'fed' than a neutron needs to be fed and may decay for the
same or similar reasons. It just may need to be stabilized. My own
work indicates that a BL is a toroidal flux loop system. And we
certainly have examples of magnetic flux loop systems in plasmas having
anomalously long lifetimes. But people looking at a magnetic flux loop
(say, on the Sun, for example) are not likely looking at such a
structure as a torus. When Coronal Mass Ejections emerge from the Sun
we have evidence that these are large scale toroidal structures. The
dynamics of flux loops can be very interesting, unless, of course, one
is predisposed to believe they already know all that can be known about
them. Right now, solar scientists haven't a clue about the process of
the generation of Coronal Mass Ejections. The phenomenon is not
understood by the mainstream community of plasma physicists. Most
solar physicists will openly admit this. Yet the flux loop model that
I have developed is reasonable, consistent with Maxwell's equations (as
far as I can tell) and can be applied to large scale phenonemon like
stars and stellar jet systems as well as to Ball Lightning. But my
model involved discovering some new properties of flux loops. If you'd
care to learn about them you can always drop me an email.
> As far as I am aware of course,
An appropriate qualifier we should all use more often, for sure.
Regards,
Ace Schallger.
Hans Aberg
j...@de-ster.demon.nl wrote:
> Someone whom Hans Aberg forgot to cite wrote:
>> If ball lightning somehow is able to contain plasma for a fairly long time
>> (several seconds, or perhaps minutes) without a strong magnetic
>> containment field, it is worth to explore to why that can happen both from
>> the theoretical and practical point of view.
>Indeed, this has come up as a crackpot scheme for a fusion reactor,
>on basis of postulated fusion reactions in natural ball lightning.
Well, these problems are likely to very hard if one should be able to
produce something of scientific (and practical) worth.
>So called 'Ball lightnings' in lab experiments have some form
>of energy supply, as microwaves for example.
Do you say that these LBL's (Lab Ball Lightning's) require a continuous
microwave feed? -- I was under the impression that one first created the
LBL, and then it lived on for some time (a couple of seconds).
>All 'plasma' explanations of ball lightning suffer from the same
>fundamental weakness:
>Decay times of any postulated plasma are far to short to explain
>observed phenomena.
>A related problem is that the energy content
>of plasma spheres must be too high to be compatible
>with most observations.
Perhaps there is a difference in the type of plasma: In fusion processes,
there is a soup of particles only. Could it possible at lower energies one
produces a soup of nucleuses plus electrons that is more stable?
The reproducible experiment I saw on TV produced a ball of some sort that
was able to move through a ceramic plate without harming it. What do you
think yourself what it is made up of (assuming the experiment was
correct)?
Ace Schallger
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <9hn9fd$hn...@rs04.hrz.uni-essen.de>, Urs Schreiber
<Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
> "Ace Schallger" <phys...@att.net> wrote in
> news:270620010228336807%phys...@att.net...
> concerning ball lighning in general and a certain event in particular:
>
> > This remarkable event gives a number of powerful clues about BL.
>
> This raises a few natural questions. All I know about ball lightning I know
> from this posting of yours, so bear with me. :-)
There's getting to be quite a lot of published literature on it and a
search engine like Google.com can bring you a large number of
references.
> > A loud humming is indicative of an oscillatory process associated with
> > the phenomenon. What can be oscillating with respect to a plasma?
>
> Yes, what? Are there any models that explain a humming noise?
Sure, in a plasma toroid model the toroid oscillates between two modes
1) a toroidal current mode (or E flux loop mode) where the structure
should display magnetic dipole properties and 2) a poloidal current
mode (or H flux loop mode) where the structure should display electric
dipole properties. There are larger scale plasma phenomena which also
'oscillate' between modes like our Sun (the normal solar cycle) and
other stars (which demonstrate solar cycle like properties). This is
an infant science and the details of the mechanism of the oscillations
are the subject of controversy.
> > The radiation aspects of this are especially intriguing since in 1886
> > none of the present menagerie of particles had yet been discovered and
> > our knowledge of gamma radiation, x-rays, alpha particles, beta
> > particles, and neutrons was yet to come forth in a scattered manner
> > over the next 48 years.
> Just to make sure I understand you correctly: The intriguing thing is that
> the date of 1886 excludes the possibility that the described event was
> somehow caused by human technology?
That's correct. You can go to most good university library systems and
get a copy of the 1886 Scientific American article and read it
yourself. It isn't only that it was not caused by human technology but
that the person who reported it for S.A. was a diplomat who was
apparently interested in the unusual and that his report was untainted
by his own speculation concerning radiation (since no one knew anything
about particles or x-rays or gamma rays in 1886).
> > Yet, here we have powerful evidence of some
> > rather intense radiation associated with the phenomenon that cannot be
> > dismissed or waved away with the hand. That is one of the things that
> > is exciting about this particular report.
>
> Is it only this one report that suggests intense radioactivity associated to
> ball lightning? Am I correct that intense radioactivity in lighning is
> something that can hardly be explained from our current knowledge of how
> things work?
That is a fair assessment. But it isn't lightning here that we're
discussing but rather an apparently spherical (could be toroidal)
plasma structure that has quite anomalously long lifetimes. On a talk
I gave up at NW Nat'l Labs two years ago one of the attending
scientists was interested because he and his wife had recently
witnessed a large BL event on some overhead powerlines.
> Do you thus expect this to be one example from the "treasure
> trove of new physics" that you expect to be associated to ball lightning?
Well, as I said, some rather notable physicists like Kapitsa, for
example, and Dr. James Tuck of Project Sherwood fame (early A.E.C.
funded experiments in nuclear fusion) were keenly interested in BL and
my conversation with Tuck three decades ago certainly gave me the
impression that he was convinced new physics was in the offing to
anyone who cracked the mystery of BL.
> Are there more plausible mechanisms that might explain the "radiation
> sickness" syndromes the report mentions?
Well, some sort of standing wave phenomenon. Kapitsa believed there
was some sort of a magnetic field that might have acted as a focusing
mechanism for Cosmic Rays (I don't endorse this at all but it was an
idea at least). My own ideas are related to a mechanism that can
produce a strong neutron flux. I'm making a connection with certain
plasma pinch experiments conducted in the 1950's (see Project Sherwood
by Amasa Biship - published by Addeson-Wesley 1958) produced huge
bursts of neutrons (10E8 at a time). Also see: S. Shah, H. Razdan, C.
Bhat, and Q. Ali, "Neutron Generation in Lightning Bolts," NATURE, 313,
773 (1985).
> [Moderator's note: as we dig deeper into this, let us avoid taking
> uncorroborated anecdotal reports too seriously, since that way lies
> madness, or at least overly speculative posts. - jb]
Unfortunately, most BL reports are uncorroborated but nevertheless, it
is a real phenomenon and there's even a nice woodcut dating from the
1700's showing Georg Ritchie in Russia (a Franklin contemporary) being
killed by a BL that came down a kite string then flew off of that and
hit him in the head. The Frankin experiment, while a bit of history,
isn't an experiment that anyone should attempt if they like mortal
life. Franklin was fortunate. Ritchie was not. The woodcut is both
serious and amusing.
Ace Schallger.
Richard D. Saam
> (snip)
>
> Perhaps some balls, but it can clearly not explain all phenomena,
> such as ball lightning having been seen inside an airplane.
>
> Best,
>
> Jan
Anecdotal Evidence
In 1972, I was a Patrol Plane Navigator
in a Navy P-3 Orion aircraft
(the same airframe as recently landed on Hainan, China)
with aluminum fuselage
about 12 feet in diameter and 100 feet long.
While on a patrol flight in the Pacific
several hundred miles from land
in tropical waters
and on a particularly stormy night,
with lots of lightning
fairly low altitude (about 1000 feet)
no lights in fuselage other than instruments,
I observed a bluish green ball
about a foot in diameter
travel from the front to the back
while traveling the centerline of the fuselage.
It lasted about a minute.
Nothing was damaged.
No sound was heard from the ball,
but engine noise may have
overwhelmed any generated sound.
At first I thought it was St. Elmo's fire
but this phenomenon is created
at points and sharp edges and
not in the open air.
In 2,500 hours flying time,
I only observed this phenomenon once.
Would this observed phenomenon
fall under the Ball Lightning concept?
Richard Saam
J. J. Lodder
[snip more anecdotical reports]
> Dr.
> James Tuck, a principle researcher at Los Alamos, attempted to
> reproduce BL using similar equipment. He reported in a conversation I
> had with him about 1972-73 that while they never saw one form, they did
> catch one on film.
Actually, I did see that movie, instead of being told about it.
It is not very convincing. It shows an explosion,
and after the debris have passed it shows a pinpoint of light
moving in a roughly parabolic arc, dropping out of the frame.
It is too small to establish a form, and it could have been anything.
It is definitely not floating.
> > The claim that sphere-like discharges can be produced in the lab
> > in various ways is no doubt correct.
> > The connection with real ball lightning remains to be shown.
>
> I have no idea what might constitute 'proof' for you but the data I
> examined was very convincing.
>
> > Until it has, 'not really' is correct.
>
> As an opinion - only.
Sure, never claimed otherwise, and so is yours,
Jan
Ace Schallger
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <9hn9fd$hn...@rs04.hrz.uni-essen.de>, Urs Schreiber
<Urs.Sc...@uni-essen.de> wrote:
> "Ace Schallger" <phys...@att.net> wrote in
> > The radiation aspects of this are especially intriguing since in 1886
> > none of the present menagerie of particles had yet been discovered and
> > our knowledge of gamma radiation, x-rays, alpha particles, beta
> > particles, and neutrons was yet to come forth in a scattered manner
> > over the next 48 years.
>
> > Just to make sure I understand you correctly: The intriguing thing is that
> > the date of 1886 excludes the possibility that the described event was
> > somehow caused by human technology?
> That's correct. You can go to most good university library systems and
> get a copy of the 1886 Scientific American article and read it
> yourself. It isn't only that it was not caused by human technology but
> that the person who reported it for S.A. was a diplomat who was
> apparently interested in the unusual and that his report was untainted
> by his own speculation concerning radiation (since no one knew anything
> about particles or x-rays or gamma rays in 1886).
Sorry, I originally misunderstood your question when I first answered
it. I took it as a statement at first. I never ever suspected that
there was human technolgy. The only BL events where human technology
is involved on a regular basis that I know of was the fireballs
produced inside submarines and a 1910 engineer's report from Norway
concerning short tests of large 10kv generators near a waterfall that
produced long lasting BL events. So, no, that wasn't what was
intriguing. What was intriguing was that the report contained
information which today would be interpreted as classic radiation
injury to tissues - but the report came out before such injuries were
ever known to exist and, in fact, before the mechanisms for such
injuries were known to exist.
Cheers,
Ace Schallger
J. J. Lodder
> Anecdotal Evidence
> I observed a bluish green ball
> about a foot in diameter
> travel from the front to the back
> while traveling the centerline of the fuselage.
> It lasted about a minute.
> Would this observed phenomenon
> fall under the Ball Lightning concept?
Indeed, it does, and no explanation is available.
(In my opinion only of course :-)
And you are not the only one to witness of this type of event:
A very similar observation inside a passenger plane,
with the ball passing within feet of the reporter,
even made it to publication in Nature, long ago.
Best,
Jan
J. J. Lodder
> Some poor uncited soul wrote:
> > Indeed, this has come up as a crackpot scheme for a fusion reactor,
> > on basis of postulated fusion reactions in natural ball lightning.
> No need to use the pejorative term 'crackpot' here because you paint
> people like James Tuck of Project Sherwood and numerous other
> scientists who have been drawn to the notion that BL as stable natural
> plasma might give us the key to a winning reactor design with an ugly
> brush.
To put down this misunderstanding:
James Tuck never claimed fusion reactions to occur
-in naturally occuring ball lightning- as the explanation
for their longevity or energy source.
Others actually did, much later.
I don't think crackpot is misplaced here,
and it doesn't apply to Tuck.
Tuck on the other hand was (in the very early stage of fusion research)
interested in testing the idea that ball lightning -might-
have a plasma explanation, and tha it -might-
provide a workable containmant scheme.
He soon gave up, to explore more promising avenues.
Jan
Gerry Quinn
> The occupants, completely terror stricken, and believing, as
>they relate, that the end of the world had come, threw themselves on
>their knees and commenced to pray, but their devotions were almost
>immediately interrupted by violent vomitings, and extensive swellings
>commenced to appear in the upper part of their bodies, this being
>particularly noticeable about the face and lips.
> It is to be noted that the brilliant light was not accompanied
>by a sensation of heat, although there was a smoky appearance and a
>peculiar smell.
> The next morning the swellings had subsided, leaving upon the
>face and body large black blotches. No special pain was felt until the
>ninth day, when the skin peeled off, and these blotches were
>transformed into virulent raw sores.
> The hairs of the head fell off upon the side which happened to
>be underneath when the phenomenon occurred, the same side of the body
>being, in all nine cases, the more seriously injured.
...
> Another curious attendant circumstance is that the trees around
>the house showed no signs of injury until the ninth day, when they
>suddenly withered, almost simultaneously with the development of the
>sores upon the bodies of the occupants of the house.
>
>The radiation aspects of this are especially intriguing since in 1886
>none of the present menagerie of particles had yet been discovered and
>our knowledge of gamma radiation, x-rays, alpha particles, beta
>particles, and neutrons was yet to come forth in a scattered manner
>over the next 48 years. Yet, here we have powerful evidence of some
>rather intense radiation associated with the phenomenon that cannot be
>dismissed or waved away with the hand. That is one of the things that
>is exciting about this particular report.
>
I'm not convinced that the above - even if exactly accurate - can be
identified with the effects of ionising radiation.
What if heat were generated within the bodies of the victims? The
internal organs have no heat sensors. Internal burns would likely
enough turn into 'virulent sores' after a while. Trees could also be
injured by internal heat under the bark.
The hair falling out is perhaps the only phenomenon that's hard to
explain by internal burning due to induction and/or dielectric heating.
- Gerry Quinn
Ace Schallger
<nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
> Ace Schallger <phys...@att.net> wrote:
> > Dr. James Tuck, a principle researcher at Los Alamos, attempted to
> > reproduce BL using similar equipment. He reported in a
> > conversation I had with him about 1972-73 that while they never saw
> > one form, they did catch one on film.
>
> Actually, I did see that movie, instead of being told about it. It is
> not very convincing. It shows an explosion, and after the debris have
> passed it shows a pinpoint of light moving in a roughly parabolic
> arc, dropping out of the frame. It is too small to establish a form,
> and it could have been anything. It is definitely not floating.
Well you're one up on me - I only talked to Tuck several times and
perhaps one can't make too much of the film even though it might yield
more on a frame by frame analysis and some advance processing of the
frames themselves. Do you know if anyone has attempted to do this?
You also might want to contact Dr. James Corum or his brother Kenneth
and see if you can get them to make and send you a copy of their video
tapes. Frame by frame viewing is especially interesting and the fact
that they last up to three frames (90 ms) and form often outside of any
discharge channel is quite interesting. 90 ms is anomalously long for
recombination times. They have blowup stills of some of the video
frames. I searched using Google.com and found a paper by the Corum
Bros. at http://home.dmv.com/~tbastian/ball.htm.
The Corums describe very interesting properties and then they go off on
a tangent finally developing a conclusion that turns out to be
inconsistent with the known behavior and energy of many naturally
reported Ball Lightning events. David Finkelstein of Georgia Tech has
had a long standing interest in BL and his comments were that if the
Corum's analysis were to be correct then that would eliminate BL as a
research candidate for relevance to nuclear fusion. I agree with that
statement but I don't suppose for a second that their analysis is even
close to the truth about BL hence BL is, indeed, a candidate for
relevance to nuclear fusion but in a completely unexpected manner.
Ball lightning is not just some burning soot or some electric fractal
aerogel phenomenon but rather on occasion has sufficient energy upon
explosion to kill livestock and people - I saw a photo of a propeller
on Russian plane the pilot of which claimed the prop was struck by a
ball lighting. There was a melted chunk out of it. Burning soot or
fractal aerogels don't pass through plexiglass or sheet metal. BL
does. In 1973 I interviewed a father and son (both adults) who saw a
two meter diameter ball rolling around in their yard during a lightning
storm. They claimed that it pulled nails out of the side of the house
as it passed by and 'blew the nails out of a door frame" that it passed
near. They also claim it passed through plastic covered copper clothes
lines and vaporized sections of the lines.
I'm a trained aircraft accident investigator with a number of
investigations under my belt and I'm careful to follow strict
procedures in interviews so that I make no comments which might give
leeway to the witnesses to 'dress up' their accounts in such a manner
as to perhaps make it more interesting for me. So, my questions are
related to duration, apparent size, brightness, activity etc. I'm
careful to not feed eyewitnesses a single bit of information as to
color, etc or any other properties. The unsolicited comments about it
pulling nails or 'blowing nails out of the door frame' were especially
surprising to me as this might indicate the presence of a rapidly
oscillating magnetic field of some intensity. In all of my research I
haven't run across another report that indicated anything like nail
pulling. I have heard numerous reports of BL following wires for some
distance like along barbed wire fence lines but I couldn't attribute
that necessarily to some magnetic effect but rather perhaps related to
the conductivity of the wire.
"On November 4, 1749, the captain of the ship Lizard was taking
observations , when he was asked by an under officer to look to the
windward which he did and observed a large ball of blue fire rolling on
the surface of the water at about 3 miles distance. It came on them
very fast and rising out of the water at the ship's side "it went off
with an explosion as if hundreds of cannon had been fired at once."
The ship was filled with a sulphurous smell and the masts were much
injured; several men were injured by the shock. The ball appeared to
be as large as a mill-stone when it struck the ship."
This is from an article "On Globular Lightning" Mendenhall, T. C.
American Meterological Journal, 6:437-447, 1890.
Here we have extreme physical damage to the masts of a multi-masted
sailing ship and I think the phenomenon was slightly more robust than a
piece of burning soot or some burning fractal aerogel.
So the key to figuring out ball lightning is to not take a single
aspect and try and find some explanation that covers that one thing but
rather to gather all the attributes together from a large number of
reports and find a general solution which can produce all of the known
or reported effects.
I've found a general solution which satisfies me and if you are
interested you can drop me an email.
Cheers,
Ace Schallger.
Ace Schallger
<ger...@indigo.ie> wrote:
> In article <270620010228336807%phys...@att.net>, Ace Schallger
> <phys...@att.net> wrote:
[Unnecessary quoted text deleted by moderator]
> > The occupants, completely terror stricken, and believing, as
> >they relate, that the end of the world had come, threw themselves on
> >their knees and commenced to pray, but their devotions were almost
> >immediately interrupted by violent vomitings, and extensive swellings
> >commenced to appear in the upper part of their bodies, this being
> >particularly noticeable about the face and lips.
> > It is to be noted that the brilliant light was not accompanied
> >by a sensation of heat, although there was a smoky appearance and a
> >peculiar smell.
> > The next morning the swellings had subsided, leaving upon the
> >face and body large black blotches. No special pain was felt until the
> >ninth day, when the skin peeled off, and these blotches were
> >transformed into virulent raw sores.
> > The hairs of the head fell off upon the side which happened to
> >be underneath when the phenomenon occurred, the same side of the body
> >being, in all nine cases, the more seriously injured.
> ...
> > Another curious attendant circumstance is that the trees around
> >the house showed no signs of injury until the ninth day, when they
> >suddenly withered, almost simultaneously with the development of the
> >sores upon the bodies of the occupants of the house.
> I'm not convinced that the above - even if exactly accurate - can be
> identified with the effects of ionising radiation.
>
> What if heat were generated within the bodies of the victims? The
> internal organs have no heat sensors.
Perhaps you have a good suggestion about how such heat might be
produced in the bodies of the victims? Maybe you're thinking of some
oscillating electromagnetic field like they were in temporary giant
microwave cooker? The fact that only the side of each person that was
exposed suffered injury would argue against this and it would also
argue for particulate radiation as opposed to, say, a gamma ray or
x-ray flux which would have cooked them all the way through. The level
of damage to the skin could not also occur to the internal organs
without immediate death. Fast neutrons would have also cooked them
internally - so we're left with some particulate radiation. The best
candiate I see is a intense thermal or epithermal neutron flux so that
severe skin burns associated this event could be taken as evidence of
hydrogen and nitrogen recoil related to the interaction of neutrons
with hydrogen in the water in the skin of the victims and with nitrogen
in the skin tissues.
I think that it is not unlikely that Ball lightning, perhaps, involves
some internal current pinch mechanism. Project Sherwood experiments
with pinch experiments reported bursts of 10e8 neutrons during plasma
pinches. It is not uncommon to see ordinary lightning undergoing what
looks like self constrictions or pinches and if pinches in plasma
experiments can produce such large bursts of neutrons then at current
and voltage levels which might be several orders of magnetitude above
that used for the Project Sherwood experiments it might not be
unreasonable to expect even larger neutron bursts. See S. Shah, H.
Razdan, C. Bhat, and Q. Ali, "Neutron Generation in Lightning Bolts,"
NATURE, 313, 773 (1985).
> Internal burns would likely enough turn into 'virulent sores' after a
> while. Trees could also be injured by internal heat under the bark.
It sounds as if you might be grabbing at straws here. We know trees can
be killed by lighting strikes that vaporize the water in trees but such
effects are generally immediate and catastrophically explosive - they
don't typically take nine days or so.
> The hair falling out is perhaps the only phenomenon that's hard to
> explain by internal burning due to induction and/or dielectric heating.
Well, the effects are consistent with an intense thermal neutron flux.
For myself, I try to reduce things to a common denominator which can
include all the known effects as opposed to endorsing one that cannot
embrace all of the known data.
This has been a common fault I've seen among BL theorists who will
focus on one aspect and leave the other known phenomenon unattended. I
call that the 'Elephant - Blind Men Approach' where each blind man
attempts to discern the nature of an elephant by attending to only one
feature of it.
Ace Schallger
Squark
returned, therefore I post it here:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Ace,
You have recently wrote on spr that "I've found a general solution [to
the problem of ball lightnings] which satisfies me". It sounds
extremely intriguing, so I wonder whether you can send me some sort of
explanation of this solution?
Best regards,
Squark.
[Moderator's note: Replies by e-mail, please... mind the spam
blocker. -MM]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Write to me at:
[Note: the fourth letter of the English alphabet is used in the later
exclusively as anti-spam]
dSdqudarkd_...@excite.com
Dirk Bruere
news:1ew0kj3.be...@de-ster.demon.nl...
> Tuck on the other hand was (in the very early stage of fusion research)
> interested in testing the idea that ball lightning -might-
> have a plasma explanation, and tha it -might-
> provide a workable containmant scheme.
>
> He soon gave up, to explore more promising avenues.
I assume he gave up because of the difficuly of getting a sample of BL to
study, rather than because the idea itself was at fault.
Dirk
J. J. Lodder
> In article <1evxw6p.t36...@de-ster.demon.nl>, J. J. Lodder
> <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
>
> > Ace Schallger <phys...@att.net> wrote:
>
>
> > > Dr. James Tuck, a principle researcher at Los Alamos, attempted to
> > > reproduce BL using similar equipment. He reported in a
> > > conversation I had with him about 1972-73 that while they never saw
> > > one form, they did catch one on film.
> >
> > Actually, I did see that movie, instead of being told about it. It is
> > not very convincing. It shows an explosion, and after the debris have
> > passed it shows a pinpoint of light moving in a roughly parabolic
> > arc, dropping out of the frame. It is too small to establish a form,
> > and it could have been anything. It is definitely not floating.
>
> Well you're one up on me - I only talked to Tuck several times and
> perhaps one can't make too much of the film even though it might yield
> more on a frame by frame analysis and some advance processing of the
> frames themselves. Do you know if anyone has attempted to do this?
Yes, I talked te someone who has tried to do that,
on his video copy I saw. Nothing much can be made of it beyond what can
be seen right away. Moreover, the frame rate of the original camera
appears to be unknown, which makes it impossible to decide if we are
seeing just motion under gravity.
> You also might want to contact Dr. James Corum or his brother Kenneth
> and see if you can get them to make and send you a copy of their video
> tapes.
Sorry, no, other things on my hands.
[snip more observation reports]
No agreement exists on the energy content of ball lightning.
Some hold that these are rather harmless low-energy phenomena,
with damage explained as colateral,
caused by the associated lightning stroke.
Ball lightnings which survive long enough after the stroke
are rarely reported to do much damage.
Others believe ball lightning itself
to have enough energy to be harmful.
Observation reports are of course inconclusive,
since it is hard to see what really happens.
Positions taken vary with the explanation preferred,
and a consensus has not been reached.
It won't be reached until a convincing theory
for ball lghtning is found.
Or perhaps there are several kinds to be explained,
Jan
PS Discovery Channel did run a series on mysterious phenomena
(and their possible explanation) by Arthur C. Clarke, years ago.
In the one on ball lightning you can see James Tuck himself explaining
the circumstances to Clarke, and the famous movie fragment.
Try to see it, if they ever do a rerun of the series.
Matt McIrvin
<phys...@att.net> wrote:
This could be a reasonable approach if, in fact, we're dealing with
several different phenomena instead of just one. After all, the
*observers* of ball lightning are necessarily in the position of the blind
men-- since the reports are so isolated and anecdotal, and differ in the
described behavior, it's hard to tell whether all of the things described
as ball lightning are really the same animal.
On the other hand, I agree that it's a fallacy to come up with a theory
that explains one feature and then announce "this is the correct
explanation of ball lightning." This would be a fallacy even if it
explained *all* the previously observed features!
Some of the observations could be mistaken, as well. I'm *not* saying
"all of the people who see ball lightning are crazy or lying"-- smart,
sane, observant people can make honest mistakes. Some accounts could
be mistaken and some could be accurate. Similarities between many
accounts do not themselves constitute incontrovertible evidence that
an observed feature is real-- there could be a systematic error that
many people tend to make in the same situation, such as the tendency
to mis-estimate the distance to a glowing object seen outdoors (for
those cases that were seen outdoors).
These are possibilities worth considering whenever the evidence is mostly
anecdotal. A common rhetorical fallacy when discussing unusual or
transient phenomena is the false dichotomy between believing an
observation uncritically and believing that the observer is an
untrustworthy person. Even professional physicists have to take pains to
avoid this-- maybe they have to take *extra* care, since in professional
scientific research, reputation is so attached to scientific results.
--
Matt McIrvin
Ace Schallger
<mmci...@world.std.com> wrote:
> This could be a reasonable approach if, in fact, we're dealing with
> several different phenomena instead of just one. After all, the
> *observers* of ball lightning are necessarily in the position of the blind
> men-- since the reports are so isolated and anecdotal, and differ in the
> described behavior, it's hard to tell whether all of the things described
> as ball lightning are really the same animal.
It would be hard to tell if all were really the same animal but one who
collects a lot of data from a lot of blind men comes much closer to
seeing the form of the elephant than any of the blind men. Since BL
has been reported from the time of Aristotle to the present day with
hundreds if not thousands of reports to draw upon I don't think that it
is unreasonable to have a list of common attributes and abilities and
characteristics of BL and then to look of for a general solution that
would have all of those characteristics, etc.
> On the other hand, I agree that it's a fallacy to come up with a theory
> that explains one feature and then announce "this is the correct
> explanation of ball lightning."
Absolutely. This has been the general tendency for many investigators
though and every once in a while some investigators will do just that.
> This would be a fallacy even if it
> explained *all* the previously observed features!
Not necessarily. There is no doubt in my mind, after 29 years of
interest and reseach related to this problem, that there is a general
phenomenon that underlies most BL events.
We know that they most often occur in the near vicinity of lightning
strokes or in the vicinity of strong electrical discharge activity
whether of natural or man made origin. They have been observed to
emerge from tornadoes and eyewitnesses of tornadoes have reported
intense electrical activity associated with tornadoes. (See article by
Vonnegut, B., and Moore, C. Bl; Journal of Meteorology, 14:284-285,
1957.) We know that BL can be intense, bright and can contain
significant amounts of energy or they can be tenuous and wispy enough
to see through yet retain enough energy to cause reddening of the skin
after contact. We know that they frequently are loud or are humming,
yet some are silent. They sometimes display magnetic properties. They
can penetrate plate glass and sheet metal. They can explode violently,
sometimes killing people and or livestock or have done damage to
property. Sometimes there's limb darkening reported. One witness I
interviewed had one come inside of a car that he was driving. It
electrically stunned him to the point where he nearly wrecked the car.
Two eyeswitnesses I interviewed reported seeing a BL that sheared off a
telephone pole.
Here's a report from Symons's Monthly Merteorological Magazine, 4:
123-124, 1869 about a fiery whirlwind.
"Out in Cheatham county about noon on Wednesday--a remarkably hot day--
on the farm of Ed Sharp, five miles from Ashland, a sort of whirlwind
came along over the neighboring woods, taking up small branches and
leaves of trees and burning them in a sort of flaming cylinder that
travelled at the rate of about five miles an hour, developing size as
ti travelled. It passed directly over the spot where a team of horses
were feeeding and singed their manes and tails up to the roots; it then
swept towards the house, taking a stack of hay in its course. It
seemed to increase in heat as it went, and by the time it reached the
house it immediately fired the shingles from end to end of the
building, so that in ten minutes the whole dwelling was wrapped in
flames. The tall colum of travelling caloric then continued its course
over a wheat field that had been recently cradled, setting fire to all
the stacks that happend to be in its course. Passing from the field,
its path lay over a stretch of woods which reached the river. The
green leaves on the trees were crisped to a cinder for a breadth of
twenty yards, in a straight line to the Cumberland. When the "pillar
of fire" reached the water, it suddenly changed its course down the
river, raising a column of steam which went up to the clouds for about
half a mile, when it finally died out. Not less than 200 people this
strangest of strange phenomena, and all of them tell substantially the
same story about it. The farmer, Sharp, was left houseless by the
devouring element, and his two horses were so affected that no good is
expected to be got out of them in future. Several withered trees in
the woods through which it passed were set on fire, and continue
burning still." <end of report>
Now, I mention this only because it seems that there is a relationship
or blending together of vortical or rotational phenomena and BL on some
occassions. An ordinary whirlwind observed in Africa by scientists
waiting for an eclipse was followed by a truck with instruments capable
of measuring and recording the electrical field gradient and it
appeared to have a dipole nature and had a range of 500-600 volts per
meter. See "The Electrical Field of a Large Dust Devil" Freier, G.D.:
Journal of Geophysical Research, 65:3504, 1960. If lightning can
continuously go up and down in the funnel of a tornado then it appears
that the gradient there can be hundreds of thousands volts per meter.
And there seems to be some evidence of oscillation. Vonnegut in the
Journal of Geophysical Research, 65:205-206, 1960 comments that "It is
worth remarking, however, that an understanding of ball lightning may
very well be necessary if the tornado puzzle is to be solved."
indicating that others have also made the connection between the two
phenomena.
The Newbottle Whirlwind of Nov. 30th, 1872 Beesley T.; Symons's Monthly
Meterological Magazine, 8:150, 153, 1873 [in part] "as I was leaving
the house, my gardner called me to come quickly and see the ball of
fire. I was unfortunately, half a minute too late, but I have seen
four persons who saw it from different points, and who all agree they
heard a whizzing roaring sound like a passing train, which attracted
their attention, and then saw a huge revolving ball of fire travelling
from six to ten feet off of the ground. The smoke was whizzing round
and rising high into the air, and a blast of wind accompanied it,
carrying a cloud of branches along and destroying everything in its
way. The havoc dones is very considerable---large trees bodily
uprooted, other broken off about ten feet from the gound, others have
all their branches snapped off; in one place about 100 yards of a wall
laid flat, and the remainder thrown over at intervals, as if the ball
had rebounded, and some of the stones carried ten yards off. I rode
this afternoon along the whole line of its journey, about two miles in
length; the direction was from S.W. to N.E., and near the end it turned
N.W. Where it first began the breadth of ground travelled over was
very narrow, but increased as it proceeded, tin in the last field the
debris covered a space quite 150 yards wide, and here it seems to have
exhausted itself, as all the witnesses agree tha the ball of fire
seemed to vanish at this spot without any explosion. Here the ground
had been cut in places as if by a cannon ball, but I could find no
cause for this, and I saw no signs of fire on its route. One man,
however, says there was a strong sulpherous smell after it had passed."
<end of quote>. In the same issue a gardner at Newbottle Manor
reported he heard a noise like a long railway train crossing a
bridge...then immediately afterwards "a dark ball, as big as a
carriage", red sparks were seen emitted from the ball.
I have read of at least one occasion when a ball was black and I have
read one report of a tornado (one which destroyed the first Mormon
temple at Nauvoo, Illinois) in which the propagation of light was
suppressed. See 'Early American Tornadoes'. So, on the basis of
these two notions we might ask what sort of phenomenon associated with
electricity might suppress the emission of radiation?
Lastly, associated with tornadoes there are hints of effects that
resemble what might be termed some sort of a gravitational effect where
people have been lifted up but not by the force of wind but rather by
what they have discribed as an 'invisible force'. See Electric Storms
and Tornadoes in France on Aug. 18 And 19, 1890, Hazen, H. A., Science
17:304305, 1891
One tornado in Boston that was several blocks away seemed to have an
antigravity effect on a small boy who rose into the air but was pulled
back down by his mother and her female companion. Down the street a
man delivering eggs reported the eggs floating in the air. This seems
remarkable that the man was not lifted up also since he would be much
more aerodynamically dirty than the eggs and if there were some sort of
a vacuum cleaner effect the man would likely be sucked up before the
eggs.
So, what sort of phenomenon can account for all of these things or what
underlying phenomenon can produce all of these effects?
I believe that it is something so basic that when we fully understand
it then we'll have a new physics that ties together gravity and
electromagnetism.
Ace Schallger
[Moderator's note: in the last sentence we are coming close to "overly
speculative land" - jb]
J. J. Lodder
Don't think so,
more a matter of sound scientific judgement.
Lots of things were tried and dropped again
in the early days, you know,
Jan
Ace Schallger
<rds...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Anecdotal Evidence
> In 1972, I was a Patrol Plane Navigator in a Navy P-3 Orion aircraft
> (the same airframe as recently landed on Hainan, China) with aluminum
> fuselage about 12 feet in diameter and 100 feet long.
>
> While on a patrol flight in the Pacific several hundred miles from
> land in tropical waters and on a particularly stormy night, with lots
> of lightning fairly low altitude (about 1000 feet) no lights in
> fuselage other than instruments, I observed a bluish green ball about
> a foot in diameter travel from the front to the back while traveling
> the centerline of the fuselage. It lasted about a minute. Nothing was
> damaged.
>
> No sound was heard from the ball, but engine noise may have
> overwhelmed any generated sound.
>
> At first I thought it was St. Elmo's fire but this phenomenon is
> created at points and sharp edges and not in the open air.
>
> In 2,500 hours flying time, I only observed this phenomenon once.
>
> Would this observed phenomenon fall under the Ball Lightning concept?
Absolutely. This sort of report is similar to others where ball
lightning has entered aircraft in flight. You might add any other
imformation that you can honestly dredge up from your memory - such as
when did you first notice the ball? Was it in the aircraft when you
first noticed it? How did it exit? Did it exit? Did it fade away?
did any other crew members see the ball? Do you have their names and
contact information? Was it optically thick or could you see through
it? How bright was it?
Cheers,
Ace Schallger
Urs Schreiber
reminiscent of so called "supernatural" phenomena. This makes it both
very interesting and very difficult to seriously discuss its possible
causes. E.g., when you mention somebody's hypothesis that BL derives
its energy from cosmic rays, this sounds pretty absurd (to me). On the
other hand, you can always argue that it has to derive its energy from
*some* *unknown* source, so apparent absurdity is not really a point
against a hypothesis, and I would agree. Its just hard to discuss things
under such circumstances.
For centuries people did not, and could not, have a clue as to the true
nature and cause of *ordinary* lightning, and, even though the
phenomenon was very well known to exist. Without any knowledge of
electromagnetism, speculation on the nature of lightning is bound to be
vain. One probably has to do all the little steps that lead from rubbing
amber on fur to an understanding of the principles of electricity to
"understand" lightning someday. This may be a long way, but it is likely
to yield progress.
Something like this might apply to the field of physics in its entirety:
Search for shortcuts is risky, progress it achieved by a multitude of
small, seemingly unexciting steps. Just consider Galilei: In his time
the educated part of Europe (i.e. the clerics) were very much concerned
with big and exciting questions like the origin of our world, the cause
and goal of human existence, and so on. I can imagine that they must
have regarded Galilei, professor of mathematics, insane for studying
such a mind numbing trivial thing as the fall of a metal ball! While
they were concerned with the really deep questions this guy was wasting
his time with childish trivialities! But a few centuries later it now
turns out that a huge chain of such then seemingly pointless endeavors
like Galilei introduced into science (i.e. experiments) finally puts us
into position to begin to make some real progress on these "final
questions" that the critics of Galilei were concerned with. By starting
with dropping metal balls one has eventually learned something about the
origin of the universe, life, humans, etc. It was (and is) a very long
way, but still better than insisting on shortcuts that do not exist.
What I am trying to say here is, that it might not be very fruitful to
tackle problems that are simply not yet solvable. It'd be better to
tackle the solvable problems first and, when these are solved, to see
which new, deeper problems arise, which can then be approached. But I do
understand the fascination of going for the deep questions first.
Squark
<1ew904g.bj...@de-ster.demon.nl>):
>
>Dirk Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> "J. J. Lodder" <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote in message
>> news:1ew0kj3.be...@de-ster.demon.nl...
>>
>> I assume he gave up because of the difficuly of getting a sample of BL to
>> study, rather than because the idea itself was at fault.
>
>Don't think so,
>more a matter of sound scientific judgement.
What do you mean? That scientific judgement implies ball lightnings aren't
plasma? It's hard to imagine what else can it be...
Best regards,
Squark.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Write to me at:
[Note: the fourth letter of the English alphabet is used in the following
exclusively as anti-spam]
dSdqudarkd_...@excite.com
Ace Schallger
<dSdqudarkd_...@excite.com> wrote:
> What do you mean? That scientific judgement implies ball lightnings aren't
> plasma? It's hard to imagine what else can it be...
It is not as simple as their just being plasmas. When a BL is seen by
numerous airline passengers to pass from the cabin right through the
sheet metal of an airliner in flight and then to go bouncing along the
wing it doesn't make any since at all to believe that the excited gases
passed through the sheet metal as well. When more than one pilot has
reported BL coming right through the plexiglass without harming it one
cannot sensibly consider that the gas molecules and atoms which were in
an excited state actually passed through 3/8" thick plexiglass. So the
logical thought here, it seems to me, is that, instead, the underlying
phenomenon causes the gases to become ionized. So we have the scenario
of a phenomenon that passes through sheet metal and plexiglass (and
ceramic tiles in the lab) which has the necessary electric field
gradients to ionize the air around it. This is the thing we should be
looking for, and not become confused by the secondary phenomenon of
ionization but rather search for the primary phenomenon that can cause
ionization.
Ace Schallger.
Gordon D. Pusch
at the moment won't accept Gordon Pusch's usual antispammed From:
line for some reason. His address in the From: line should have a
".xnet." between the NO and the SPAM. -TB]
Squark<dSdqudarkd_...@excite.com> writes:
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 04:43:00 GMT, J. J. Lodder wrote (in
> <1ew904g.bj...@de-ster.demon.nl>):
>>
>> Dirk Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> "J. J. Lodder" <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote in message
>>> news:1ew0kj3.be...@de-ster.demon.nl...
>>>> He soon gave up, to explore more promising avenues.
>>>
>>> I assume he gave up because of the difficuly of getting a sample of BL to
>>> study, rather than because the idea itself was at fault.
>>
>> Don't think so,
>> more a matter of sound scientific judgement.
>
> What do you mean? That scientific judgement implies ball lightnings
> aren't plasma? It's hard to imagine what else can it be...
A recent paper by John Abrahamson and James Dinniss [_Nature_ v.403,
pp.519--521 (2000)] proposed that:
``When normal lightning strikes soil, chemical energy is stored in
nanoparticles of Si, SiO or SiC, which are ejected into the air as
a filamentary network. As the particles are slowly oxidized in air,
the stored energy is released as heat and light.''
So the author is proposing that it is essentially an exotic form
of chemical combustion, and not electrical in nature at all.
The full text appears to be publicly available via:
<http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v403/n6769/full/403519a0_fs.html>
-- Gordon D. Pusch
perl -e '$_ = "gdpusch\@NO.xnet.SPAM.com\n"; s/NO\.//; s/SPAM\.//; print;'
J. J. Lodder
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 04:43:00 GMT, J. J. Lodder wrote (in
> <1ew904g.bj...@de-ster.demon.nl>):
> >
> >Dirk Bruere <art...@kbnet.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> "J. J. Lodder" <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote in message
> >> news:1ew0kj3.be...@de-ster.demon.nl...
> >> > He soon gave up, to explore more promising avenues.
> >>
> >> I assume he gave up because of the difficuly of getting a sample of BL to
> >> study, rather than because the idea itself was at fault.
> >
> >Don't think so,
> >more a matter of sound scientific judgement.
>
> What do you mean? That scientific judgement implies ball lightnings aren't
> plasma?
Knowledge of plasma properties as established on basis of theory and
experiment does not yield an explanation of ball lightning.
On the contrary, predicted decay times, assuming plasma,
are far shorter then what is reported.
(both on basis of confinement loss and energy loss)
> It's hard to imagine what else can it be...
Indeed, that's why ball lightning still represents a challenge,
Jan
Graham Rounce
"Ace Schallger" <phys...@att.net> wrote in message
news:150720011452056882%phys...@att.net...
> a phenomenon that passes through sheet metal and
> plexiglass (and ceramic tiles in the lab)
What DOES happen to the materials they pass through? Are they apparently
untouched, burned, disrupted in any way, have any microscopic holes, etc?
PS: Ace - Am I still on yr email list for "I've found a general solution
which satisfies me and if you are
interested you can drop me an email."? - Which I did? - Thanks in advance...
zir...@my-deja.com
>A recent paper by John Abrahamson and James Dinniss [_Nature_ v.403,
>pp.519--521 (2000)] [....]
>So the author is proposing that it is essentially an exotic form
>of chemical combustion, and not electrical in nature at all.
Another combustion hypothesis for ball lightning was made by engineers at
Canterbury University in NZ. See this news article:
zir...@my-deja.com
says...
>>A recent paper by John Abrahamson and James Dinniss [_Nature_ v.403,
>>pp.519--521 (2000)] [....]
>
>>So the author is proposing that it is essentially an exotic form
>>of chemical combustion, and not electrical in nature at all.
>Another combustion hypothesis for ball lightning was made by engineers at
>Canterbury University in NZ. See this news article:
>http://home.dmv.com/~tbastian/balite.htm
Actually, this news article is also about the work of John Abrahamson, but it
discusses an earlier experiment done with P. Coleman.
Matt Kennel
:In article <UWz37.18021$Kf3.2...@www.newsranger.com>, Squark
Would this suggest exploring notions of string theories or exotic particles?
Bits of a neutron star? Micro blackholes?
:Ace Schallger.
--
* Matthew B. Kennel/Institute for Nonlinear Science, UCSD
*
* "To chill, or to pop a cap in my dome, whoomp! there it is."
* Hamlet, Fresh Prince of Denmark.
Graham Rounce
news:slrn9n5lio.e31.SPAMB...@lyapunov.ucsd.edu...
> On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 21:52:14 GMT, Ace Schallger <phys...@att.net> wrote:
> :In article <UWz37.18021$Kf3.2...@www.newsranger.com>, Squark
> :<dSdqudarkd_...@excite.com> wrote:
> When a BL is seen by numerous airline passengers to pass
> from the cabin right through the sheet metal of an airliner in
> flight and then to go bouncing along the wing
How well documented is this? Why should the BL go through the metal of the
fuselage, but bounce off the metal of the wing? What about the 600mph wind
outside??
> passed through 3/8" thick plexiglass.
Has the plexiglass, or aluminium in the case of the fuselage, been properly
minutely examined? Is there any charring, microscopic holes, deformation,
or anything at all? It would be nice to get more verifiable facts into
this.
Graham Rounce