Maker Pro
Maker Pro

New ball lightning theory

Hi group.

I had an interesting idea that perhaps the reason why science has yet
to duplicate the anomalous long lifetime of natural ball lightning is
simply that the scale is wrong.

As has been seen in the various attempts to build fusion plants, large
toroidal plasmas seem to be inherently unstable, requiring continuous
correction and current/magnetic field application to keep them stable.

Therefore, it would seem unlikely that such a structure could exist in
air, in the presence of oxygen atoms and other gases.

My idea is that ball lightning is in fact a cluster of microscopic
(<1mm) plasma toroids held together by their electrostatic attraction
but kept from merging by their rotation and magnetic moment.

They are produced during the return stroke from a powerful lightning
bolt by the interaction between the collapsing plasma channel and its
surrounding magnetic field.

Each plasma toroid is a discrete and separate entity, and therefore the
ball can collide with objects yet not dissipate, as has been observed.
Additionally, being so small these toroids can find their way through
the majority of structures (window frames, under doors, through
keyholes, etc) and reform on the other side.

If there are a large enough quantity of these toroids then they might
vapourise a small hole in the glass/metal, through which the rest will
then rush through in much the same way that a crowd of people pass
through a single open doorway.

This theory also explains the apparently random motion of ball
lightning, as the motion of the cluster would resemble a lightning
"leader" following air currents and eddies, as well as responding to
local magnetic fields.

It also explains how ball lightning can "explode" causing damage. Each
one of these toroids may hold a small portion of the overall energy,
and when they begin to destabilise, a "chain reaction" may take place
where the decay of some leads to a criticality event and a sudden
energy release. This is toroid-density dependent which explains how
some "fizzle out" causing no damage.

Feel free to comment :)

-Andre
 
D

Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi group.

I had an interesting idea that perhaps the reason why science has yet
to duplicate the anomalous long lifetime of natural ball lightning is
simply that the scale is wrong.

Feel free to comment :)

I think more lightly ball lightning is mostly either of these:

1. Afterimages of a bright spot where lightning hits - such as a spot
where metal or salts vaporize. Or an afterimage of a "bright spot" caused
by a segment of lightning stroke being nearly parallel to your line of
sight.

2. Drops of molten metal falling from where lightning hits. Molten metal
does not wet most nonmetallic materials and sometimes fails to wet
metallic objects, so drops of molten metal roll along things very easily.
It is fairly common for drops of molten metal to only mildly and/or
intermittently scorch things they roll over if they move fast enough. And
they can be fairly large due to the high surface tension of many molten
metals. In addition, sometimes aluminum can burn in a manner like that of
magnesium, and is at least sometimes more easily ignited by an arc than by
a flame.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
W

worldcitizen

Jan 1, 1970
0
I've heard of ball lightning being seen around the large bank of
storage batterys that were used in WWII submarines and I have seen a
moving picture on tv of an experiment to make ball lightning where they
were trying to reproduce the battery effect and had an explosion of the
battery gasses which was caught on high speed camera where they showed
about 5 or 6 very small balls of what may be lightning about an inch
or two in diameter bouncing across the floor. Does this tie in with
what you are saying?
 
J

Jerry G.

Jan 1, 1970
0
You sound like your involved in some heavy physics. A number of years
ago, I read some similar theories. About 15 years ago, I had the
experience of seening ball lightning. It was an interesting thing to
see.

Jerry G.
=======
 
Jerry said:
You sound like your involved in some heavy physics. A number of years
ago, I read some similar theories. About 15 years ago, I had the
experience of seening ball lightning. It was an interesting thing to
see.

Cool! what did it look like/lifetime/etc?

re. the post about submarines. It would certainly make sense, the
smaller balls might be a lower energy version produced by spinning
metal plasma blobs held together by electrostatics, instead of
full-blown pm=lasma toroid clusters.

Regards,
-A
 
W

worldcitizen

Jan 1, 1970
0
They were small and fast moving and lasted less than a second. Since
the pictures were taken with a high speed camera it is hard to say
exactly without knowing the frame speed of the camera. The actual run
time of the images was about 3 or 4 seconds and the balls were
deflected off the concrete floor at about a 10 or 15 degree angle and
were traveling at a high speed. The distance that was observed in the
video that they traveled was maybe 20 or 30 feet before passing out of
camera view. One ball in particular (the largest one) bounced only
once and about 15 feet from the camera and when it got out of view it
was maybe 3 feet off the ground. With such a limited amount of
information it is even possible that what was photographed was some
burning "shrapnel". I can't say for sure but in the program that it
was shown on they presented it as ball lightning.
Hope this helps.
 
J

Jerry G.

Jan 1, 1970
0
I was about 120 miles north of Montreal. It was during the summer, right
after a heavy thunder shower. I stopped at a dining place to have some
lunch. The area had a very strong smell of ozone, probably because of the
heavy thunder showers.

I happened to look up and saw a sort of glowing circle of light. It was not
very bright. It appeared to be like a transparent reddish blue ball. There
appeared to also maybe have some traces of some yellow and green in it. The
colour seemed to vary a little as if it was unstable. I would think that
most of the colour that I saw was from reflections or just the ambient light
in the area. This ball lasted about maybe 20 to 30 seconds if that long at
all. It seemed to float towards some power lines near to a telephone poll.
At that point it simply faded or vanished.

I know of someone else who also has seen ball lightning. He was over in
Europe when he saw this.

I know of a story that someone had one come in to his house through an
opened window. It floated around in his kitchen for about 30 seconds, and
then disappears with a sort of snapping noise.

Was these some type of electrical build-up from charges that were in the
air? Each time these occurred, it was right after severe thunder showers.
 
D

Dave Baker

Jan 1, 1970
0
I know of someone else who also has seen ball lightning. He was over in
Europe when he saw this.

When I was in the Air Force, one of my technicians made ball lightning
accidentally.

We had these massive power supplies - called Invertrons if I remember
correctly. Can't really remember what they did, but they had 3 phase input &
3 phase output, and each phase had 40 high power transistors on a massive
heatsink. I think it created very clean 3 phase power.

Anyway, one of the techs was replacing a transistor - they died reasonably
regularly. When putting it back in the 19" rack he wired the input to the
output & vice-versa.

At turn-on, a ball of lightning about the size of a tennis ball came straight
out of the front panel & floated around in the air a little for about 5 to 10
seconds, in front of about 5 technicians including some of the bosses. Quite
impressive.

The mistake also blew out all 120 power transistors which took quite a
rebuild! :)

Dave

The email address used for sending these postings is not valid.
All replies to the group please.
 
Top