Is there a Scientific explanation to the Weirdest thing I saw today?

Danger · Oct 18, 2008

sjls said:

http://boulevardbible.org/biz/active/images/plasmoid.JPG

I recognize that from Madonna's book, but it wasn't that blurry...

Phrak · Oct 18, 2008

Danger said:

I recognize that from Madonna's book, but it wasn't that blurry...

That's wild danger. Scan it, post it, and we'll decide if Madona's hind quarters speaks to the serealistic school of plazmoidal art.

sjls · Oct 21, 2008

These things should not be appearing inside someone's house under any weather conditions. And I wasn't eating mushrooms b/c 2 others saw this light just as in the picture. You need to read my first post to understand.

Charlie G · Jan 3, 2009

Sounds like ball lightning. A poorly understood electrical phenomenon. On wikipedia they actually have a nice picture of it occurring in Japan, and it seems to fit your description pretty well.

Charlie G · Jan 3, 2009

My bad for repeating what's already been said, I didnt look at everyones replies. Also on wikipedia it mentions ball lightning occurring in a church, so I guess that it could just as easily occur in your home.

Ivan Seeking · Jan 3, 2009

Another form of lightning that is considered rare but has even been observed moving down aisles within an airplane is ball lightning.

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/car/WCM/Maine-Ly Weather/Spring 2004/convectiveamateurs.htm

...An historical observation of a woman who was "chased" by a Ball Lightning at her own wedding was cited in an ABC television program by Arthur C. Clarke and narrated by George Scott during 1984.

http://www.prometheus2.net/bl-tokyo.pdf

Observations of ball lightning have been reported for centuries, but the origin of this phenomenon remains an enigma. The 'average' ball lightning appears as a sphere with a diameter of 300 mm, a lifetime of about 10 s, and a luminosity similar to a 100-W lamp. It floats freely in the air, and ends either in an explosion, or by simply fading from view. It almost invariably occurs during stormy weather. Several energy sources have been proposed to explain the light, but none of these models has succeeded in explaining all of the observed characteristics. Here we report a model that potentially accounts for all of those properties, and which has some experimental support. [continued]

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v403/n6769/abs/403519a0_fs.html&dynoptions=doi1104708867

Link now dead. The quote comes from the Credible Anomalies Napster where a number of other refererces can be found in addition to information on other interesting phenomena.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=58374

The Structure and Stability of Ball Lightning
The main characteristics of ball lightning are well established. They include its general appearance (shape, size range, brightness, etc.), its peculiar motion and, less satisfactorily, its energy content. A remarkably consistent picture emerges from the thousands of detailed descriptions which are now available. There is, however, no such consistency in the various hypotheses that have been put forward to explain ball lightning. The only thing most of them share is an ability to explain a few aspects of the phenomenon at the expense of physically impossible requirements in other areas. If one is to accept that a single phenomenon is being described in all these observations, it seems clear that ball lightning is, at the very least, an electrical and chemical phenomenon; and several branches of both disciplines seem to be involved [continued]

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1994RSPTA.347...83T&db_key=AST