Yes... there are a few different kinds, not all are understood...
I don't remember how it works in detail, but...
In 1990 or so, the TCBA (Tesla Coil Builder Association) magazine about how to make it with two Tesla coils, and my best guess about how it worked was that when the lightning from a lower frequency one touched the lightning from the
higher frequency one, there is so much more energy in the
low frequency that has nowhere to go so it discharges at
the intersection of sparks, and the coils' fields keep it alive,
supposedly making many of them at once, which have been
photographed going through glass windows. Tesla described
making them but he used so much power that they tended
to be attracted to his coils and would go bang on the wires
and burn them, so they were a nuisance caused maybe by
bad tuning of the coil. This ball lightning is air that is lighting
up like neon because of the lightning, and electricity is
moving around in it under the influence of the electric field,
powering it and keeping it together.
I once found a few "dangerous microwave oven experiments" online, and to make ball lighting in a microwave you put a
small candle in it which I can't remember if it is burning or
blown out, when you "cook" the candle. In this case, the
microwaves supply the energy field and carbon particles
in the smoke are conducting the electricity. Carbon is
conductive, and carbon arc welding can be done for a
short time with a large, low voltage battery, making a
very bright spark of lightning betwenn two carbon rods.
So it takes less power to make a carbon ball lightning
than to do it with just air in a thunderrstorm.
Power linemen seem to be familiar with balls of light
moving down the wires, possibly due to a power surge
on high voltage lines. They are not very well understood
but might be soliton waves, which are large, slow moving
waves that hold their shape for a long time. I have seen
balls of light on the power lines by my home when I was
a child, but I don't trust my vision. Lots of them kept
following the wires until they reached the house and then
flashed away, and that scared me, and it stopped when
I called for my parents. But other things in the room
glowed after they turned off the lights and I have no
explanation for it other than unusual persistence of
vision that day. Otherwise it was something like
"Saint Elmo's Fire" which is a corona discharge of very high
voltage static electricity on non-conductive objects, and
not really "fire" at all, but just too many electrons in one
place jumping off of what's charged into the air. (Except
for the 10 kilovolt danger, negative-ion generators do that
also in the dark if they are turned on while removed from
an air cleaner's cover.)
Once, I saw a sibling plug in a key, and a tiny ball lightning
came out of the outlet, probably made of vaporized metal,
and didn't last very long... less than a second as it came
out fast and hit a wall or something. Other similar sparks
I've seen did not make ball lightning, so it was a rare kind.
When I researched it out of curiosity (especially Tesla stuff),
I found out that it was once common in submarines, and
assumed that it was some kind of standing wave in a
resonant environment, and maybe sometimes it is, but
still, if anyone knows all about it, they didn't write a book,
so it may be secret, and may have some use in nu clear
fusion reactors, or that may be just a misinformation rumor.
I think that the various "kinds" have much in common
and are similar enough to be called the same thing.
Ball lightning is hard to understand even when it is
observed, because it is rare, and does strange things,
such as burn clothes but not people(*), go through
glass, up and down chimneys(**), follow people,
disappear with or without a loud bang, etc.
Orbs, seen in photographs, often claimed to be spirits,
are particles in the air. Once I took a picture of snow falling
and when it developed, it looked like Christmas Tree Balls
or lots of moons close together in space. In Infrared
photography, especially with illumination, floating dust
particles somehow diffract the light to look like spheres
to a camera. Out of all the "ghostbuster stuff" the most
mysterious things are infrared video cameras and
electrostatic field detectors, which show unexplainable
random things frequently, but very rarely anything like
ghosts. A static electricity detector can be so sensitive
to ions in the air, that people are mystified by why it
keeps changing its readings, even if you wave at it,
or pet a cat on the opposite side of the room (or it
will detect the cat walking there). Copying machines
use static electricity on an insulator to capture the
original and attract "toner" to the invisible static image
before rolling it off, onto the copy paper. This paragraph
explains things that are NOT ball lightning (or ghosts).
(*)Once someone accidentally hotwired and shorted an
electrical box , I mean they tried to fix it without pulling
the breaker, and a spark ignited extremely fine fuzz on
their flannel shirt, making a fire that wasn't hot, but looked
like red lightning from Darth Vader's master in Return of
the Jedi, just zapping all over the shirt like a special effect,
but although it wasn't electricity it looked like it. In that
situation, the shirt was Not permanently damaged and
the spark that ignited it was barely hot enough to do so.
Some people who have been hit by a ball of lightning and
were not visibly injured seem to have various peculiar
descriptions of the experience. One said it went through
them and they fainted.
(**)Chimneys may be dusty with carbon, and possibly
pick up enough electricity from lightning to form carbon
ball lightning.
Maybe google Bill Beatty (an amateur scientist), who
has a website full of both speculation about strange
phenomena and real scientific experiments such as
how to make a static detector or a hologram. I think
he has some interesting ideas about ball lightning and
other mysterious things too.
edit: I had not read the article before posting
and I'm surprised by the similar information. But I have
more too. Tornadoes sometimes generate such fast
moving ball lightnings shooting out of them that they
had gone unnoticed until found on analog videotapes of
tornadoes that were paused by storm chasers (or
something like that). I think that someone said they
were hiding in a ditch when a tornado moved over
them, and they saw glowing rings inside of the tornado,
but they were not lifted by the tornado. If there is
anything conductive in a tornado, the magnetic field
of the earth makes it into a big electric generator.
Last edited by ValMikeSmith on 16 Apr 2010, 2:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
15 Apr 2010, 10:59 pm
