Physicists Create Great Balls of Fire

dylanduck writes "Talk about having fun at work. These guys have created luminous clouds of ball lightning up to 20 centimetres across and lasting up to half a second, longer and more realistic than before. There's a cool video too. They say it may even help understand how to contain the plasmas needed for nuclear fusion."

Comments

Let me be the first to say

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Goodness Gracious!

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Rob T Firefly]

Grrr.. you've won this round, $RANDOMLUSER! Until next time...

/me drops a smokebomb and vanishes into the night

Re:Let me be the first to say

[FirienFirien]

My thought too... they could at least have put that in as the soundtrack for the video!

Re:Let me be the first to say

[$RANDOMLUSER]

"You are powerless against my Model M"

/twirls moustache, laughs triumphantly

Re:Let me be the first to say

[mnemonic_]

-1 Flamebait.

Video?

[ironwill96]

The video is more of a 19 second slideshow of 6 pictures. I was hoping to see an actual high-speed video of the event not a "video" of pictures.

Re:Video?

[dorbabil]

Considering that TFS says that the balls only lasted 1/2 a second (something a lot of my fellow /.ers are probably familiar with), a live video wouldn't be very interesting. 6 seconds of nothing, then a brief flash, then 6 more seconds of nothing.

Re:Video?

[eric_brissette]

I think the point is that 3.7mb for 6 webcam quality photos is kind of rediculous.

Re:Video?

[ironwill96]

Note the statement I made about hoping for a "high speed" video. Haven't you ever seen those videos of a bullet smashing through an apple? Let me assure you that occurs in half a second and yet is more of a video than what they showed.

Re:Video?

[Tx]

Yes, it's kind of surprising. Ultra-high speed cameras (>1 million frames per second) can typically only take a handful of pictures. However for something lasting a third of a second, a regular high speed video camera (there are plenty that can do several thousand fps) would be ideal, you'd get hundreds of frames of this event.

Maybe they were having trouble with the initiation of the event, and running at low framerate/long duration to make sure they captured the event at some point.

Re:Video?

[Janek Kozicki]

those guys should use this cheap high speed camerea array

Re:Video?

[LordVader717]

Most digital high-speed cameras (usually up to around 10 000 fps) basically record permanently to ram, writing over the last 1 or 2 seonds or so. Then when a trigger is initiated, it can save say the half second before, and half a second after the trigger. It's pretty easy if you can hear/see the event happening.

As for ultra high speed cameras (around 1 million fps), well they're film based systems, where a reel is shot through like a rocket.

Re:Video?

[Em Adespoton]

Was that an attempt to redicule computer users at large?

Let's parse the new word, and find out what they actually mean:

re-di-cul-ous:

ous = "worthy of," therefore the object is worthy of re-di-cul.

re = "to do again," therefore the object is worthy of di-cul again.

di = "twice" or "two," therefore the object is worthy of cul twice again.

What is this "cul?"

http://dict.die.net/cul/ says there are two meanings:
1) a noun, meaning "a passage with access only at one end."
2) a verb-acronym, meaning "see you later."

While the first definition could be forced into working, considering this is the internet, the second definition is more likely.

Therefore, rediculous means:

The object of the sentence is worthy of seeing you later twice again.

Is it just me, or does this sound like the definition of a dupe on Slashdot?
Therefore, many /. stories are indeed rediculous, as are 90% of the comments in response to any given story.

Re:Video?

[Tx]

Pointlessly late reply, but for the benefit of anyone stumbling on this thread in the future:

Modern ultra high speed cameras of at least one type (the type with which I'm very familiar) consist of several effectively separate digital still cameras looking down the same optical axis via a beamsplitter. Special image intensifiers are used on each still camera module to provide "shuttering" and coincidently to amplify the light enough to get a decent picture at the ridiculously short exposure times used. In order to achieve frame rates of up to 1 billion frames per second (yes, billion), and exposures down to a few hundred picoseconds, a pulse is applied to each of the image intensifiers in rapid sequence. Although the exposure times may be less than a nanosecond, the captured image glows on the phosophor screen for many milliseconds, plenty of time to capture it on the CCDs.

Film-based cameras involving a rapidly spun reel as mentioned in the parent aren't capable of speeds of more than a few thousand fps. However film-based cameras involving a rapidly rotating mirror and a stationary loop of film can achieve frame rates in the millions.

Re:Video?

[papercut2a]

What is this "cul?" http://dict.die.net/cul/ says there are two meanings: 1) a noun, meaning "a passage with access only at one end." 2) a verb-acronym, meaning "see you later."

Cul is also the slang French word for "ass."

So...rediculous could also mean: "your ass is worth doing twice again."

I'll be in the other room until everyone has finished with your ass. I really don't need to see it.

cool "video"

[tverbeek]

The "cool video" looks more like a series of about a dozen still shots with one-second fades from one to the next. It's more like a slide show than full-motion video.

Re:cool "video"

[Grayden]

An animated gif would also hose their server significantly less while accomplishing the same effect.

weapons

[mikesd81]

This could be a potential weapon of the future. The beginning of the phasers.

Re:weapons

[AntEater]

"This could be a potential weapon of the future..."

Ah! Now that's the way to get your research funded. Forget about applying for NSF grants. Could my research potentially kill someone? If so, let the DOD fund it. No worries.

Re:weapons

[Ambidisastrous]

Now, if only we could do something about mud...

Re:weapons

[Zerbs]

I'm not sure how you could turn this particular technology into a weapon. "Excuse me... sir... Mr. enemy, could you just step into that pool of water over there for a minute?" This may lead to other areas of research though that could be used as weapons. "Excuse me... sir... Mr. enemy, would you mind if I attached these electrodes in clay tubes to your skin?"

Re:weapons

[32771]

Mud? What MUD? Multiuserdetection? I'm sure those defense guys could find this interesting too.

Re:weapons

[Ambidisastrous]

Naw, just plain ol' mud. (2nd paragraph)

That's great

[audj]

But what do they really know about any of this? The article says all of this was created in a lab inside a glass tank. That doesn't seem representative of a real world environment. The lightning strikes were also altered so that they would last much longer than a normal flash.

Can someone tell me how playing Zeus is going to help nuclear technology?

Re:That's great

[FirienFirien]

Remember that nuclear technology isn't performed in your 'real world environment' - instead tending to be created in a (very) controlled environment, akin to that glass tank though bigger. Controlled conditions are exactly what we want for nuclear technology, thank you very much. Playing Zeus in a controlled environment - especially if it works! - is therefore highly relevant and useful.

Re:That's great

[AchilleTalon]

Maybe you should have read more carefully the article. The whole thing is about plasma, which is ionized gas at high temperature. And if you know a little bit about what is going on at ITER you should now understand any advance in plasma behavior knowledge maybe useful to the nuclear fusion experiments and hopefully future commercial reactors.

This has nothing to do with the nuclear reaction itself, but rather than with the mean the nuclear reaction is triggered into a torus-shaped plasma. One of the great challenges is to produce a self-sustained plasma. Since, this Zeus-like experiment seems to prove there is a way to produce a self-sustained plasma for much more long times than it is possible right now in all other fusion experimental reactors, this single thing may lead to significant advances in the nuclear fusion industry if well understood and applicable to plasmas produced inside Tokamak-like devices.

Hope this helped you to better understand the link between these apparently unrelated two things.

Re:That's great

[audj]

I got the plasma thing - doesn't everyone do the microwave experiment at some point in their highschool chemistry class? I was under the impression that the microwave experiment was actually considered very stable, so I guess in my mind, the question was why go to all the trouble to create something the article says is incredibly unstable.
Thanks for the explanation though. I think I'd doing pretty good for an English major who married technical.

Re:That's great

[AchilleTalon]

The microwave plasma thing is not a self-sustained plasma, it is induced by the energy from the microwaves. So, it is stable as long as the microwave oven is running. This is a little bit different from a plasma lasting while the enery source has been shutted down.

Re:That's great

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the great challenges is to produce a self-sustained plasma.

Just a nitpicking point from a physicist. There are no self-sustained plasmas, if by self-sustained you mean a plasma which is in a stable equilibrium with its environment. In fact, it has been known for quite some time that any gradient of a quantity in the plasma (density, electric or magnetic field strength, gravitational force, etc.) will induce an instability in the plasma which ultimately results in the plasma's destruction. There is also a thermodynamic argument which states that any finite plasma must necessarily be out of equilibrium with its environment, and therefore there will be processes induced which will tend to bring about equilibrium (i.e. destruction of the plasma).

Since, in real life, there is simply no way to avoid these instabilities there are no plasmas which will not destroy themselves. There are, however, plasmas which have exceedingly large life times such as stars and the large scale plasma configurations at the centers of many galaxies. The goal is therefore not to create a stable plasma, but to create a plasma configuration which is not so unstable that it destroys itself before you can do anything useful with it. This has so far proved elusive.

Re:Let me be the fourth to say

[FirienFirien]

http://www.google.com/search?q=lyrics+great+balls+ of+fire

An oldie, but a goodie. Pick your favourite artist from the list there, it's certainly been covered a whole bunch of times, though I don't know which of the groups there produced the iconic (if iconic works with sound) version with enthusiastic lyrics and poprock backing.

No, not really.

[Valdrax]

The idea of a self-contained plasma bolt speeding through an atmosphere is just silly. What holds the pocket of plasma together against the wind? I just don't see a high-speed projectile application in the technology's future.

Re:No, not really.

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Oho yes and I just found the wikipedia article about ball lightning. Apparently fireballs of this sort can carve trenches in peat bogs (and if you have ever gone turf cutting, you will know thats no mean feat).

Re:No, not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would probably be easier than you'd think. Being that a plasma is highly ionized, it would be quite susceptible to EM fields.. There's a group at livermore which fires donuts of plasma at a tokamak at many times the speed of sound.
Plasma also has a very low viscosity.

Re:No, not really.

[after fallout]

The idea for a plasma bolt to go through the air is to create a vacuum to send a very high power laser through without the problems of blooming. The plasma bolt itself would not itself be what causes all the damage.

Re:No, not really.

[Half a dent]

Would need more mass (fuel) and velocity for this added mass? Perhaps it comes down to the launcher device for plasma packets (what would you call plasma rounds?) - either some form of gauss gun (a bit too sci-fi) or using compressed air - a really nasty surprise for your opponents if you took it paintballing!

We seem to want to spend a fortune on developing new ways of killing each other when there are plenty of tried and tested methods - guess that's where the research money tends to be although I would prefer civil applications for most technology myself.

Re:No, not really.

[(negative video)]

What holds the pocket of plasma together against the wind?

The leading edge of the plasma ball could be defined by the focus of a phased array of microwave emitters, a fancy version of the votive-candle-in-microwave-oven trick.

Re:No, not really.

[Valdrax]

The leading edge of the plasma ball could be defined by the focus of a phased array of microwave emitters, a fancy version of the votive-candle-in-microwave-oven trick.

Where would the phased array of microwave emitters have to be positioned on a battlefield? Could it move while the shot is still being fired (as from a moving vehicle)? What range would it be effective at?

Re:No, not really.

[Jerf]

Oh, come on, you're missing the first rule of Star Trek Military Technology, which is "All your opponents are complete idiots, so you can be too."

We're talking about a bunch of people who will beam into a highly volatile combat situation with a short-range low-powered raygun, or, if the situation is truly desparate, a medium-range low-powered raygun with effective ranges in the tens or hundreds of feet for all but the most expert users.

Grenades? Armor? Vehicles? Artillery of any kind, including simply "bigger weapons"? Sanity? Comprehension of tactics? All relics of a by-gone era.

Little fiddly details like the ones you're complaining about are all going to become increasingly irrelevant in the brave new era of strategy and tactics where the winner will be decided by whose plasma beam is prettier!

Re:No, not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

oh come on now, you just made that up :)

Re:No, not really.

[Nefarious Wheel]

the launcher device for plasma packets (what would you call plasma rounds?

Well, Duh! Photon Torpedoes of course.

Re:Let me be the fourth to say

[chrismcdirty]

Wikipedia would have taken you even further, letting you know that it was written by Otis Blackwell and recorded/performed by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Big balls

[mobby_6kl]

You mean something like this?

Then, there's Steve Vai, but his Giant Balls are instrumental.

Ah yes, Science

[GroeFaZ]

They say it may even help understand how to contain the plasmas needed for nuclear fusion.

Almost the best excuse to have fun, second only to reproduction.

Dad was a Bush Pilot

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

A bazillion years ago my father was a bush pilot up in Alaska. He had more than a few stories about ball lighting inside the planes he piloted - sometimes lasting for many seconds, rolling up and down the passenger/cargo areas. Maybe they were tall tales meant to impress us kids, but he wasn't usually one to exaggerate.

Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot

[freeweed]

A bazillion years ago my father...he wasn't usually one to exaggerate.

So, you inherited the trait from your mother? :)

Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot

[dimension6]

So, you inherited the trait from your mother? :)

Well, because "bazillion" is an indefinite number, the grandparent was neither lying nor telling the truth ;)

Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I never miss a chance to let the old man know that he's an old man, you know?

Re:Dad was a Bush Pilot

[forgetful]

Some years ago an accquaintance, who had been an engineer or co-pilot on military transports, told me a similiar story: Lightning struck the airplane and a ball of "lightning" rolled into the flight deck, and across various surfaces before disappearing. The entire incident caused no serious damage. I wonder how common are these incidents in airplanes?

The same thing can be accomplished a lot cheaper..

[Anonymous Coward]

by having a guy sleep with a cheap hooker with sores and foul smelling discharge......

Maybe it's all the Sci-fi

[thoughtlover]

When I read the article title, I thought of the movie, The Arrival, given all the talk of global warming, lately.

I recall the balls of fire in the movie were significantly larger and were not lightning/plasma, though.

the arcane

[bjackz0r]

So it's taken us this long to do what level 5 wizards were doing eons ago? I'll be impressed when they can aim these things accurately at orcs.

Re:the arcane

[gameguy1957]

Yea, first thing I thought when I saw the title of the article was how many d6 this thing was able to deal.

-JM

Ball lightning experience

[euthman]

As a skeptic, I have tended to dismiss reports of natural ball lightning, but I must say that I experienced something that appeared similar. When I was a teenager (in the 1960s), I was playing my electric guitar in the living room, when the electrical transformer on the utility pole in front of the house was struck by lightning and exploded in yellow fire. I perceived a white light from behind, and when I turned around, there was an impossibly bright shiny ball of blue-white light sitting right in front of the amplifier speaker. It lasted for less than a second and quickly faded, leaving the amp unscathed and completely functional (after household current was eventually restored).

I wasn't doing any drugs either. ;)

Re:Ball lightning experience

[Nicolay77]

If it had happened to me I would have chosen a career in physics to try to repeat that event.

Or as a musician... imagine a concert with all the big speakers having blue spheres of light!

These Physicists are Pretty Slow

[Morosoph]

People have been producing ball lightning in microwave ovens for years!

Wow.

[NetRanger]

Watching that shook my nerves, and it rattled my brain.

And the link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia link

So it's finally decided...

[R2.0]

THEY'VE got the biggest balls of them all.

Great Balls of Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

I had great balls of fire last year, but penicillin took care of it.

SteveF -- not AC, just don't remember my password

Although

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

I really wouldn't underestimate mankinds ability to turn anything into a weapon, especially balls of sizzling plasma. Actually, what this put me in mind of was the ancient "batteries" discovered a while back. FTA

The tank contains two electrodes, one of which is insulated from the surrounding water by a clay tube.

Sounds remarkably similar. A lightshow, the remnants of some yet earlier technology, or a weapon of the ancients? Or just a battery? The scientists note that they produced this effect by mimicking the effects of lightning and water; is it far fetched to wonder if the ancients noted the same correlation?

Re:Although

[julesh]

That's an ... err ... interesting article. I was right with them until they said:

"This experiment proved that electric batteries were used some 1,800 years before their modern invention by Alessandro Volta in 1799."

Err... no, it doesn't. At the most it proves that somebody made a battery in a 2,000 year old pot at some point during that pot's lifetime. I'm figuring it's more likely to be entirely coincidental, and there's nothing there that doesn't.

"Iraq has a rich national heritage. The Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel are said to have been sited in this ancient land."

How about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which are at least widely acknowledged to have existed, as opposed to the two examples they cite which are probably purely mythological?

Re:Although

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Bleh. they found a lot of them. And that article was just the first thing that came to hand, you can find far more authoritative sources if you look.

Beware!!

[Gldm]

You may be aiding in copyright infringement! (dramatic chord)

If you think you're safe because you only showed people where to find it and don't actually have it yourself, don't come crying to me when 50 cops break down your door and steal your computers!

Do I really need a /sarcasm on Slashdot?

Mad Props

[Baby Duck]

"from the cousin-marriage dept."

BRILLIANT!

NewScientist Requires Skepticism

[aldheorte]

*groan* Did this article occur before or after "Crackpot Discovers Indiana Jones in Atlantis Battling Dinosaurs Originally Bred in Captivity By UFOs From Outer Space?" I'm not disparaging the science at hand, but could we get better source material? Please? Anyone?

Re:NewScientist Requires Skepticism

[Anonymous Coward]

http://plasma.physik.hu-berlin.de/sonstiges/Kugelb litz.htm was linked in tfa. I don't speak German, so I don't know if it's all that much better.

I expected more from the article . . .

[millisa]

The fact that the video is a bunch of screenshots where you only see the ball lightning in 2-3 of them has already been mentioned . . . But, they claim it lasts .3 seconds, and even using non-high-speed film at 27-ish fps, we should have gotten a good 8-9 frames . . .

Some of the statements in the article bug me too. They say it must not be hot because we put a piece of paper over it and it didnt catch fire! Er, I can hold a match under a piece of paper for .3 seconds and it wont catch fire either... How about "We measure it with a digitial thermometer and it was 39 degrees celsius, much cooler than expected!". I'm sorry, but I think our little minds can handle a number like that if we can handle .3 seconds...

The statement in the article that bugged me the most, which I think is just bad writing was: "Most accounts describe a hovering, glowing, ball-like object up to 40 centimetres across, ranging in colour from red to yellow to blue and lasting for several seconds or in rare cases even minutes." Ranging from Red to Yellow to Blue eh? So they are not . . black? If you range from any of the 3 primary colors to the other 3, don't you about cover everything that isn't a shade of grey and outside of our vision?

If it was on cnn.com I guess I could let it slide since this'd be closer to their norm, but a site dedicated to science articles? Come on . . .

Re:I expected more from the article . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

They say it must not be hot because we put a piece of paper over it and it didnt catch fire!

There's another problem with that as well. In order to set the paper on fire the plasma would have had to be both hot and dense. The plasma in florescent bulbs, for instance, is at a temperature of a few thousand Kelvin. It is extremely sparse, however, so it doesn't conduct much heat to its surroundings (i.e. the glass tube containing the gas).

Ranging from Red to Yellow to Blue eh? So they are not . . black? If you range from any of the 3 primary colors to the other 3, don't you about cover everything that isn't a shade of grey and outside of our vision?

Yes and no. Black really isn't a color, something that is black is something which absorbs all radiation incident upon it. Of course your eyes only see a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum so things which are not technically black can appear to be black to your vision.

I'd love to know how they reacted...

[dpbsmith]

...when they achieved this. Too bad they didn't have a video of the scientists.

Were they wearing white coats?

Were they dignified? ("Indeed, Dr. Fussman, you must write up this notable phenomenon for the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society.")

Or did they behave like Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in "Back to the Future?"

Did they shout "Eureka!" Or "Holy s---!" or "What the f---?" Or the German equivalents thereof?

DId they run out into the hallway and say, "Hey everyone, this is cool, some see what we just did?"

Did they invite their wives and kids to come in and see it the next day?

Were they expecting it or did it surprise them?

Did they get a harsh scolding from the lab safety officer?

Do they plan to aim the next one out the window and launch them into the courtyard?

Or was their first action to file for a patent so they can sell through ThinkGeek?

Re:I'd love to know how they reacted...

[Anonymous Coward]

if i recall correctly dr. brown's ejaculatory phrase was

GREAT SCOTT

Re:I'd love to know how they reacted...

[Cicero382]

As a professional scientist I can answer some of these for you:

> "Were they wearing white coats?"

Embarrasingly - probably.

> "Were they dignified? ("Indeed, Dr. Fussman, you must write up this notable phenomenon for the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society.")"

No!

>"Or did they behave like Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in "Back to the Future?"
> Did they shout "Eureka!" Or "Holy s---!" or "What the f---?" Or the German equivalents thereof?"

The standard phrase/word is "WOW!" but sometimes we are driven to "Holy s---!" and, in extreme cases (sometimes involving the destruction of a lot of expensive lab gear), "WTF!" (Oh, and sometimes "OW!" or even "AAAAAAAAAAARGH!")

> DId they run out into the hallway and say, "Hey everyone, this is cool, some see what we just did?"

Please! This is standard operating procedure.

> Did they invite their wives and kids to come in and see it the next day?

No. They'd just roll their eyes and, in the case of my kids, just say "Daaaad!"

> Were they expecting it or did it surprise them?

Usually, we hope to anticipate the results of an experiment. However, sometimes the unexpected is informative/exciting/interesting/deadly.

> Did they get a harsh scolding from the lab safety officer?

What's a "lab safety officer"? Come to that, what does "safety" mean?

> Do they plan to aim the next one out the window and launch them into the courtyard?

Again, this is SOP.

> Or was their first action to file for a patent so they can sell through ThinkGeek?

Damn! Why didn't I think of that?

--
Dr J. Clancy - Head of Research CLAN BioTech.

Damn

[steve_bryan]

Damn, damn, damn, damn. As soon as I clicked post I realized I had committed the hilarious mistake of making a classic spelling error while correcting the spelling of someone else. Of course the correct spelling is misspell which looks ridiculous but is correct. I only spell check for words that feel unfamiliar since I get so many false positives otherwise. I suppose that might be the case for the original poster. Anyhow I apologize and go fix some coffee to see if that improves my acuity.

p.s. But I'm right that there is some sort of conspiracy to misspell the word ridiculous

Re:Damn

[vistic]

This was really a big deal to you, huh?

Re:Damn

[steve_bryan]

Which was a big deal? My inability to point out an increasingly common error without committing a similar error or the way a common word has been kidnapped in the online world and tarted up with a superfluous E that does not belong in it? Neither is a big deal but the former is slightly embarrassing. Of course as an alumnus of U of Arizona I could wonder if you aren't confused about this whole spelling/misspelling issue. But that would just be pointlessly nasty (no, really, I'm joking).

Re:Damn

[StikyPad]

p.s. But I'm right that there is some sort of conspiracy to misspell the word ridiculous

That's unpossible.

And rediculous!

longer and more realistic than before

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

More realistic? So you're saying they're actually fake? Sheesh! I make better looking fake stuff ten times a day.

Tesla

[Martin Marvinski]

Didn't Tesla do this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Re:Tesla

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I was going to say that Tesla used to do demonstrations for newsmen and potential investors wherein he'd create what appeared to be ball lightning, and would roll it around and manipulate it. The guy always knew more than he told anyone, which was a great loss for science, but even moreso since it didn't always get him the investors he needed. Especially later on when his idea of free power transmission caused him to lose the support of Westinghouse, and then when he thought he'd picked up intelligent signals from space, and was treated to ridicule in the press.

m:tg

[robinesque]

6/1 trample haste!!

Re:m:tg

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerd!

http://ccgdb.com/card.php?id=3659&game=mtg

Re:m:tg

[loqi]

It's nice, but you have to sac it after .3 seconds.

More realistic?

[bar-agent]

Talk about having fun at work. These guys have created luminous clouds of ball lightning up to 20 centimetres across and lasting up to half a second, longer and more realistic than before.

More realistic than before? What, were the ones from before drawn imaginary or something? How can you be more realistic than real?