Ball lightning

Ball lightning is a proposed atmospheric electrical phenomenon of which little is known. The term refers to reports of luminous, usually spherical objects which vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. It is usually associated with thunderstorms, but lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt. Many of the early reports say that the ball eventually explodes, sometimes with fatal consequences, leaving behind the odor of sulfur.

Laboratory experiments have produced effects that are visually similar to reports of ball lightning, but it is presently unknown whether these are actually related to any naturally occurring phenomenon. Scientific data on natural ball lightning are scarce owing to its infrequency and unpredictability. The presumption of its existence is based on reported public sightings, and has therefore produced somewhat inconsistent findings. Given inconsistencies and the lack of reliable data, the true nature of ball lightning is still unknown.^[1] Until recently, ball lightning was often regarded as a fantasy or a hoax, but some serious scientific discussions and theories have attempted to explain it.

Contents 1 Historical accounts 1.1 The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe-in-the-Moor 1.2 The Catherine and Mary 1.3 The Montague 1.4 Georg Richmann 1.5 HMS Warren Hastings 1.6 Ebenezer Cobham Brewer 1.7 Wilfrid de Fonvielle 1.8 Tsar Nicholas II 1.9 Aleister Crowley 1.10 Other accounts 2 Characteristics 3 Laboratory experiments 3.1 Water discharge experiments 3.2 Home microwave oven experiments 3.3 Silicon experiments 3.4 Transcranial magnetic stimulation analogy 4 Possible scientific explanations 4.1 Vaporized silicon hypothesis 4.2 Nanobattery hypothesis 4.3 Black hole hypothesis 4.4 Transcranial magnetic stimulation 4.5 Other hypotheses 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Further reading 8 External links

Historical accounts

In a 1960 study, 5% of the US population reported having witnessed ball lightning.^[2][3] Another study analyzed reports of 10,000 cases.^[2][4]

M. l'abbé de Tressan, in Mythology compared with history: or, the fables of the ancients elucidated from historical records:

... during a storm which endangered the ship Argo, fires were seen to play round the heads of the Tyndarides, and the instant after the storm ceased. From that time, those fires which frequently appear on the surface of the ocean were called the fire of Castor and Pollux. When two were seen at the same time, it announced the return of calm, when only one, it was the presage of a dreadful storm. This species of fire is frequently seen by sailors, and is a species of ignis fatuus. (page 417)

The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe-in-the-Moor

One of the earliest descriptions was reported during The Great Thunderstorm at a church in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, in England, on 21 October 1638. Four people died and approximately 60 were injured when, during a severe storm, an 8-foot (2.4 m) ball of fire was described as striking and entering the church, nearly destroying it. Large stones from the church walls were hurled into the ground and through large wooden beams. The ball of fire allegedly smashed the pews and many windows, and filled the church with a foul sulfurous odor and dark, thick smoke.

The ball of fire reportedly divided into two segments, one exiting through a window by smashing it open, the other disappearing somewhere inside the church. The explanation at the time, because of the fire and sulfur smell, was that the ball of fire was "the devil" or the "flames of hell". Later, some blamed the entire incident on two people who had been playing cards in the pew during the sermon, thereby incurring God's wrath.^[5]

The Catherine and Mary

In December 1726 a number of British newspapers printed an extract of a letter from John Howell of the sloop Catherine and Mary:

As we were coming thro’ the Gulf of Florida on the 29th of August, a large ball of fire fell from the Element and split our mast in Ten Thousand Pieces, if it were possible; split our Main Beam, also Three Planks of the Side, Under Water, and Three of the Deck; kill’d one man, another had his Hand carried of,[sic] and had it not been for the violent rains, our Sails would have been of a Blast of Fire.^[6][7]

The Montague

One particularly large example was reported "on the authority of Dr. Gregory" in 1749:

Admiral Chambers on board the Montague, November 4, 1749, was taking an observation just before noon...he observed a large ball of blue fire about three miles distant from them. They immediately lowered their topsails, but it came up so fast upon them, that, before they could raise the main tack, they observed the ball rise almost perpendicularly, and not above forty or fifty yards from the main chains when it went off with an explosion, as great as if a hundred cannons had been discharged at the same time, leaving behind it a strong sulphurous smell. By this explosion the main top-mast was shattered into pieces and the main mast went down to the keel. Five men were knocked down and one of them much bruised. Just before the explosion, the ball seemed to be the size of a large mill-stone.^[8]

Georg Richmann

A 1753 report depicts ball lightning as being lethal, when Professor Georg Richmann of Saint Petersburg, Russia, created a kite-flying apparatus similar to Benjamin Franklin's proposal a year earlier. Richmann was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences when he heard thunder, and ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the experiment was under way, ball lightning appeared and traveled down the string, struck Richmann's forehead and killed him. The ball left a red spot on Richmann's forehead, his shoes were blown open, and his clothing was singed. His engraver was knocked unconscious. The door frame of the room was split and the door was torn from its hinges.^[9]

HMS Warren Hastings

An English journal reported that during an 1809 storm, three "balls of fire" appeared and "attacked" the British ship HMS Warren Hastings. The crew watched one ball descend, killing a man on deck and setting the main mast on fire. A crewman went out to retrieve the fallen body and was struck by a second ball, which knocked him back and left him with mild burns. A third man was killed by contact with the third ball. Crew members reported a persistent, sickening sulfur smell afterward.^[10][11]

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, in his 1864 US edition of A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, discussed "globular lightning". He describes it as slow-moving balls of fire or explosive gas that sometimes fall to the earth or run along the ground during a thunderstorm. He said that the balls sometimes split into smaller balls and may explode "like a cannon".^[12]

Wilfrid de Fonvielle

In his book Thunder and Lighting,^[13] translated into English in 1875, French science writer, Wilfred de Fonvielle wrote that there had been about 150 reports of globular lightning:

Globular lighting seems to be particularly attracted to metals; thus it will seek the railings of balconies, or else water or gas pipes etc, It has no peculiar tint of its own but will appear of any colour as the case may be...at Coethen in the Duchy of Anhalt it appeared green. M. Colon, Vice-President of the Geological Society of Paris, saw a ball of lightning descend slowly from the sky along the bark of a poplar tree; as soon as it touched the earth it bounced up again, and disappeared without exploding. On 10th of September 1845 a ball of lightning entered the kitchen of a house in the village of Salagnac in the valley of Correze. This ball rolled across without doing any harm to two women and a young man who were here; but on getting into an adjoining stable it exploded and killed a pig which happened to be shut up there, and which, knowing nothing about the wonders of thunder and lightning, dared to smell it in the most rude and unbecoming manner. The motion of such balls is far from being very rapid — they have even been observed occasionally to pause in their course, but they are not the less destructive for all that. A ball of lightning which entered the church of Stralsund, on exploding, projected a number of balls which exploded in their turn like shells.^[14]

Tsar Nicholas II

Tsar Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, reported witnessing what he called "a fiery ball" while in the company of his grandfather, Tsar Alexander II: "Once my parents were away," recounted the Tsar, "and I was at the all-night vigil with my grandfather in the small church in Alexandria. During the service there was a powerful thunderstorm, streaks of lightning flashed one after the other, and it seemed as if the peals of thunder would shake even the church and the whole world to its foundations. Suddenly it became quite dark, a blast of wind from the open door blew out the flame of the candles which were lit in front of the iconostasis, there was a long clap of thunder, louder than before, and I suddenly saw a fiery ball flying from the window straight towards the head of the Emperor. The ball (it was of lightning) whirled around the floor, then passed the chandelier and flew out through the door into the park. My heart froze, I glanced at my grandfather – his face was completely calm. He crossed himself just as calmly as he had when the fiery ball had flown near us, and I felt that it was unseemly and not courageous to be frightened as I was ... After the ball had passed through the whole church, and suddenly gone out through the door, I again looked at my grandfather. A faint smile was on his face, and he nodded his head at me. My panic disappeared, and from that time I had no more fear of storms."^[15]

Aleister Crowley

British occultist Aleister Crowley reported witnessing what he referred to as "globular electricity" during a thunderstorm on Lake Pasquaney^[16] in New Hampshire in 1916. He was sheltered in a small cottage when he "noticed, with what I can only describe as calm amazement, that a dazzling globe of electric fire, apparently between six and twelve inches (15–30 cm) in diameter, was stationary about six inches below and to the right of my right knee. As I looked at it, it exploded with a sharp report quite impossible to confuse with the continuous turmoil of the lightning, thunder and hail, or that of the lashed water and smashed wood which was creating a pandemonium outside the cottage. I felt a very slight shock in the middle of my right hand, which was closer to the globe than any other part of my body."^[17]

Other accounts

• On 30 April 1877, a ball of lightning entered the Golden Temple at Amritsar, India, and exited through a side door. Several people observed the ball, and the incident is inscribed on the front wall of Darshani Deodhi.^[18]

• In July 1907 the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse in Western Australia was hit by ball lightning. Lighthouse keeper Patrick Baird was in the tower at the time and was knocked unconscious. His daughter Ethel recorded the event.^[19]

• An early fictional reference to ball lightning appears in a children's book set in the 19th century by Laura Ingalls Wilder.^[20] The books are considered historical fiction, but the author always insisted they were descriptive of actual events in her life. In Wilder's description, three separate balls of lightning appear during a winter blizzard near a cast iron stove in the family's kitchen. They are described as appearing near the stovepipe, then rolling across the floor, only to disappear as the mother (Caroline Ingalls) chases them with a willow-branch broom.^[21]

• Pilots in World War II described an unusual phenomenon for which ball lightning has been suggested as an explanation. The pilots saw small balls of light moving in strange trajectories, which came to be referred to as foo fighters.

• Submariners in WWII gave the most frequent and consistent accounts of small ball lightning in the confined submarine atmosphere. There are repeated accounts of inadvertent production of floating explosive balls when the battery banks were switched in or out, especially if mis-switched or when the highly inductive electrical motors were mis-connected or disconnected. An attempt later to duplicate those balls with a surplus submarine battery resulted in several failures and an explosion.^[22]

• On 6 August 1944, a ball of lightning went through a closed window in Uppsala, Sweden, leaving a circular hole about 5 cm in diameter. The incident was witnessed by residents in the area, and was recorded by a lightning strike tracking system^[23] on the Division for Electricity and Lightning Research at Uppsala University.^[24]

Characteristics

Descriptions of ball lightning vary wildly. It has been described as moving up and down, sideways or in unpredictable trajectories, hovering and moving with or against the wind; attracted to,^[25] unaffected by, or repelled from buildings, people, cars and other objects. Some accounts describe it as moving through solid masses of wood or metal without effect, while others describe it as destructive and melting or burning those substances. Its appearance has also been linked to power lines^[26] as well as during thunderstorms and also calm weather. Ball lightning has been described as transparent, translucent, multicolored, evenly lit, radiating flames, filaments or sparks, with shapes that vary between spheres, ovals, tear-drops, rods, or disks.^[27]

Ball lightning is often erroneously identified as St. Elmo's fire. They are separate and distinct phenomena.^[28]

The balls have been reported to disperse in many different ways, such as suddenly vanishing, gradually dissipating, absorption into an object, "popping," exploding loudly, or even exploding with force, which is sometimes reported as damaging. Accounts also vary on their alleged danger to humans, from lethal to harmless.

A review of the available literature published in 1972^[29] identified the properties of a “typical” lightning ball, whilst cautioning against over-reliance on eye-witness accounts:

• They frequently appear almost simultaneously with cloud-to-ground lightning discharge
• They are generally spherical or pear-shaped with fuzzy edges
• Their diameters range from 1-100 cm, most commonly 10-20 cm
• Their brightness corresponds to roughly that of a domestic lamp, so they can be seen clearly in daylight
• A wide range of colors has been observed, red, orange and yellow being the most common.
• The lifetime of each event is from 1 second to over a minute with the brightness remaining fairly constant during that time
• They tend to move, most often in a horizontal direction at a few meters per second, but may also move vertically, remain stationary or wander erratically.
• Many are described as having rotational motion
• It is rare that observers report the sensation of heat, although in some cases the disappearance of the ball is accompanied by the liberation of heat
• Some display an affinity for metal objects and may move along conductors such as wires or metal fences
• Some appear within buildings passing through closed doors and windows
• Some have appeared within metal aircraft and have entered and left without causing damage
• The disappearance of a ball is generally rapid and may be either silent or explosive
• Odors resembling ozone, burning sulfur, or nitrogen oxides are often reported

Laboratory experiments

Scientists have long attempted to produce ball lightning in laboratory experiments. While some experiments have produced effects that are visually similar to reports of natural ball lightning, it has not yet been determined whether there is any relation.

Nikola Tesla was reportedly able to produce artificially 1.5" (3.8 cm) balls and conducted some demonstrations of his ability,^[30] but he was really interested in higher voltages and powers, and remote transmission of power, so the balls he made were just a curiosity.^[31]

The International Committee on Ball Lightning holds regular symposia on the subject,^[32] the most recent of which took place in Kaliningrad, Russia in 2008.^[33] A related group uses the generic name "Unconventional Plasmas".^[34]

Water discharge experiments

Some scientific groups, including the Max Planck Institute, have reportedly produced a ball lightning-type effect by discharging a high-voltage capacitor in a tank of water.^[35][36]

Home microwave oven experiments

Many modern experiments involve using a microwave oven to produce small rising glowing balls, often referred to as "plasma balls".

Generally, the experiments are conducted by placing a lit or recently extinguished match or other small object in a microwave oven. The burnt portion of the object flares up into a large ball of fire, while "plasma balls" can be seen floating near the ceiling of the oven chamber. The effect is caused by electricity arcing between the conductive carbon particles in the soot, similar to the way electricity arcs between the tines of a fork. This can damage the oven by leaving burn marks and causing high-voltage electrical discharge back into the oven's magnetron.

Some experiments describe covering the match with an inverted glass jar, which contains both the flame and the balls so that they will not damage the chamber walls. Other experimenters report that substituting a nickel for the match produces better results. Some experimenters have posted instructions, photos, and videos of these experiments.^[37]

The plasma balls vanish about 30 ms after the microwave power is turned off, leaving uncertainty as to whether these are related to ball lightning or are independent phenomena. Experiments by Eli Jerby and Vladimir Dikhtyar in Israel revealed that microwave plasma balls are made up of nanoparticles with an average radius of 25 nm. The Israeli team demonstrated the phenomenon with copper, salts, water and carbon.^[38]

Silicon experiments

Experiments in 2007 involved shocking silicon wafers with electricity, which vaporizes the silicon and induces oxidation in the vapors. The visual effect can be described as small glowing, sparkling orbs that roll around a surface. Two Brazilian scientists, Antonio Pavão and Gerson Paiva of the Federal University of Pernambuco^[39] have reportedly consistently made small long-lasting balls using this method.^[40][41] These experiments stemmed from the theory that ball lightning is actually oxidized silicon vapors (see vaporized silicon hypothesis, below).

Transcranial magnetic stimulation analogy

Theoretical calculations from University of Innsbruck researchers suggest that the magnetic fields involved in certain types of lightning strokes could potentially induce visual hallucinations resembling ball lightning.^[42] Such fields, which are found within close distances to a point in which multiple lightning strikes have occurred over a few seconds, can directly cause the neurons in the visual cortex to fire, resulting in Magnetophosphenes (magnetically-induced visual hallucinations).^[43]

Possible scientific explanations

An attempt to explain ball lightning was made by Nikola Tesla in 1904,^[44] but there is at present no widely-accepted explanation for the phenomenon. Several theories have been advanced since it was brought into the scientific realm by the English Physician and electrical researcher William Snow Harris in 1843,^[45] and French Academy scientist François Arago in 1855.^[46]

Vaporized silicon hypothesis

This hypothesis suggests that ball lightning consists of vaporized silicon burning through oxidation. Lightning striking Earth's soil could vaporize the silica contained within it, turning it into pure silicon vapor. As it cools, the silicon could condense into a floating aerosol, bound by its charge, glowing due to the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen. An experimental investigation of this effect, published in 2007, reported producing "luminous balls with lifetime in the order of seconds" by evaporating pure silicon with an electric arc.^[47][48][49] Videos of this experiment have been made available.^[50]

Nanobattery hypothesis

Oleg Meshcheryakov suggests that ball lightning is made of composite nano or submicrometre particles, each particle constituting a battery. A surface discharge shorts these batteries, resulting in a current which forms the ball. His model is described as an aerosol, but not aerogel, model that explains all the observable properties and processes of ball lightning.^[51][52]

Black hole hypothesis

Another hypothesis is that some ball lightning is the passage of microscopic primordial black holes through the Earth's atmosphere as proposed by Mario Rabinowitz in Astrophysics and Space Science journal in 1999.^[53] Inspired by M. Fitzgerald’s account of ball lightning on 6 August 1868, in Ireland that lasted 20 minutes and left a 6 meter square hole, a 90 meter long trench, a second trench 25 meters long, and a small cave in the peat bog, Pace VanDevender, a plasma physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his team found depressions consistent with Fitzgerald’s report and inferred that the evidence is inconsistent with thermal (chemical or nuclear) and electrostatic effects. An electromagnetically levitated, compact mass of over 20,000 kg would produce the reported effects but requires a density of more than 2000 times the density of gold, which implies a miniature black hole. He and his team found a second event in the peat-bog witness plate from 1982 and are currently trying to geolocate electromagnetic emission consistent with the hypothesis. His colleagues at the institute agreed that, implausible though the hypothesis seemed, it was worthy of their attention.^[54]

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

Cooray and Cooray (2008)^[55] stated that the features of hallucinations experienced by patients having epileptic seizures in the occipital lobe are similar to the observed features of ball lightning. The study also showed that the rapidly changing magnetic field of a close lightning flash has a strength which is large enough to excite the neurons in the brain strengthening the possibility of lightning-induced seizure in the occipital lobe of a person located close to a lightning strike establishing the connection between epileptic hallucination mimicking ball lightning and thunderstorms. More recent research with Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been shown to give the same hallucination results in the laboratory (termed magnetophospenes), and these conditions have been shown to occur in nature near lightning strikes.^[56][57]

Other hypotheses

Several other hypotheses have been proposed to explain ball lightning:

• Spinning electric dipole hypothesis. A 1976 article by V. G. Endean postulated that ball lightning could be described as an electric field vector spinning in the microwave frequency region.^[58]
• Electrostatic Leyden jar models. Stanley Singer discussed (1971) this type of hypothesis and suggested that the electrical recombination time would be too short for the ball lightning lifetimes often reported.^[59]
• J. Pace VanDevender separates extreme ball lightning of the highly energetic violent kind, and proposes a theory of neutrinos and heavy neutrinos.^[60]
• Smirnov proposed (1987) a fractal aerogel hypothesis.^[61]
• Fedosin S.G. and Kim A.S. proposed (2000) Electron-ionic model.^[62]
• Torchigin proposed (2003) considering ball lightning as a form of self-confined intense light.^[63]

See also

• St. Elmo's fire
• Naga fireballs
• Hessdalen light
• Will-o'-the-wisp
• Hitodama
• Foo fighter
• Spontaneous human combustion
• Red sprite
• Marfa lights

Notes

Further reading

• Barry, James Dale (1980). Ball Lightning and Bead Lightning. New York: Plenum Press. 
• Cade, Cecil Maxwell; Delphine Davis (1969). The Taming of the Thunderbolts. New York: Abelard-Schuman Limited. 
• Coleman, Peter F. (2004). Great Balls of Fire—A Unified Theory of Ball Lightning, UFOs, Tunguska and other Anomalous Lights. Christchurch, NZ: Fireshine Press. 
• Coleman, P.F. 2006, J.Sci.Expl., Vol. 20, No.2, 215–238.
• Golde, R. H. (1977). Lightning. Bristol: John Wright and Sons Limited. 
• Golde, R. H. (1977). Lightning Volume 1 Physics of Lightning. Academic Press. 
• Uman, Martin A. (1984). Lightning. Dover Publications. 
• Viemeister, Peter E. (1972). The Lightning Book. Cambridge: MIT Press. 

External links

• A video of a microwave plasma ball experiment
• CityTV report on lightning striking a car
• Brian Dunning's debunking of ball lightning

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