
A New Explanation for One of the Strangest Occurrences in Nature: Ball Lightning - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/a-new-explanation-for-one-of-the-strangest-occurrences-in-nature-ball-lightning
======
Feneric
One of these scared the heck out of me as a kid. I had just gone to bed and
was staring up at the ceiling and a small ball of intense light with crackling
tendrils around it flared in the middle of the room and was gone. I ran out
and got my parents, and I was so obviously scared my Dad eventually climbed
into the attic above my room and reported a burning smell in the air but
couldn't find anything out of place.

------
ChuckMcM
There was evidence that Nikolai Tesla not only understood what caused ball
lightning but could create it on demand. It is not one of his experiments that
have been replicated however and so often it is consigned to the "myth" part
of his reputation. An interesting extract on it is here:
[http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_20.htm](http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_20.htm)

~~~
nikofeyn
he did a lot of weather research at his colorado springs lab, which burnt to
the ground. so many of his papers and experiments were destroyed in that fire.

------
mholt
Ball lightning is one of my earliest memories as a child. I was in the
basement in our farmhouse when it came in through our window during a storm
and "popped" next to me. My mother also remembers this experience. I don't
remember if the window was open or not (we didn't have air conditioning down
there - I think the storm was just starting). No damage. But it freaked us out
and we went back upstairs in a hurry.

~~~
mSparks
Im surprised this theory took them so long.

making ball lightening in the kitchen is one of my childhood memories.

light a candle and stick it in the microwave for a few seconds. the tip of the
burning candle will spit out ball lightening that will then happily float
around the microwave for a few seconds.

be interesting to know if that is the same as what you saw in your basement.

if you dont feel like doing it yourself

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G7lfzA7WzVI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G7lfzA7WzVI)

~~~
Angostura
That sounds like burning vaporised wax... Presumably quite different to what
is being suggested here.

~~~
mSparks
considering the video uses only a match. definately nothing to do with the
wax.

you get an electrical arc inside the flame then it spits out balls of plasma.

if you time it just right so it doesnt hit the sides the plasma can last for
quite a while after the microwave is shut off.

pulling a mocrowave to bits and doing it uncontained is still on my todo list.

------
memories
When I was about 11 I remember sitting in my parent's living room at our
computer when a small marble sized ball floated slowly across the room. As it
got close to me it electrocuted my right hand with what seemed to be a small
lightning bolt shooting off from the main body of it, burning my hand. It
freaked me out quite a bit and I still have no good explanation for what
happened.

~~~
bitskits
Minor nit: shocked, not electrocuted, since you're thankfully still with us.
:)

Electrocution is death by electric shock (that's the '-cution' part, like
execution).

~~~
memories
Interesting, I thought it could pertain to injuring as well. OED seems to
allow for injuring, but it's probably a more modern use (due to misuse).
Thanks for pointing this out!

------
happyslobro
Microwaves trapped in balls of plasma. Electrons accelerated fast enough to
pass through sheet aluminum, but able to slow down and form a ball on the
other side. Electrons accelerated to high relativistic speeds, producing
nothing more potent than mere microwaves when decelerated.

I am no physicist, but these explanations seem really messed up. I don't think
this guy got us any closer to understanding ball lightning.

~~~
laughinghan
None of that sounds implausible to me.

• Plasma is opaque to electromagnetic radiation (including microwaves), it
could totally be trapped:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26jxu6/why_is_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26jxu6/why_is_plasma_opaque_to_radiation/)

• Beta radiation (electrons) are known for passing through several millimeters
of aluminum (³²P beta radiation penetrates to a depth of 3/8th of an inch or
9.5mm):
[http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.ht...](http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.htm)

Besides, radiation penetration isn't discrete, it's an exponential falloff;
even if only 0.1% makes it through a particular sheet of aluminum, well, one
thousandth of a lightning strike is still a serious amount of radiation.

• If you've ever sat in front of a CRT TV or computer monitor, electrons were
accelerated to relativistic speeds right at your face in the span of a foot or
so, about 1/3 c:
[https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201011010306...](https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101101030617AAGm7aD)

Maybe 1/3 c doesn't count as "high relativistic" in your book, but clouds are
huge compared to CRT monitors, any free electrons would be in much stronger
electric fields and would be accelerating over much greater distances.

~~~
rcthompson
I don't doubt that lightning launches electrons at high speed. I doubt that
those electrons can pass through a metal sheet at high speed and then
immediately come to a stop on the other side before travelling the dozen or
two feet across the plane and out the other side.

~~~
pmalynin
Plus rapidly decelerating electrons produce x-rays.

~~~
laughinghan
"For high atomic number materials, there is a chance of the beta particles
loosing energy by producing some x-rays. In water, the x-ray production from a
beta particle is quite miniscule."

[http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.ht...](http://www.alpharubicon.com/basicnbc/RadiationPenetration.htm)

By "high atomic number materials" they mean stuff like lead, 82. Aluminum is
13.

------
pontifier
When I was about 16 I was in our half basement with full size windows at
ground level playing SNES. It was mid-morning, and there had just been a light
rain, but it was sunny out. I saw something bright out of the corner of my eye
and turned just in time to see it hit the answering machine that was sitting
on the window sill. There was a fairly loud pop, and it tripped the breaker
and shut off my game. The answering machine was fine.

~~~
AceyMan
This thread brings up old memories: I, too, am a ball lightning witness. It'd
been so long since I'd replayed it in my mind [0] that I'd probably describe
it better if I slept on it. (Slow Retrieval == AWS Glacier).

I was around eight or so, and was idle on the sidelines at a practice;
American football, iirc, with an open field adjacent to the one we were
scrimmaging on. It was after dark, hot and humid, with thunderstorms in the
vicinity (aka, Georgia in springtime).

I don't remember if it was concomitant with a thunderclap, but I was looking
around (not at the active play) and on the open field a bright, blue-white
ball descended into the field maybe 75m from me, appx 75 cm in apparent
diameter. When I say "into" I mean it was proximal but not tangent to the
field; hovering, as it were, but only for a second. Then it raced off, but
seemed to dissappear more quickly than you'd estimate based on the rate of
angular velocity wrt my eye—almost as if it evaporated.

And, does anyone else seem puzzled that the observation group is almost
completely comprised of young persons? I've read some other accounts of ball
lightning since the Internet age, and that seems to be a common attribute.
Maybe tweens just stare off into space more/lie awake sleeplessly /etc., but
it sure seems strongly correlated (small sample size, admittedly).

~~~
AceyMan
Oops, forgot my footnote.

[0] One theory is that the $current state of all of our experienced memories
is just a copy of the last time we replayed that memory. Like bootleg tapes,
N-generations old.

------
kazinator
This caught my attention: _" Microwaves also tend to make an audible noise
when they encounter a person’s inner ear"_.

Say what?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect)

~~~
derefr
> This was accompanied by side effects such as dizziness, headaches, and a
> pins and needles sensation.

I've felt this sensation in my inner ear, along with hearing pops, twice in my
life. Neither involved microwaves, AFAIK.

First, I had a laptop with a power supply that was badly grounded. I would use
it on my lap, on a couch that had cushions that would build up a static charge
and adhere to me. Every once in a while, touching the metal body of the laptop
would run a shock up my body and out the back of my head, and the couch
cushion fabric would relax. Sounded and felt just like that.

Second, I've walked in the distant vicinity of a high-power radio antenna
before, on a cold day with extremely high humidity—the sort of day that comes
before a lightning storm. I felt slight bits of static in the air discharge
"through" me repeatedly, heard the pops, and also smelled increasing levels of
ozone. I don't think I was anywhere near enough to the antenna tower be
getting RF burns, and there was no lightning or thunder yet, so my hypothesis
here was that the tower was charging air _above_ the ground, that air was
being blown around by the wind, and then the oppositely-charged clouds were
sparking against it. It's like I was inside a CRT!

------
Sevrene
One time I went up to my local mountain lookout to do some night time
photography. It was very dark and I was using long exposure.

During one of the photographs a huge white flash occurred. I turned around and
couldn't see anything. It made no sense because I was up on a mountain, and
the silent lightning appeared to come from above and behind me.

There wasn't even a cloud in the sky in any direction and it wasn't my camera
flash because it was during a long exposure and I was looking at the camera.
The photo I took came out over exposed even though it was the same length of
exposure I had been using all night.

Don't think I will ever know what it was, but I've always suspected that it's
probably something in similar to nature to what the article talks about.

~~~
laughinghan
It was silent? Could it have been a meteor?

~~~
Sevrene
Sure, don't see why not.

------
asimuvPR
I saw one of these a long time ago. While driving through an area where some
lighting was happening a blue-ish ball appeared on top of the powerlines that
were parallel to the road. The ball was big enough for me to notice it out of
the corner of my left eye. It was fast, too. Traveling at at least the same
speed I was traveling down the road. It was spooky but I loved it because I
love seeing raw electricity. I never knew what it was until today (I'm making
the assumption based on my memory).

~~~
empath75
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBlptPM-
pWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBlptPM-pWE) it was probably something
like this, not ball lightning. Just an arc.

~~~
nkrisc
That might finally explain an experience I had when I was about 6 years old.
My room was on the third floor and one night I heard a loud buzzing sound and
my room was illuminated by bright, blue-white light. I couldn't actually see
what was happening from my bed but I could tell from the orientation of the
shadows in my room and the sound it made that it was traveling down the street
past my house.

Completely scared the crap out of me at the time. I thought someone was being
abducted by aliens.

------
gtrubetskoy
And you can create one in your microwave with a sliced grape!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTjsRt0Fzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTjsRt0Fzo)

(I am not sure that this would be the same phenomenon, but it's definitely
microwave plasma).

~~~
Qworg
Note - you will likely ruin your microwave doing it if it breaks containment.

You can also do it with a fish bowl and a burned toothpick in a cork - that
way you can see the ball like plasma race around the inside. =)

------
ganzuul
Very nice to read other people's observations! Thank you, everybody.

I saw silvery-white ball lightning from my 7th story window a few years ago.
It swooped, turned sharply and touched down maybe 200 meters away. It was a
very bright, constant light against a cloudless blue sky in the middle of the
day, moving at a constant speed.

The best explanation I have for it is decay products of cosmic rays, resulting
in plasma soliton. My estimate of the wattage and energy of its light output
would mean it wasn't from a source in our solar system.

I would think that if the source wasn't our sun then events like these would
be very easily seen at night, and that my Northern latitude's long dark
winters would de-bias opportunities to observe. Meanwhile if the source was
our sun, then I would assume observations would correlate with sunspot
activity.

------
bvinc
Everyone seems to have stories about ball lightning. Where is a video?

PS: The video in the article is unconvincing and probably a firefly.

~~~
xeromal
I feel like hackernews/reddit has a unusually high number of stories like
this. I don't buy it. Another one everyone claims to have is sleep paralysis.

~~~
Gigablah
Sleep paralysis is why I go to sleep on my side rather than my back every
night.

I no longer fear it since I can consistently awaken myself now, but I'd rather
not deal with the annoyance.

~~~
xlxlxlx
I almost exclusively get sleep paralysis laying on my back too. It's hard for
me to fall asleep on my back fortunately, but when I do it's a nearly sure-
fire way to end up in sleep paralysis. Is there any explanation for why this
is the case?

To GP, it's definitely real. I didn't have it until I was around 25. My first
time was shocking -- I'd never experienced anything similar. I rarely have any
visual hallucinations, sometimes auditory hallucinations, but the main
component of sleep paralysis is the breathless, weighed down sensation of
desperately wanting to move but being totally unable to do so. My experiences
are always accompanied by the extreme urge to get up and protect myself. I
even sometimes have my eyes open during sleep paralysis, and I've confirmed
with my wife that I can see my surroundings by, after I come to, accurately
reporting her movements around the room during an episode.

~~~
flukus
For me it's only ever happened on my side.

~~~
ptrincr
I used to find it happened only when I was lay on my front. But just the other
day I had it when I was on my back. I've had it more when I've been extremely
tired and finding it hard to sleep.

It's only happened a handful of times in my life that I can recall, but it's
really unpleasant. It feels like you are trapped, can't move and have to will
yourself free.

------
jandrewrogers
I've seen ball lightning twice, both during my short stint living in rural
Nebraska as a kid. It was correlated with, but not directly underneath, the
hyper-energetic thunderstorm systems that are typical for that region. It is
really interesting to observe because it doesn't follow the rules you
intuitively expect.

The most memorable incident was when it dropped out of the sky directly over a
little league baseball game I was playing in. Several dozen people saw that
one. It hovered, sizzled, zipped off, and disappeared. They called the game on
account of weather.

