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Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls Of Lightning Explained

Friday, October 19, 2012 15:01

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(Before It's News)

Sightings of balls of lightning have been made for centuries around the world – usually the size of a grapefruit and lasting up to twenty seconds – but no explanation of how it occurs has been universally accepted by science. Even more mysterious are sightings of balls of lightning forming on glass and appearing in homes and in aeroplanes.

19th-century depiction of ball lightning

Credit: Wikipedia

CSIRO scientist John Lowke has been studying ball lightning since the sixties. He’s never seen it, but has spoken to eye witnesses and in a new scientific paper, he gives the first mathematical solution explaining the birth of ball lightning – and how it can pass through glass.

Previous theories have cited microwave radiation from thunderclouds, oxidising aerosols, nuclear energy, dark matter, antimatter, and even black holes as possible causes. John disputes these theories.

He proposes ball lightning is caused when leftover ions (electric energy), which are very dense, are swept to the ground following a lightning strike. As for how they pass through glass, he says this is a result of a stream of ions accumulating on the outside of a glass window and the resulting electric field on the other side excites air molecules to form a ball discharge.

According to John ball lightning is rare, but it has been witnessed in Australia many times. People just don’t realize what it is when they see it.

A demonstration of the water discharge experiment

Credit: Wikipedia

Ball lightning is an unexplained atmospheric electrical
phenomenon. 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

Ball Lightning – “Globe of Fire Descending into a Room” in “The Aerial World,”