Ball of Light Clocked At 1,800 Miles/second!

[Terry W. Colvin]

SUBJ: Ball of Light Clocked At 1,800 Miles/second!

August 21, 1996. Sarpy County, NE.

1,800 miles/second! That's 6,480,000 miles/hour! This speedy
phenomenon was captured on video tape by D. Morss and P. McCrone.
These researchers were monitoring the top of a thunderstorm with
low-light, high-speed video equipment, when the ball of light
"popped out" of the top of a thundercloud and flashed across their
instrument's field of view in 1/10 of a second. Nevertheless, it
was caught on six video frames. Morss commented as follows:

"It's something that you're going to have to scratch
your head and think, 'What kind of phenomenon could
form this kind of light?'

.....

"It's got to be some kind of trapped charge that popped
out of the top of a thunderstorm."

(Anderson, Julie; "Ball of Light Leaves Scientists in the Dark,"
Omaha Morning Herald, December 18, 1996. Cr. L. Farish.)

Comment. Perhaps 1,800 miles per second should really be 1,800 miles
per hour. This velocity would be comparable with that of another
very speedy "ball of light."

May 25, 1997. Near Loco, Oklahoma.

In what might be called a "video replay" of the above phenomenon,
L. Lamphere caught a similar fast-moving "object" near a tornado-
spawning storm. He and his team had a digital video camera trained
on the storm and were taking time-lapse still photos. Lamphere
reported:

"The ceiling was maybe 900 feet. We were about four
or five miles from the storm, which was tracking
southeast. The object was well-defined and well-lit,
but was obscured briefly by scud clouds. It dipped
and bobbled in its trajectory before it flew into a
storm known to contain hail the size of baseballs
and then re-emerged, apparently undamaged.

"Scientists at the Astrophysics Department at the
University of Oklahoma believe the object was solid
and may have been traveling between 9,000 and 20,000 mph."

(Anonymous; "Image on Storm Video Raises Questions," Dallas Morning
News, June 21, 1997. AP item. Cr. D. Phelps.)

Comment. Just one high-speed "object" might be dismissed as, say, a
photographic artifact. But, when two are caught by cameras imaging
violent meteorological events, we must conclude that something
unusual is going on.

From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997. (C) 1997-2000 William R. Corliss
BT