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Ball Lightning Created In the Lab

Posted by kdawson on from the hot-stuff dept.

EWAdams writes to point us to a New Scientist report that the mysterious phenomenon of ball lighting has now been created in a Brazilian research lab. The phenomenon has long been reported anecdotally but never explained or understood. Scientists have devised numerous possible explanations, including mini black holes left over from the Big Bang, but have had little success in producing working examples. From the article: "A more down-to-earth theory... is that ball lightning forms when lightning strikes soil, turning any silica in the soil into pure silicon vapor. As the vapor cools, the silicon condenses into a floating aerosol bound into a ball by charges that gather on its surface, and it glows with the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen. To test this idea, a [Brazilian] team... took wafers of silicon just 350 micrometers thick, placed them between two electrodes and zapped them with currents of up to 140 amps. Then... they moved the electrodes slightly apart, creating an electrical arc that vaporised the silicon. The arc spat out glowing fragments of silicon but also, sometimes, luminous orbs the size of ping-pong balls that persisted for up to 8 seconds." Here is a movie of the phenomenon.

5 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdotted Video? by gbulmash · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looks like the video link is already Slashdotted. But the video also seems to be all over YouTube (particularly since the story is a few days old). Here's a link to it at YouTube.

    Is ball lightning supposed to bounce around the ground like that? I thought it floated. 'Course, I could be mistaken.

    - Greg

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:Slashdotted Video? by Cousin+Scuzzy · · Score: 5, Funny
      A friend of mine was swimming in a lake in the eighties and some ball lightening appeared.

      That's not ball lightening, that's just shrinkage. Happens to men when they're swimming all the time. Usually not when the water's in the eighties though.

      It dissipated shortly after he got out

      Yeah, that's typical too.
  2. Having seen 'ball lightning'... by rindeee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...that isn't it. The most accurate description I can give based on the one time I witnessed it is that it looked very similar to the luminescent jellyfish that you might see when boating at night (soft glow, bluish, semi-translucent). That 'look', and the fact that what I saw seemed to 'float' (the video shows something that is most definitely not weightless as it drops and bounces about)leaves me unimpressed. I don't know what causes ball lighting (I'm sure it's rather anticlimactic whatever it is), but this isn't it. Just my two cents.

  3. I want names by lohphat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Scientists have devised numerous possible explanations, including mini black holes left over from the Big Bang"

    I want their names -- show me a scientist who would publicly postulate this.

  4. The Boxen by kfg · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am just a Sun Blade and my story's seldom told
    I have squandered my existence on some packets full of numbers such are data files
    All porn and jest
    Still the NAT hears what it wants to hear
    and access denies the rest
    Oh yes, access denies the rest

    In the NOC there stands a boxen
    and a server by its trade
    and it carries the reminders
    of every luser guest that logged on
    and downloaded till it cried out
    in its full Slashdotted shame
    "My CPU is burning, but the hard drive still remains"
    Yes, the data still remains . . .

    Dee oh Ees *kissssssh*
    Dee oh, Dee oh, Dee oh Ees
    Dee oh Ees *kissssssh*
    Dee oh, Dee oh, Dee oh, Dee oh, Dee oh Ees

    KFG