Has Ball Lightning Ever Caused Notable Damage?

[wolram]

It seems there are as many therories to the science behind BL as there are sightings,
many refer to (new science), i wonder if BL is the door to new science.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It seems there are as many therories to the science behind BL as there are sightings,
many refer to (new science), i wonder if BL is the door to new science.

Perhaps we can have you appointed as PF Mentor of Ball Lightning.

 

[zoobyshoe]

That would be one Oxygen atom with some charge added or stripped away, as opposed to a charge surplus or defiency on O2. Normally oxygen wants to assume the form of O2 [the form of oxygen that we breath], or O3, which is ozone.

Thanks.

I wonder why this might occur naturally as proposed at that site.

The vexing thing is some events are witnessed were there is no lightning, it has been argued in one of the papers i read ,that a rapidly rotating air mass can produce BL, i am not sure how much current could be produced by a whirlwind, or if this current could interact with particles sucked into it in the same way a ground strike would.

I now doubt all things referred to as "ball lightning" are the same thing. Being able to recreate anyone of them would be a start to sorting these phenomena out.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I now doubt all things referred to as "ball lightning" are the same thing.

Same here. There seems to be too many variations to be explained by one phenomenon.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

i wonder if BL is the door to new science.

The fact that an answer is so elusive suggests that we might learn something interesting. Of course that is always the risk with research - we may learn something Earth shaking, or we might find a simple model that explains it all using known processes.

One of the theories proposed to explain bl is that of "little black holes". And, frankly, it might take something that exotic to explain a number of striking UFO reports.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

As for bl passing through cracks in doors and windows and the like, that wouldn't seem to explain how it might, for example, enter a commercial airliner while in flight, and roll down the passenger aisle.

Generally it is thought that bl can pass through solid objects such as windows, stove pipes, and aircraft bodies.

 

[wolram]

Please forgive a may be over enthusiastic spate of postings, my interest in this subject is intense, and i forget that others may not have the same enthusiasm.

 

[zoobyshoe]

As for bl passing through cracks in doors and windows and the like, that wouldn't seem to explain how it might, for example, enter a commercial airliner while in flight, and roll down the passenger aisle.

Generally it is thought that bl can pass through solid objects such as windows, stove pipes, and aircraft bodies.

It seems to be more than this "ability': it seems to seek the interior of any available enclosed space. That might mean it seeks calmer places, or it might mean it seeks lower or higher pressure places. Maybe you can think of other differences found in interiors as opposed to the open atmosphere. A generally different ambient charge?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Please forgive a may be over enthusiastic spate of postings, my interest in this subject is intense, and i forget that others may not have the same enthusiasm.

Sorry, Wolram. It was the "door to new science" thing. I think it's all perfectly classical, just very unusual.

 

[wolram]

I think i am only interested in EBLs now, if they exsist, the other forms of BL are more a side show, and i think are a group of totaly different phenomena.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think i am only interested in EBLs now, if they exsist, the other forms of BL are more a side show, and i think are a group of totaly different phenomena.

"EBLs"? What's the E stand for?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Perhaps related, there is another form of lightning called "bead lightning"
http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-50963/Three-frames-from-a-motion-picture-film-of-bead-lightning?articleTypeId=1

EBL is extreme ball lightning, which is mostly what we have been talking about - high energy, long life, causes damage or even death, can pass through solid objects, etc. However, I think that any true distinction is conjecture at this point.

 

[-RA-]

Theres some very good info on a lot of IEEE papers about ball lighning, i think they have recently released some new ones in their august papers, i'll have a look for them when I've got a minute. Coincidentally Senior Member of the IEEE Dr. VanDevender who has studied plasmaspheres, especially EBL type, and he has made a detailed list of EBL's characteristics, and what damage, you would expect to see from it.

"VanDevender distinguished extreme ball lightning (EBL) by the following characteristics:
• it glows in air;
• it originates from nothing visible;
• it lasts between 10 and 1200 seconds;
• it floats at about 1 meter/second;
• it is lethal or potentially lethal;
• it causes significant damage;
• it contains energy estimated at 100,000 to 1 billion Joules, far in excess of the energy density attributable to chemicals or electrostatics;
• it penetrates walls, glass and metal, generally without leaving a hole;
• it induces large currents but is in radial force equilibrium;
• it leaves black streaks on corpses without the spasm of electrocution;
• it can excavate tons of earth. "

found at; http://www.thunderbolts.info/webnews/ieee_plasma_balllightening.htm

another interestng thing i noticed from an IEEE paper is that increasing the current into the balls increases their diameter http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnumber=605182&isnumber=13168. I wonder what the maximum size of an artificially created one would be?

 

[wolram]

Thanks RA.

Reading about normal lightning , Gamma rays have been detected before the strike, some prefer to call them X rays, this to me shows that some high energy particles could create high energy ball lightning in the atmosphere some how.

http://www.aip.org/pnu/2007/split/841-2.html