
Relativistic-microwave theory of ball lightning - fitzwatermellow
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep28263
======
chmike
The theory of Prof. Aguste Meessen published well before Wu's article in
Nature already explains ball lightning as a plasma bubble [1]. It is
surprizing that Wu didn't reference this work in its introductory review.

In its most simple form the thin layer of the bubble is a plasma made of
electrons oscillating radially. Like soap bubbles, a plasma bubble may have
multiple ecapsulated bubbles.

A plasma ball is a dynamic system at an equilibrum using ions like ozone as
energy source. The plasma ball will follow ions gradient. It explains why
lightning balls may follow complex path like circling in a room and suddently
going through a cheminey or a key hole.

He explains why plasma balls can traverse windows which are electrical and
chemical reaction insulators.

This theory is now ready to be tested experimentally.

[1] [http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/BL-
Theory.pdf](http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/BL-Theory.pdf)

~~~
beevai142
Note that Wu's article is in Scientific Reports, not Nature. SR is far lower
in the "prestige rank" of physics journals, and it's far easier to get papers
accepted there, so omissions are more likely. On the other hand, Meessen's
paper appears to be unpublished (or according to google scholar, maybe
published in a predatory open access journal) --- and it raises some red flags
that the author didn't want to / couldn't get it published via standard
channels. Not planning to read it, but critical eye may be warranted.

~~~
drjesusphd
A critical eye is always warranted, but the prestige of a journal has no
bearing on the correctness of the claim. This attitude is harmful to science.
Perhaps his analysis is incorrect or lacking somehow, but that's not the
argument you make.

~~~
beevai142
Generally speaking, if a paper is published in a bad journal, it often means
it was submitted first also to other journals, but rejected by reviewers.
Hence, it is more likely there's something wrong with it. Reading papers takes
time, so it is useful to be aware beforehand of how likely the time is well
spent. How is it in this specific case is then a different question.
(Predatory open access _is_ bad --- publishing work on your own website OTOH
is fairly neutral.)

~~~
chmike
I disagree on your logic that discredit articles not published in high ranked
peer review journals. First this assume that peer review is unbiased which is
wrong. There are subjects that will be rejected because they are simply too
controversial and present a risk for the credibility of the journal. This is
totally independent on the scientific validity, value and pertinence of the
article content.

Some articles may be rejected or strongly frowned upon by referee just because
the author has also published on controversial topics like UFOs while the
submitted article is not addressing a controversial subject. Again this is to
protect the credibility of the journal.

Finally, the fact that the author is known or not also strongly influence the
referee's criticism. An author which is known through conferences and
communication exchange is more likely to be trusted on the seriousness and
validity of his work. A submission of a much less known author will be
examined with circonspection and strong criticism, against just as a
protection measure.

You don't take in account those bias while what should really matter is the
scientific validity of the content. If you don't have the compentence to judge
the content, then your red flag raising has nothing to do with science. It's
just gossip.

~~~
chmike
There is another bias in your analysis. You assume that an author of a theory
will always submit his article to a peer review journal. You deduce that if he
doesn't, it implies that the article was rejected. This is wrong logic.

People woes career is research tend in general to focus on one specific
research domain and do publish in peer review journals or perish (loose
financial support and eventually their job). But this is not the case for
everybody and especially not for Prof.Meessen woes job was teaching physics in
a university. He had the luxury to be free to chose any research topic he
wanted and found interesting (not possible anymore). This explains the
diversity of his research topics. Also as a theorist all he needed was a very
good chair, paper and pencils. He had no dependencies on budgets, lab space
and instruments, or personnel.

The assumptions I read in this thread apply to career researchers but can't be
used as a tautology.

Another wrong assumption is that referee are always perfectly competent,
impartial, objective and honest judges. Referee are humans raised in school of
thoughts, have opinions and have limit in their domain and depth of
competence. Implying that a rejected article MUST be crack-pottery is
completely ignoring this and is thus also a bogus logic.

If an article is rejected, the scientific validity and pertinence is thus a
priori UNKNOWN. What IS determinant to evaluate the scientific validity of an
article are the ARGUMENTS of rejection. You don't even consider them.

As an example Prof. Meessen submitted an article on his study on the rotating
compass. In his article he used as example a testimony involving multiple
military ships and I think documented in the project blue book. Based on the
theory presented in the book a referee computed the intensity of the EM field
that should have been produced by the UFO. The intensity was many Tesla if I
remember well. The referee said something along the line that no known
material could sustain such EM magnetic field or an EM field of this intensity
can't be produced. I'm not fully sure because I heard of it more than 25 years
ago.

The objective and true reality is that we DON'T KNOW if it's possible or not.
The article was thus rejected because of the ASSUMPTION (belief/opinion) of
the referee that it was impossible and the editor buying it. Of course
Prof.Meessen didn't waste more time to confront with such types of referees
and clueless journal editors who can't distinguish good referees from
impostors. He than published his work in the Book on the Belgian UFO flap. Red
flag you say ?

Another wrong assumption of yours is that articles are always rejected because
referee reject articles. It may happen also that referee say they can't decide
and don't want thus to endorse the publication of the article. In these rare
case, met by Prof. Meessen for his space time quantification theory, it is
then common practice that the journal editor ask the author to suggest
referees. These then act in fact as endorsers. If you have a strong network
and are in close contact with well known people working on the same research
subject, you can provide them to the editors and these people know if you are
a crook or a respectable scientist. But if you worked mainly alone as did
Prof.Meessen you are stuck. So in this case the lack, or small number, of
publications doesn't prove anything beyond the fact that he doesn't have many
publications. Again completely bogus logic.

If you are a scientist I would advise you to reconsider your career because
your reasoning is deficient and wrong in so many ways. I guess you know where
to put your red flag now.

~~~
chmike
Einstein was very lucky that the chief editor of Annalen der Physik was Max
Planck [1] who was a really smart and open minded scientist. He would have had
a huge red flag I guess. We are missing such types of editors and scientists.

[1] [http://blog.oup.com/2015/11/einstein-planck-general-
relativi...](http://blog.oup.com/2015/11/einstein-planck-general-relativity/)

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mangeletti
I witnessed what I think was ball lightning in my front yard as a kid, here in
South Florida where lightning storms are a +thrice weekly event.

What happened was that lightning struck the ground at the edge of our yard
while we were waiting at the front door for the rain to slow (so we could get
to the car). I jerked my head to the right because of course the sound and
flash scared the heck out of me, and right as I looked there was what looked
like a glowing ball of electricity, the size of a beach ball, just above the
ground, for what seemed like a few seconds.

~~~
cfontes
Nice, maybe this happens on the sky when it's a Earth -> Cloud lighting, which
is a lot less common from what I've read.

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rubidium
This is the reference 6 of the spectrum recording of ball lightning from 2012:
[http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5](http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5)

Impressive that the model has "passed all the tests" for an acceptable theory
of the origin of ball lightning.

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Aelinsaar
This sounds a bit like the process that is believed to lead to terrestrial
gamma ray bursts in the upper atmosphere, I believe.

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breck
nit: would be helpful if the abstract or introduction gave numbers on how
frequently ball lightning occurs, instead of just saying "rare". Is it 1 in
1,000 rare or 1 in a billion rare?

From some Googling, there are 8M lightning strikes per day on earth, so say
about 3.5B strikes per year. Let's say 3% of those strikes are in populated
areas. So ~250,000 lightning strikes per day in populated areas. In the past 5
years, that is ~500M lightning strikes in populated areas. Let's say that
there's at least one person or video camera filming the sky during 20% of
those strikes.

Given we only have 1 video of marginal quality of ball lightning, that makes 1
in a 100M strikes a reasonable guess. But that also makes me think it really
could just be 0 and eye witness accounts are just some visual misperception.

~~~
astrodust
There's no way to compute an approximation here since reports of ball
lightning are so infrequent.

"Populated area" is somewhat subjective here since those that live in a rural,
open area, especially the prairies, are able to observe more lightning
activity.

Most of the reports that I've read about involve those living in the country
where the artifact of the strike, the resulting ball, can be readily observed.

I'd read about a laboratory trying to recreate this phenomenon using submarine
batteries and were more successful in blowing the roof off the warehouse than
creating ball lightning.

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InclinedPlane
tl;dr: Under the right conditions the step leader of a lightning strike can
have a small bunch of electrons out in front of the rest of the tip, and the
extremely strong electrostatic forces at play can then accelerate that bunch
ahead of the tip to relativistic velocities. The bunch then hits the ground
and releases an intensely strong (hundreds of gigawatts) coherent microwave
radiation pulse. Also under the right conditions this microwave pulse can get
trapped as a standing wave inside of a plasma bubble which it maintains
through its own energy, lasting for several seconds. Scientists should be able
to test this theory and create ball lightning artificially if they can build
microwave devices in the 100 GW range.

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davesque
Not an expert but it seems neat that their model apparently explains many
known properties of the phenomenon.

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cmenge
I read "lightsabers are totally possible". Where can I preorder?

~~~
stcredzero
That would be more like light-flails or light-maces.

~~~
macintux
I need a lightsaber to keep my jungle of a yard under control. Would a light-
flail do the trick?

~~~
stcredzero
Flame thrower. It's more reliable and cost-effective tech.

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senthil_rajasek
disappointed that there is no mention of Terminator.

~~~
fsloth
Movies and science are - at least to me - in different aesthetic compartments.

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PaulHoule
My summary is that if I see a ball lightning coming, I'm going to run.

