"Gigantic Jets" Blast Electricity Into the Ionosphere

New Scientist has an update on the so-called "gigantic jets" first discovered in 2003 — these are lightning bolts that reach from cloud tops upward into the ionosphere, as high as 90 kilometers. (There's a video at the link.) What's new is that researchers from Duke University have managed to measure the electrical discharge from a gigantic jet and confirm that they carry as much energy skyward as ordinary lightning strikes carry to the ground. According to the article, "Gigantic jets are one of a host of new atmospheric phenomena discovered in recent years. Other examples are sprites and blue jets."

Comments

First post to claim this is God's work

[Anonymous Coward]

God dunnit!

Re:First post to claim this is God's work

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I thought this was kinda funny.

Twice

[karvind]

But can it the same place twice ?

/ducks

Re:Twice

[jeffb (2.718)]

only if it accidentally the whole thing.

Re:Twice

[Fluffeh]

But can it the same place twice ?

/ducks

If your delete key can, it can too.

Re:Twice

[Anonymous Coward]

this isn't fark

Re:Twice

[jeffb (2.718)]

No shiat.

Re:Twice

[fractoid]

But can it the same place twice ?

/ducks

Generally it can't the same place twice because after the first time the same place isn't anymore.

We should take action against Boeing.

[cpicon92]

Not only does their production get delayed all the time but it turns out they have environmental impact!

Re:We should take action against Boeing.

[Fluffeh]

Not only does their production get delayed all the time but it turns out they have environmental impact!

Having that dream you walk into the wrong class naked?

Re:We should take action against Boeing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having that dream you walk into the wrong class naked?

No, it was a dream where I see myself standing in sort of Sun God robes, on a pyramid, with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at me.

Re:We should take action against Boeing.

[fractoid]

I thought everyone had that dream?

Re:We should take action against Boeing.

[pete_norm]

If they throw little pickles at you, i hope you get the message...

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't stand high above Cumulonimbus clouds. Important safety information. Thank you.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Don't stand underneath a tree while high above Cumulonimbus clouds. Important safety information. Thank you.

There, fixed that for you!

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the best thing about aeroplanes? Apart from the peanuts in the little silver bags, I mean.

It's looking out of the windows at the clouds, and thinking, maybe I could go walking in there. Maybe it's a special place where everything's okay.

Sometimes I do go walking in the clouds, but it's just cold and wet and empty.

But when you look out a plane it's a special world... and I like that.

Sprites

[causality]

Other examples are sprites and blue jets.

The funny thing about that is that the many eyewitness reports of sprites were routinely disregarded because we "knew that wasn't possible". Thus, for a long time they were regarded in a fashion not unlike the way people who experience paranormal phenomena are treated today, that is, relegated to the fringes because they were considered unworthy of serious formal investigation. I just wanted to mention that because the biggest obstacle to new discoveries seems to be the unwillingness to question those things that we "know" to be "impossible." If there's one lesson that institutional science should have learned from its history it's that one.

I am seeing more and more surprises like this that are not really surprising from alternative viewpoints, such as the Electric Universe (I said those two words, so I guess that makes me automatically Flamebait eh?). The same thing can be found by regarding the solar wind as an electrical current instead of viewing it in mechanical terms. The solar wind is the flow of charged particles from the Sun. "The flow of charged particles" is the very definition of an electric current but mainstream science doesn't regard the solar wind (or any other celestial phenomena) in those terms. At some point, the independent thinker realizes that "mainstream" does not represent the pinnacle of human knowledge about which we are most certain, though ideally this would be the case. Rather, it unfortunately tends to represent what is most easily demonstrated to the shallowest and least questioning of minds who are all too easily influenced by the authority or the credentials of the person who is speaking. Rather than shouting down or marginalizing the minority who disagree, we should be promoting their dissent so long as it's scientific in nature.

Re:Sprites

[sukotto]

Just like so many other scientific discoveries like say, the germ-theory of medicine. In many cases, getting the science right is less difficult than getting the science community and the general public to accept your discovery.

Einstein was right: "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

Re:Sprites

[calidoscope]

The first indications that I saw of cloud to ionosphere discharges was in QST in the 1980's - someone had shown a very good correlation between major T-storm activity and sporadic E skip above 50MHz. When I saw the first reports of sprites in the mid-1990's, my first thought was "this explains sporadic E-skip".

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

Eyewitnesses are often wrong about what they see. There are lots of studies on it. Asking for actual evidence rather than anecdotal reports isn't really that much to ask before accepting something as true.

Science doesn't just accept something new as being true just because someone says it's so. That's a good thing.

Re:Sprites

[caramelcarrot]

What's your point? That science is a process of constant discovery? That science requires proper evidence for something to be accepted?

What element of solar winds isn't accurately modelled by current theory? The solar wind is a lot more complex a charge flow than charge flow in a wire - you get magnetohydrodynamic effects, the particle flows are also partially ballistic, all sorts. EU is an over simplistic model in itself and current models can accurately explain all the observations, while EU cannot.

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

"The flow of charged particles" is the very definition of an electric current but mainstream science doesn't regard the solar wind (or any other celestial phenomena) in those terms.

You sure have drunk the Electric Universe kool-aid.

"Mainstream science" recognizes the flow of charged particles from the Sun as an electric current. It's the rest of the Electric Nonsense like the Sun being powered by electricity instead of fusion that it rejects.

But sure, tell us all about how physicists are so stupid they don't know what a current is. If they won't admit that the Sun is powered by electricity then they certainly can't admit that charged particles exist in the solar wind. Oh wait. They do, and this has been established by "mainstream scientists" long before EU "theory" was invented. I hate to break it to you, but they occupy their time by sitting around thinking up new ways to deny the Truth of EU Theory.

And while you're at it, follow it up with an extended rant about how all these idiot scientists are putting down all the brave genius Galileos. That never gets old. It's always good for a Slashdot up-mod, though.

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be they don't occupy their time.

Re:Sprites

[Heed00]

What's your point?

C'mon, he even made sure his conclusion was the very last sentence of his post -- right where you'd expect it to be:

Rather than shouting down or marginalizing the minority who disagree, we should be promoting their dissent so long as it's scientific in nature.

Nietzsche made a similar point in the following aphorism:

Corruption. The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in high esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Re:Sprites

[ahankinson]

I think you more prove his point than refute it...

If someone wants to investigate a phenomenon by putting it in a different light, what is it to you? Yet you spit vitriol at anyone who attempts to frame an argument that goes against the "general wisdom."

The EU theory may very well be wrong. But it's an idea, and it's an idea that helps frame understanding the universe in a new light. That's the way of progress. If it's a bad idea, it will die on its own merits; but if it's a good idea, killing it prematurely by putting it down simply because it goes against conventional wisdom is doing nobody any good.

Re:Sprites

[khayman80]

If it's a bad idea, it will die on its own merits; but if it's a good idea, killing it prematurely by putting it down simply because it goes against conventional wisdom is doing nobody any good.

He may have been overly harsh, but the Electric Universe idea has been disproven for many years. It's fair to say that it isn't science, but rather a conspiracy theory promoted by people who don't understand physics (or science) very well.

In addition to my critique, Tim Thompson has rebutted the electric sun idea in depth, and W.T. Bridgman has a lengthy critique of the same notion on his site "Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy." Unfortunately, my internet connection is screwed up so I can't provide direct links to these articles at the moment.

Re:Sprites

[Timothy Brownawell]

The funny thing about that is that the many eyewitness reports of sprites were routinely disregarded because we "knew that wasn't possible". Thus, for a long time they were regarded in a fashion not unlike the way people who experience paranormal phenomena are treated today, that is, relegated to the fringes because they were considered unworthy of serious formal investigation.

There is a difference, which is that people have actually seriously looked into various paranormal stuff (mostly looking for military applications, I think) before dismissing it, rather than dismissing it without investigation.

I just wanted to mention that because the biggest obstacle to new discoveries seems to be the unwillingness to question those things that we "know" to be "impossible." If there's one lesson that institutional science should have learned from its history it's that one.

The absence of that obstacle would itself be an obstacle, when all the researchers got DDOSed with investigating people's perpetual motion machines and reactionless thrusters.

I am seeing more and more surprises like this that are not really surprising from alternative viewpoints,

It's amazing how much we see what we look for, isn't it?

such as the Electric Universe (I said those two words, so I guess that makes me automatically Flamebait eh?).

The trouble with EU is that you can look at what it says about our local environment (the sun, weather on earth, etc), go make observations, and realize that reality doesn't match the theory.

The same thing can be found by regarding the solar wind as an electrical current instead of viewing it in mechanical terms. The solar wind is the flow of charged particles from the Sun. "The flow of charged particles" is the very definition of an electric current but mainstream science doesn't regard the solar wind (or any other celestial phenomena) in those terms.

Salt water flowing through a tube is also a flow of charged particles (lots of Na and Cl ions). What makes this not an electric current is that for every so many + charges moving past a given point, there are the same number of - charges moving past in the same direction.

At some point, the independent thinker realizes that "mainstream" does not represent the pinnacle of human knowledge about which we are most certain, though ideally this would be the case.

Instead, it represents a combination of a lot of the pinnacle of what we were certain of a few years ago, and a little of whatever's politically fashionable at the moment.

Rather, it unfortunately tends to represent what is most easily demonstrated to the shallowest and least questioning of minds who are all too easily influenced by the authority or the credentials of the person who is speaking.

That's not "mainstream" science, it's "popular" science. Things like books you find at amazon, rather than papers you find in journals.

Rather than shouting down or marginalizing the minority who disagree, we should be promoting their dissent so long as it's scientific in nature.

How do you propose to determine whether it's "scientific"? How do you propose to convince people that it's worth their time to review yet another "everything everyone knows is wrong" theory instead of working with what's already "known" to push the limits of what we're able to do?

Re:Sprites

[khayman80]

I am seeing more and more surprises like this that are not really surprising from alternative viewpoints, such as the Electric Universe (I said those two words, so I guess that makes me automatically Flamebait eh?). The same thing can be found by regarding the solar wind as an electrical current instead of viewing it in mechanical terms. The solar wind is the flow of charged particles from the Sun. "The flow of charged particles" is the very definition of an electric current but mainstream science doesn't regard the solar wind (or any other celestial phenomena) in those terms.

As I mention here, the solar wind is electrically neutral. The Sun isn't "electric." It's a giant ball of fusing hydrogen and helium, and the solar wind is primarily thermally-driven (with exceptions due to solar flares, etc.)

You're not flamebait, just confused or seriously lacking in graduate physics education. The Electric Universe idea has been disproven for many years. It's fair to say that it isn't science, but rather a conspiracy theory promoted by people who don't understand physics (or science) very well.

In addition to my critique, Tim Thompson has rebutted the electric sun idea in depth, and W.T. Bridgman examines the idea in detail on his site "Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy." Unfortunately, my internet connection is screwed up so I can't provide direct links to these articles at the moment.

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet you spit vitriol at anyone who attempts to frame an argument that goes against the "general wisdom."

Except that's exactly what he didn't do: frame an argument. He just wrote an unsupported rant about how The Man is keeping the noble EU proponents down. There was no science nor scientific evidence in the post, it was just high-sounding rhetoric. Then he coupled it with an idiotic claim that "mainstream scientists" refuse to admit that the solar wind carries an electric current, which shows far more about his biases than any scientists'.

Re:Sprites

[causality]

In many cases, getting the science right is less difficult than getting the science community and the general public to accept your discovery.

And that's a serious problem. Those two should be one and the same. Anytime it is otherwise, what you have is not science but a religion that uses scientific language.

I think the view of what "skepticism" means has a lot to do with this. At one point, skepticism meant something like "we really don't know either way, we should assume nothing, and we should ask questions and investigate before any conclusions are drawn." Now, it means something more like "we will deny this discovery no matter what, even if that means clutching at straws or using flimsy reasoning, until it becomes blatantly smack-you-in-the-face obvious and even then we will acknowledge it only reluctantly and preferably when a lot of other people do so first." This can only lead to stagnation.

Re:Sprites

[causality]

Eyewitnesses are often wrong about what they see. There are lots of studies on it. Asking for actual evidence rather than anecdotal reports isn't really that much to ask before accepting something as true.

Science doesn't just accept something new as being true just because someone says it's so. That's a good thing.

That sounds good and all but I believe you have missed my point. I was not talking about whether or not something should be accepted as true. I was talking about whether or not it is worthy of serious investigation. If many eyewitnesses report something, it's reasonable to say "we don't know, but we will look into it and get back to you about whether this is a previously-unknown phenomenon." That reasonable action is not what generally happens. Instead, what happens is more like "we KNOW that's not possible so we will ignore the many thousands of people who have seen it." When it's something like sprites that were eventually acknowledged anyway, this means that we had to wait longer for no good reason and have missed out on all the data that we could have been gathering during the entire time that it was ignored. That is what my complaint was about.

Re:Sprites

[causality]

What's your point? That science is a process of constant discovery? That science requires proper evidence for something to be accepted? What element of solar winds isn't accurately modelled by current theory? The solar wind is a lot more complex a charge flow than charge flow in a wire - you get magnetohydrodynamic effects, the particle flows are also partially ballistic, all sorts. EU is an over simplistic model in itself and current models can accurately explain all the observations, while EU cannot.

I believe you have missed my point the same way that the AC has done. Please see this post (in the same thread) for clarification. Nowhere did I talk about the criteria that must be met for something to be accepted as factually true. My view on skepticism (in this post)may also help you to understand my position.

I see this fairly often and I think it's just a brand of cynicism. That is, you read a post and find a very easy objection. At that point you must make one of two choices: either I'm stupid/careless/etc. and really did leave myself open to such an easy objection, or, you have not correctly understood what I was and (importantly) was not saying. For whatever reason most people automatically assume the former case and seem unwilling to consider the latter case. The point of telling you this was not to put you down or to feel like I am more "right" than you, whatever that would mean. I tell you that with the hope that you can recognize this tendency (that many folks here have shown) and become more aware of your own motivations and thought processes. If that happens, then I will have done my good deed for today.

Re:Sprites

[4D6963]

I just wanted to mention that because the biggest obstacle to new discoveries seems to be the unwillingness to question those things that we "know" to be "impossible."

Hallelujah. Some time during the 20th century (or maybe the late 19th century) we decided that we knew mostly anything about everything, and we "froze" our conception of what is possible or impossible. A great parallel and maybe one reason for that attitude is that we live in closed world that we have entirely mapped. No more "HERE BE DRAGONS" on maps, we've seen it all, there's no mystery, no Atlantis, no big cave leading to the centre of the Earth, no lost 7th continent, and so on... And I think that it's something that anyone can confirm. Deep down, you know we know mostly everything about anything. You know there's no such things as ghosts, witches, mysterious dragons, angels, giant sea serpents, mole people, space aliens roaming our atmosphere, reincarnation, because what you really think is, if any such thing really existed, we would surely know by now.

So that's a problem we now have, we tend to think that we've reached the end of things to discover, at least when it comes to what goes on on our closed world that is our planet, and therefore our conception of reality is frozen. And the real problem is, when something challenges that frozen conception of reality, we'll reject it, blindly. Airplane pilots who've seen impossible flying objects must have been confused, people who say they were abducted by aliens must be mad, children who talk about previous lives must be confabulating, people who communicate with the dead are all charlatans, and people who say they saw a mythical monster like Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster should perhaps lay off the sauce. It doesn't matter how compelling the evidence is, it doesn't matter if 1,000 people report the same thing, because we're reasonable people, and as such we all know what's possible from what's impossible, and that what's impossible is impossible, and it will never change.

Re:Sprites

[fermion]

Which is the way science works. A theory is developed that explains all relevant known observations, and is considered the prevailing theory until it no longer adequately predicts new observations. Very often, at least initially, new observations that are not predicted by the theory are dismissed. There are many reasons for this, the primary of which is normal human suspicion of new things, which grows stronger as one grows older.

In any case, when an counter example observation is validated, the theory is adjusted, or the domain is restricted, or sometimes it is thrown away. In any case, the primary enemy of science is not the counter example, or the people who don't believe it, but impatience. If an observation is real, it will eventually be put into the theories. if the observations are false, then impatience will only cause bad science.

A classic example of this is quasars. The popular press got a hold of these objects as 'proof' that relativity was wrong and object in the universe could move faster than light. We could think that is the case and throw out the theory of relativity, which frankly causes us some head ache. Or we could simply explain the apparent faster than light measurement as an artifact of the method of our observation. I don't think anyone knows for sure which is the right decision. Given that relativity is doing rather well, the majority seems to be in favor of keeping it, although that may change is other things, like gravity waves, fail to materialize.

In any case, if reletivity did fall, it would only be because a better theory, which will be the long awaited GUT, comes along. We saw this with QM. Just because we knew that black box radiation did not in fact develop infinities, did not mean that we left classical mechanics, at least not until we had a developed theory of quantum mechanics. Likewise, if we do not understand why the upper atmosphere is deficient of electrons, then the mere presence of such lightening is only half the work.

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if enough people say it, we should take them seriously, despite the fact that they lack all evidence?

No, this is exactly how science should work. You will not be taken seriously unless you present a proper amount of evidence. If we went didn't "ignore the many thousands of people who have seen it" in favor of evidence, we'd be researching alien anal probings by now.

No evidence = no case in sience.

Re:Sprites

[LurkerXXX]

So if you are a scientist, and you think the thing extremely unlikely to be real, even though there are (notoriously unreliable) eyewitnesses, exactly how much time and money do you think you are going to invest in it?

With unlimited budgets and resources, sure, I'd look at it. With the realistic amount of resources at my disposal? I think I'll investigate something else that I already believe is real and have a curiosity about.

Re:Sprites

[skornenicholas]

Exactly, it reminds me of the "green flash" phenomenon. For the longest time it was regarded as your standard drunk sailor tale, akin to mermaids and vanishing islands. Hell, even Columbus reported seeing it on multiple occasions, and no I am not a fan but the guy did write everything down which is good, and it wasn't until the 1980s that it was taken into serious consideration. You really can't place a monetary value on the nature of discovery and that is the problem with the majority of people not of the inquiring persuasion. Discovery in and of itself is a beautiful thing, we should always look into reports simply to further our understanding of the nature of the world. Besides, if everyone was busy trying to figure out the answers to the many questions in science we would have little idle time which would take care of an entire host of other problems. Use your brains people! Otherwise a Voodoo priest might send a zombie slave to eat it, and frankly it would serve your right for not paying attention.

Re:Sprites

[khayman80]

After rebooting the router, I can give you W.T. Bridgman's review of "The Electric Sky" and Tim Thompson's review of the electric sun idea, and a follow-up.

Re:Sprites

[khayman80]

After rebooting the router, I can give you W.T. Bridgman's review of "The Electric Sky" and Tim Thompson's review of the electric sun idea, and a follow-up.

Re:Sprites

[tyler.willard]

That science requires proper evidence for something to be accepted?

Proper???

Please enlighten me as to what constitutes proper?

Frankly, it sounds like the same kind of tripe as "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"; as if the standards of proof change for what some people consider "extraordinary".

The part that's most galling about this argument is that it usually comes from people who purport to be "scientific", when in fact subjectively shifting standars of proof are anything but.

Science is supposed to, nay, by definition is required to, reach a conclusion by what repeatable observations demonstrate. If said observations annoy people, don't jibe with current theory, or otherwise fail to conform to conventional understanding, it means precisely fuck-all.

Re:Sprites

[WaywardGeek]

My father flew F-102's, the first supersonic aircraft commissioned for battle by the US Air Force. If you get the "official" Air Force post card of the F-102, my dad's flying it. He flew Delta jets later until he retired a few years ago. He told me about red-coloured lightning going up from clouds into the sky when I was a kid (1970's), and the other pilots also knew about them, too. Are these the same as the "sprites" mentioned here?

Re:Sprites

[sjames]

There is a big difference between "we need better evidence" or "we need more evidence" or even "we have no evidence for it" and "it's impossible because we don't know how it would work, so we don't believe it".

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

As a member of the Federation of Angry Scientists, I'd like to call you out as an utter dick.

Lack of understanding +5, Geek bitterdom +5.

Re:Sprites

[wasted]

... If we went didn't "ignore the many thousands of people who have seen it" in favor of evidence, we'd be researching alien anal probings by now....

...instead of letting the aliens do the research.

Re:Sprites

[Roger W Moore]

Einstein was right: "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds...."

That's great. Any idea how we can tell the great minds from the mediocre idiots? There are people telling us that they have been abducted by aliens, can predict the future from tea leaves and that drinking water can cure you (homeopathy) amongst other things. The reason that people do not get believed is not some great scientific conspiracy it is simply that their signal gets lost in the overwhelming noise of idiots making stuff up. Scientists have better things to do than going around checking out every nut job that comes up with something on the off chance that this might be genuine.

It is a shame, because things do get missed and sometimes the short-sightedness of the "establishment" can indeed be a factor (an excellent example is John Harrison). However if you have to blame someone for why people are not believed blame the crystal ball gazers who make it almost impossible to determine those who are genuine.

Re:Sprites

[TapeCutter]

"The funny thing about that is that the many eyewitness reports of sprites were routinely disregarded because we "knew that wasn't possible"...[snip]...I just wanted to mention that because the biggest obstacle to new discoveries seems to be the unwillingness to question those things that we "know" to be "impossible." If there's one lesson that institutional science should have learned from its history it's that one. "

Poppycock, "extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence". Eye-witness reports are NOT extrodinary evidence, if they were then "institutional science" would be spending way too much time investigating pink elephants.

"Rather than shouting down or marginalizing the minority who disagree, we should be promoting their dissent so long as it's scientific in nature."

Again, if someone makes a claim that is unsupported by the evidence then it is the claimant that should STFU not those who are pointing out the lack of evidence.

"Institutional science" is exactly how it should be, skeptical.

"I am seeing more and more surprises like this that are not really surprising from alternative viewpoints, such as the Electric Universe (I said those two words, so I guess that makes me automatically Flamebait eh?)."

No, just scientifically illiterate.

Re:Sprites

[TapeCutter]

"Please enlighten me as to what constitutes proper [evidence]?"

Can be reproduced by others. Eye-wittness accounts are neither evidence nor extordinary.

"Frankly, it sounds like the same kind of tripe as "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof"; as if the standards of proof change for what some people consider "extraordinary"."

The correct quote is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and you have failed to comprehend it's meaning, science is not in the bussiness of proof.

Re:Sprites

[blackraven14250]

I don't think so. I'm not too familiar with it, but I know that there are "sprites", "elves", "blue jets", and "gigantic jets" related to lightning. The reddish ones are the sprites, while jets are typically blue. Sprites tend to be less focused than a jet; jets are more like lighting, in a line, whereas the sprites are more spread. The pictures I've seen show them as more of a mushroom cloud-shaped thing.

Re:Sprites

[blackraven14250]

Evidence of gravity was there, long before it was acknowledged that it was there. We had evidence of electricity for lots of time, before we acknowledged that it was there.

The point is, your attitude is one of dismissal, just as the GP was talking about. Your approach, like many people out there, is "Let's not investigate because I believe it can't happen or be true.". The more reasonable approach would be "There's a massive amount of space in the universe, and we haven't explored even the most minuscule fraction of it, and many of our calculations say there's bound to be something else out there. We should examine a random sample of these people to see if there's any evidence of them being in contact with aliens." This changee in attitude would lead to a massive amount of new findings, as people wouldn't dismiss things based on belief, which is exactly what you did to the possibility of aliens visiting us.

Re:Sprites

[TapeCutter]

"Hallelujah. Some time during the 20th century (or maybe the late 19th century) we decided that we knew mostly anything about everything, and we "froze" our conception of what is possible or impossible."

What a load of crap, compare the military technology used in WW1, WW2 and Iraq. During WW1 it was thought the sun was made from coal and that people would not be able to breath in an open top vehicle that exceeded 60mph.

"It doesn't matter how compelling the evidence is, it doesn't matter if 1,000 people report the same thing, because we're reasonable people, and as such we all know what's possible from what's impossible, and that what's impossible is impossible, and it will never change."

Some things ARE impossible in this universe, for example A cannot be not-A. However, regardless of wether something is or isn't possible, 1000 personal anecdotes is NOT EVIDENCE.

Your entire post and that of the OP is a strawman built around conflating the terms "impossible" and "unsupported by evidence", I rarely if ever hear a scientist say something is impossible. "Bigfoot" is certainly not impossible but like most of the phenomena you list in your post, the reported sightings have been investigated to death and have alaways found to be "unsupported by evidence".

In fact most of the phenomena on your list would qualify for JREF's million dollar prize if anyone was able to produce said evidence. Offering a $1,000,000 for evidence contray to the "mainstream" sure doesn't sound like science has stopped investigating strange reports with an open mind.

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

A can be not-A, it's called a paradox and the universe is full of them.

Re:Sprites

[aqk]

Einstein was right: "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

This, of course, was thought out while he was being madly stung, back when he had that summer job as a bee-keeper...

Re:Sprites

[fbjon]

"The flow of charged particles" is the very definition of an electric current but mainstream science doesn't regard the solar wind (or any other celestial phenomena) in those terms.

But if I throw a lit flashlight from here to the next planet, I wouldn't call that interplanetary flow of electric current. Certainly an electric charge is moving. That doesn't mean it makes sense to talk about electricity.

Re:Sprites

[jdigriz]

Yes, actually. We can tell the great minds from the mediocre idiots by the degree of correspondence that their ideas have with empirically verified reality. People are *still* testing Einstein's ideas out through experiment, and they have largely held up, aside from his nonscientific statements like "God does not play dice with the Universe." If the great minds want to be recognized, they had either better provide very solid persuasive evidence, or recognize the fact that their ideas are untested at this time and encourage people to test them rigorously when it becomes possible. People who are afraid of empirical testing of their ideas are almost always frauds.

Re:Sprites

[TapeCutter]

Yes, that would be a type of paradox called an existential paradox. No, the universe is not "full of" existential paradoxes. Dead or alive Schrodinger's cat is still Schrodinger's cat.

Re:Sprites

[mestar]

No. Those mentioned here came later.

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you, electric current is the flow of electric _charge_, not particles. Many people still wrongly think that electrons "flow" through wires at the speed of light. They do move, but much much slower. What really flows is charge.
Cue the obligatory car analogy:
in a traffic jam, start and stop waves move quite fast, although cars themselves move rather slowly.

Re:Sprites

[Fotherington]

I'd like to steer people in the direction of this post by AP Gaylard which talks about Kuhn's ideas on anomalous results and why resistance to new ideas is a vital part of science. Forcing proponents of a new hypothesis to make strong arguments for it in the face of something that works to the best of our existing knowledge is a good thing. I've excerpted some of it below:

A Kuhnian Checklist

1. Remember that resistance is to be expected, irrespective of the merits of the anomaly: it is not evidence for either the defence or prosecution.
2. Resistance is necessary: if too many scientists became anomaly chasers progress would be limited; if all scientists became anomaly chasers science would judder to a halt. It also ensures that only the most meaningful anomalies are taken into the body of scientific knowledge.
3. Science always works in the presence of some anomalies which are usually resolved; the presence of anomalies is not a predictor of impending revolution.
4. Progress is not inhibited by the values of science: normal science, for all its conservatism, is an excellent discoverer of anomalies. Kuhn remarked at "...the completeness with which that traditional pursuit prepares the way for its own change..." [p.65]
5. Don't get too excited too soon, normal science is also an excellent tool for resolving anomalies: "...most anomalies are resolved by normal means; most proposals for new theories do prove to be wrong..." [p.186]
6. It's not pursuing an anomaly that turns a scientist into a pseudo-scientist or a crank: it's the abandonment for scientific values.
7. Most importantly, worthwhile anomalies are born from the pursuit of detail and precision in the observation-theory match: not sloppiness.

I'm finding it difficult to remember where I saw it, but I was struck by reading that "one way a crank can be distinguished from a genius is that a genius knows and appreciates the theories that are generally accepted today, but the crank ignores or derides them".

Re:Sprites

[gtall]

And one of those resources is time. It takes a lot of time to do good research. Do you want to spend part of your finite lifetime attempting to ascertain that Raelians live on the far side of a comet and will be visiting us shortly, or do you want to spend part of your finite lifetime working on your computation model of rainfall to predict drought...decisions, decisions...

Re:Sprites

[V!NCENT]

At some point, the independent thinker realizes that "mainstream" does not represent the pinnacle of human knowledge about which we are most certain, though ideally this would be the case. Rather, it unfortunately tends to represent what is most easily demonstrated to the shallowest and least questioning of minds who are all too easily influenced by the authority or the credentials of the person who is speaking. Rather than shouting down or marginalizing the minority who disagree, we should be promoting their dissent so long as it's scientific in nature.

You are my new hero.

Re:Sprites

[CarpetShark]

and they have largely held up, aside from his nonscientific statements like "God does not play dice with the Universe.

This holds up just fine for me. Perhaps the problem you're having is vocabulary and topic familiarity, rather than validation ;)

Re:Sprites

[CmdrGravy]

So you're saying that scientists just reject all phenomenon that don't fit in with their preconceived view out of hand ?

In an article which explains the latest results of scientists scientifically investigating what was originally the observations of various people which didn't fit with their previous model.

You will forgive me if I think you're not really making much sense.

Re:Sprites

[Muad'Dave]

I had the same Aha! moment when I heard about sprites.

I like the enhanced VHF propagation that occurs when hurricanes are brewing along the east coast. I live in FM17fr, and I can hear/work 2m repeaters in NC when there's a hurricane off the coast. I attribute it to tropospheric ducting (what I call tropo-ducto; sounds rather magician-ly) rather than sporadic E, of course.

Re:Sprites

[4D6963]

Congratulations on missing the point!

Re:Sprites

[uninformedLuddite]

If you rebooted your router specifically to provide these links, I thank you.

Re:Sprites

[caramelcarrot]

You posted that you thought EU was a viable theory, which it isn't, I responded.

Your points on issues of scienctific acceptance of new paradigms might be true, but that has no baring on whether or not any particular theory like EU is actually suffering from this unfair rejection (hint: it isn't).

Don't try to mark me as misunderstanding what you said, you made an assertion regarding scientific progress, then tried to tie it into an unrelated point about EU (which was factually incorrect).

It's a wonderful tactic if you want to feel persecuted.

Re:Sprites

[mdwh2]

If there's one lesson that institutional science should have learned from its history it's that one.

Nonsense. The very fact that these things are now scientifically accepted shows that science adapts to new evidence.

The problem was never with people who claimed they saw certain things - the problem is those who claimed that therefore, "sprites" existed (as in, actual creatures). Far from proving them right, on the contrary, this shows that there is a rational explanation, and therefore they are proven wrong.

Will they learn your lesson, and accept that they were wrong?

Rather than shouting down or marginalizing the minority who disagree, we should be promoting their dissent so long as it's scientific in nature.

Right, and who is shouting down scientific theories?

And btw, "I saw something weird, it must have been caused by sprites" is not scientific.

Now sure, sometimes scientists are slow to accept new ideas (e.g., Einstein and quantum mechanics), but let's not conflate that with any fringe idea that comes under the umbrella of "alternative".

Re:Sprites

[mdwh2]

The same Einstein who was reluctant to accept quantum mechanics, which turns out to be one of the most accurate descriptions of nature we have...

Re:Sprites

[turing_m]

Any idea how we can tell the great minds from the mediocre idiots?

Several rules of thumb. If this person can't spell or their grammar is poor, I figure that the odds of them being a "great mind" are poor. Language is a system that requires some intelligence to master. And English as a second language should not be a barrier, there are thousands of grad students from all over the world churning out papers that are "good enough" as far as this is concerned. This will weed out most of the mediocre thinkers right away.

Logical fallacies - if I see some I stop reading. Someone with basic scientific training should not be making these. This eliminates more. http://www.tektonics.org/guest/fallacies.html

Gobbledygook - is the terminology of whatever scientific domain used correctly? If not, discard. If someone is too stupid to make it through high school physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics etc, odds are very remote that they will come up with something ground breaking.

Perpetual motion machine - ignore.

"For the secret to ... send money..." -ignore.

If they get that far, then as another poster said, does the theory match known empirical data? Is there actually a theory at all? Does it make new predictions that are testable? If so, then we might have something of worth. However, we have probably eliminated 99% of the random idiots out there with the first few tests. I'd be surprised if there are many false positives. A great mind will have good enough language skills, know what logical fallacies are and not rely on them, use proper scientific terminology, not propose perpetual motion machines, and not be selling snake oil.

In addition, if a great mind wants to be taken seriously he will bend over backwards to make it as easy as possible to get to the crux of the idea and pass all of the above hurdles. He will look at how his argument appears to a third party and attempt to be as transparent as possible. He will assume complete lack of trust in himself and thus buttress his argument with empirical data from trusted third parties so that his argument does not rest on assertion.

The mediocre minds Einstein was referring to are not the rank and file mediocre minds the tests above will eliminate. It is the moderately intelligent and educated mediocre minds in positions of power who are not brave or smart enough to change the status quo and/or have a vested interest in said status quo. Because there is always a power structure associated with the existing status quo, and those people want to maintain their positions, these "mediocre minds" will always put up a fight.

Re:Sprites

[Abcd1234]

There is a big difference between "we need better evidence" or "we need more evidence" or even "we have no evidence for it" and "it's impossible because we don't know how it would work, so we don't believe it".

Why? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And if your current theory says something should be impossible, and that theory is fairly well established, then it's absolutely reasonable to respond with "Sorry, that's impossible according to currently established theory. Get back to us when you have your extraordinary evidence."

I would expect the same response if someone claimed to have found a way to, say, violate the laws of thermodynamics.

Re:Sprites

[sjames]

There's a subtle shade of difference you missed. Too often something is called "impossible" NOT because it's existence would violate established fact or well tested theory (that would be an extraordinary claim), but simply because a bit of thought doesn't yield a suggested mechanism that would produce the observation (hardly extraordinary, there's a lot of things we don't know).

For example, observations of sprites and jets were ignored for years as "impossible". Nothing about them violates known laws or even strong theories in physics.

That's the problem. Too often, even not so extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. In the case of sprites, it took 259 years from first reputable report to "discovery" (accidental at that). That discovery was interesting, but certainly didn't upset any theory or turn physics on it's ear as would be expected of an extraordinary claim gaining it's extraordinary evidence (such as when experiments in relativity proved out).

Re:Sprites

[lena_10326]

Why do you believe the UFO/Abduction/Ghost/TeaLeaf/ESP/Crystal/Homeopathy/Numerology/Bigfoot/etc crowd makes it up?

Your post is a reason why blanket generalizations are bad. Are you talking about figures in the media, or everyone who indulges in these topics? I ask because I've known a number of people into those topics and I can tell you they do not think they are making it up. They might be hallucinating, misinformed, or simply finding patterns in random data, but they are not making it up nor do they have financial reason to do so.

I personally have seen apparitions, left my body, experienced vivid episodes of clairvoyance, and on a handful of occasions had visions of random future events which came to pass. I know of many people, like myself, who experience these things and don't talk about it with skeptics (generally) or those who would call us "idiots". Maybe I was hallucinating? It doesn't bother me if you believe that, but it does bother me when you make statements that everyone like me is an idiot liar. There is an enormous difference between being wrong and being a liar.

I think you should soften up your arrogance a bit with your characterization. I concede many who achieve notoriety or profit greatly are possibly liars, but for every one of those there are flocks of people who do truly experience "weird" phenomena. We are invisible to you because you probably project a very negative attitude whenever these topics come up in conversation. Since we are invisible, your only experience is watching the notorious ones in the media: the ones with enormous profit motives.

Re:Sprites

[Urkki]

Hallelujah. Some time during the 20th century (or maybe the late 19th century) we decided that we knew mostly anything about everything, and we "froze" our conception of what is possible or impossible. A great parallel and maybe one reason for that attitude is that we live in closed world that we have entirely mapped. No more "HERE BE DRAGONS" on maps, we've seen it all, there's no mystery, no Atlantis, no big cave leading to the centre of the Earth, no lost 7th continent, and so on... And I think that it's something that anyone can confirm. Deep down, you know we know mostly everything about anything. You know there's no such things as ghosts, witches, mysterious dragons, angels, giant sea serpents, mole people, space aliens roaming our atmosphere, reincarnation, because what you really think is, if any such thing really existed, we would surely know by now.

No. It's that what we don't know has moved to an area that "layman" no longer easily understands, such as incompatibility of general relativity and quantum mechanics, string "theories" (or whatever you want to call them), current problems in cosmology, etc.

Currently (21st century) scientists very acutely know we don't know everything, not by a long shot. It's just that there are many things experimentally known to match current theories to the limits of current measurements. Offering something that doesn't match current measurements as a valid replacement is just silly.

Re:Sprites

[4D6963]

You're talking about something entirely different and unrelated.

Re:Sprites

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a bad idea, it will die on its own merits;

You fail at memetics.

Re:Sprites

[Roger W Moore]

does the theory match known empirical data? Is there actually a theory at all? Does it make new predictions that are testable? If so, then we might have something of worth.

...and who exactly is going to take the considerable amount of time and effort needed to check their theory against the huge amount of data and results that have already been collected? The only reason for doing this is because you think that the idea has some merit and you decide that using non-scientific principles based on arbitrary criteria such as you outline. People will never agree on these criteria and so hence there is a problem....

Re:Sprites

[Roger W Moore]

Yes, actually. We can tell the great minds from the mediocre idiots by the degree of correspondence that their ideas have with empirically verified reality.

Ok well until recently nobody had seen upward lightning and strange glowing sprites so. before that, those who said that they had seen them were clearly wrong because their statements did not correspond with empirically verified reality. Right?

The problem with your approach is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Re:Sprites

[causality]

I mentioned the Electric Universe in passing and it was not the crux of my argument. You have chosen to get fixated on that because it's apparently some kind of push-button keyword for you. I can't be responsible for that.

Don't try to mark me as misunderstanding what you said, you made an assertion regarding scientific progress, then tried to tie it into an unrelated point about EU (which was factually incorrect).

Well, when I never once spoke about the criteria for something to be accepted as "truth" and you respond talking about the criteria needed for something to be accepted as truth, what am I supposed to think? That you fully understood what I was saying? Yeah, sure. Look, you made an easy mistake and I pointed that out. Deal. I was neither rude nor disrespectful in pointing it out so this defensiveness of yours and outright denial of an obvious mistake is rather unbecoming.

It's a wonderful tactic if you want to feel persecuted.

While I appreciate the attempt to make this into a personal issue, it's quite useless. You may think whatever you like about me as a person. It still has no bearing whatsoever on anything I've said about science.

Re:Sprites

[jdigriz]

No, not right "/

Ok well until recently nobody had seen upward lightning and strange glowing sprites so. before that, those who said that they had seen them were clearly wrong because their statements did not correspond with empirically verified reality. Right?

No, not right. When we have our first report of a sprite or upward lightning, we then have a testable claim. Either the eyewitness is correct, or they are frauds or mistaken. We need more evidence to determine which is the case. More eyewitness reports lend a bit more credence than a single individual, but there are things like mass hysteria, so we still have doubts. Also eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, ask any courtroom. Then, from TFA we see that in 2003 somebody caught a "gigantic jet" on camera. It could have been photoshopped or it could have been real. But it's another data point. Then, most recently the subjects of the article measured the radio noise output of the gigantic jet and calculated the level of electrical discharge. Now we have two concrete pieces of physical evidence and a slew of eyewitness reports. The odds of fraud or mistaken observation are vastly diminished because of all the different actors and actual data collected. If other investigators set out to replicate the results from the data collected we could be even more certain. *That* is what empirical verification of reality is. You chase the odds of lies or error into the smallest corner you can, so that you have a preponderance of evidence to back up your claims. That's what makes real scientific data better than supposition or dogma. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but a single report is not data either. Those original reporters of the gigantic jets have been proven right, through the appropriate process, not a rush to believe.

Re:Sprites

[Urkki]

You're talking about something entirely different and unrelated.

Strange matter (and the Earth converting into it), miniature black holes (and the Earth being devoured by one) etc are "HERE BE DRAGONS" on the white areas of todays "maps" (scientific theories) of the world. So it's very related to what I was replying to.

Re:Sprites

[4D6963]

No offence but you're still missing the point. You're just taking my analogies and wrapping them around what you want to say, which is unrelated.

Re:Sprites

[Chris Burke]

"The flow of charged particles" is the very definition of an electric current but mainstream science doesn't regard the solar wind (or any other celestial phenomena) in those terms.

Oh god, this again. NO, idiot, the solar wind is a plasma and consists of equal number of positively and negatively charged particles. It does not represent a net transfer of charge, and thus does not represent a current!

At some point, the independent thinker realizes that "mainstream" does not represent the pinnacle of human knowledge about which we are most certain, though ideally this would be the case. Rather, it unfortunately tends to represent what is most easily demonstrated to the shallowest and least questioning of minds who are all too easily influenced by the authority or the credentials of the person who is speaking.

Yes, and you here represent the "mainstream" of science illiterates, and you are so unquestioning and so easily influenced by this wonderful story of "rebel" science oppressed by the "orthodoxy" that you don't even bother trying to figure out if it makes any sense at all.

It takes all of five fucking seconds to disprove the Electric Universe theory on the basis of it not having even the most basic aspects of science correct. You think the Electric Universe upends our traditional understanding of astronomy and how the universe works? Ha! It upends our traditional understanding of Electricity itself -- only our "traditional understanding" is immensely well supported by experiment, while the "Electric Universe" version of electricity doesn't match reality at all.

Rather than shouting down or marginalizing the minority who disagree, we should be promoting their dissent so long as it's scientific in nature.

The only sense in which this dissent is scientific is in the sense that it is falsifiable. And it has been falsified. Ergo, if you had a single scientifically oriented neuron in your brain, you would abandon it, just like Lamarckianism and Caloric Theory were abandoned. But you don't, because while the EU hypothesis may be scientific, its adherents are not.

Re:Sprites

[Chris Burke]

If it's a bad idea, it will die on its own merits;

Clearly not true, because it's a terrible idea that is wrong at the most basic levels, yet here it still is.

It's really sad that a theory called "The Electric Universe" was created by people who don't even understand electricity. They think the solar wind is caused by an electric field. Anyone who knows anything about physics knows that you can't make positive and negative charges move in the same direction with an electric field. Yet, the solar wind is equal numbers of protons and electrons all moving away from the sun. So, there's either no way an electric field can be responsible, or fucking Coulomb's Law isn't just inaccurate but completely and utterly wrong.

Gee, we're claiming to be scientific, so what does experimentation say? Is Coulomb's Law wrong, or is Electric Universe a bunch of ignorant bullshit that won't die?

The "video at the link"

[thenextstevejobs]

That was the most underwhelming video of a 90 km lightning bolt I could have possibly imagined.

Re:The "video at the link"

[maxume]

Worry not, I am hard at work on an animation that will be even more disappointing.

Re:The "video at the link"

[jiggerdot]

Also, the cation reads: "The gigantic jet observed by Steven Cummer and his team...". The internet is indeed for porn :-)

I for one ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... overlords etc.

Re:Question

[trapnest]

Stupid slashdot removing my line breaks. :(

I wonder...

[blackraven14250]

Might this be the "equal and opposite reaction" to a lightning strike?

Error?

[jmcharry]

There must be a mistake in the article. The amount of charge isn't very big. Maybe they meant kilo Couldombs?

Re:Error?

[LSD-OBS]

A Coulomb is a heck of a lot of current, and a bolt of a lightning happens in a heck of a short time. The number's about right for a *large* bolt.

Re:Error?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 Coulomb is a charge, not a current. Not a terribly big charge either. A "gold cap" 1F capacitor charged to 1V holds 1C. Discharging 1C at an extreme voltage in a very short time, now that's impressive.

Re:Error?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Coulomb is a heck of a lot of charge, and a bolt of a lightning happens in a heck of a short time. The number's about right for a *large* bolt.

FTFY.

Re:Error?

[jmcharry]

A Coulomb is an ampere-second. Granted, the leading edge of a strike is microsecond, and I think there is flow both ways, but a lightning strike at least appears to persist for some time, and can do a lot of work. Maybe my intuition is misleading me, but do you have a reference?

Re:Error?

[Anonymous Coward]

P=U*I. Note the voltage in that equation.

Re:Error?

[Deadstick]

A Coulomb is a heck of a lot of current

Your typical Diehard stores about a quarter million of them.

And it's charge, not current.

rj

Re:Error?

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to persist because of afterglow on the retina + multiple repeat strikes along the same path in rapid succession, I think.

Re:Error?

[LSD-OBS]

I did mean charge! Trying to post comments while in the middle of a conversation at a party - probably not the best idea :)

Re:Error?

[navyjeff]

No, your typical Diehard is electrically neutral. The difference in potential between the terminals is due to the chemical properties of the battery. It is storing electrical energy by having dissimilar metals in an electrolytic solution. Putting a conductor between the terminals turns chemical potential energy into moving charge carriers.

If a Diehard stored a Coulomb of charge, it would be a capacitor, not a battery.

Re:Error?

[Deadstick]

Good point -- but still, it will deliver all those coulombs on command. From a circuit analysis POV, a storage battery can be treated very accurately as a charge storage device. Externally, it differs from a capacitor only in that its voltage doesn't go up (much) with charge level.

rj

Oh, sure. 'Charge up the "gigantic jets."'

[EWAdams]

If you want your atmospheric phenomena to be taken seriously, don't give them names that belong in an Austin Powers movie.

Re:Oh, sure. 'Charge up the "gigantic jets."'

[dominious]

huh? you mean science is taken seriously only by name? please, I could be talking about a "ghost" in statistics because a distribution looks like a ghost...so what? it makes it intuitive...

Re:Oh, sure. 'Charge up the "gigantic jets."'

[Abcd1234]

If you want your atmospheric phenomena to be taken seriously, don't give them names that belong in an Austin Powers movie.

Yeah, no kidding! That's why I refuse to believe in fundamental physics and their stupid "quarks". Charm? Bottom? Strange? Really? Please... with names like that, it must be bullshit.

Who's Ready for some FOOTBALL?!?!?

[Anonymous Cowar]

Oh wait, my bad! Not the Giants vs. the Jets blasting ratings into the Ionosphere... I thought that the ionosphere remark would be a bit too intellectual for the football fans. They've just become familiar with what stratosphere is or means, metaphorically, wouldn't want to confuse them... Carry on.

Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[jeffb (2.718)]

We've discovered, documented, and explained a major new form of lightning that, previous poster notwithstanding, hadn't even really been rumored until recently. So where are the videos and large-scale studies and quantitative models for ball lightning, which has been "generally accepted as real" for well over a hundred years?

Seriously, come on. We've got millions of hours of footage of lightning, tornadoes, meteors, and even rarer and more transient phenomena. But, as far as I know, there isn't one single unambiguous high-quality video of ball lightning "in the wild". So why are we still giving it the benefit of the doubt? How many years will it have to evade our ubiquitous cameras before we just stop believing in it?

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[DShard]

Given that they have actually produced them in the lab, I am going to have to say a while. Given that there isn't a shred of any kind of scientific evidence for alien visitations, bigfoot, loch ness monster, santa clause or the tooth faerie, their should be no one who actually thinks they exist. Yet there are those of us amongst the rest of us who believe in the existence of those things.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[Vitriol Angst]

I've witnessed "ball lightning" on about three occasions now. The likely reason we have people pursuing the concept but no documentation is probably the same as the reason I never documented it; by the time you yell "Holy crap -- that's ball lightning" it is gone.

Now I've heard some theory that it's supposed to be related to plasma created by tectonic stresses. But my wife and I witnessed it when just passing under a bridge in Florida, and the ball kind of floated along a power line until it hit a transformer and blew it up -- right over the heads of rush hour traffic.

The first time I saw it, my house had been hit by lightning, and the power went out. About a minute later, my video tape ejected from a smoking VCR, with a kind of, deep, sick-cat "meow" and instead of a tape ejecting, a 1.5" sphere of glowing plasma bounced out, and kind of slid/skipped across the rug. Needless to say, that VCR never worked again.

>> The lack of evidence for something, doesn't mean that witnesses are all hallucinating.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Given that they have actually produced them in the lab, I am going to have to say a while.

Really? A glowing ball of something, persisting for many seconds without any visible energy source, variously gliding along a conductor without affecting it or blowing a metal object to bits?

I hear a lot about shorting out rooms full of submarine batteries, and about candle flames in microwave ovens, but there's still no video of a golf-ball or tennis-ball or basketball-sized globe going for a nice, leisurely stroll around the grounds. One would think by now there would be.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[jeffb (2.718)]

I've witnessed "ball lightning" on about three occasions now. The likely reason we have people pursuing the concept but no documentation is probably the same as the reason I never documented it; by the time you yell "Holy crap -- that's ball lightning" it is gone.

And yet, again, there's plenty of footage of meteors, car crashes, lightning strikes... these are transient phenomena, giving you little or no time to catch any single event, but there are lots of cameras out there.

Now I've heard some theory that it's supposed to be related to plasma created by tectonic stresses. But my wife and I witnessed it when just passing under a bridge in Florida, and the ball kind of floated along a power line until it hit a transformer and blew it up -- right over the heads of rush hour traffic.

There are a lot of things that can make a power line or a transformer light up, and there are a lot of things that can make your eyes (and brain) think they've seen a wandering ball. For transient, high-brightness, high-emotional-impact events, your brain can't even reliably order what it sees -- you could easily see a ball of glowing debris ejected from a transformer, and interpret it as a glowing ball that hit the transformer and blew it up. I'm not saying that's what happened in the incident you describe, but I am saying that without video evidence, any observer's ability to accurately recall and describe the event is limited.

The first time I saw it, my house had been hit by lightning, and the power went out. About a minute later, my video tape ejected from a smoking VCR, with a kind of, deep, sick-cat "meow" and instead of a tape ejecting, a 1.5" sphere of glowing plasma bounced out, and kind of slid/skipped across the rug. Needless to say, that VCR never worked again.

I work with electronics as a hobby off and on, and I tend to be absent-minded and clumsy, so I've seen a lot of glowing electrical things ejected from equipment. It's often quite impressive, and it sometimes does match some descriptions of ball lightning, but it's not going to (for example) coast smoothly along a wire, or hang motionless in midair, or boil an entire tub of water.

>> The lack of evidence for something, doesn't mean that witnesses are all hallucinating.

Of course not. But with increased prevalence of video recording, some phenomena are showing up, and some are not. If ball lightning is common enough that observer reports are widespread (see, for example, the parent post), why isn't it showing up on camera?

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[DShard]

to quote wikipedia:

Laboratory experiments have produced effects that are visually similar to reports of ball lightning, but it is presently unknown whether these are actually related to any naturally occurring phenomenon.

Now, other than what is most likely something I saw on "In Search of" I have nothing that tells me that it exists. Your barking up the wrong tree. I don't imagine that a plasma could retain it's shape for any meaningful duration in our atmosphere.
I am simply pointing out that irrational beliefs are persistent because those who believe them are as well.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[blackraven14250]

There's a difference between everything in your entire list, and the aliens. They're a rather special case, as everything else there has a limited domain; they reside in a lake, a mountain range, or earth, all places where we can actually go. The aliens have a much greater place where they can be: space. They logically would have technology that lets them get here and back to their planet in a lifetime, or have probes that can move at a decent speed. We even came up with this idea for a show called "Star Trek" about interfering with planets that can't travel the way we can. OTOH, santa claus and the tooth fairy are things that people are known to have made up as kids' stories, as every kid finds out at one point. Santa is also said to have reindeer pull a flying sleigh full of toys, be a fat guy who comes down a chimney, and has elves working for him at the north pole. You really can't put alien visitation in the same category as those things given the likelihood of each actually happening, now can you?

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[blackraven14250]

Seemingly rational beliefs are persistent because people think for themselves less and less when the explanation gets more rational, regardless as to how true it is.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[DNS-and-BIND]

I thought that ball lightning had been documented many times: as a source of false UFO sightings.

Inbred Jed: Here's mah photo of tha' UFO! Now you kin pay me tha fifty dollars ya promised on the teevee!
Educated professor: No, Jed, that's ball lightning.
Jed: Sheeee-oot! Does that mean I don't get tha fitty dollas?
Professor: No. Plus, you lose at life. Move to New York City and start a new life if you ever want to be anything but a hick.
Jed: Sheee-oot!

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[Councilor Hart]

G.S. Pavia, A.C. Pavao et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 048501 (2007)

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[takev]

Here is one of the videos from the lab experiment.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/401413/ball_lightning_created_in_a_laboratory_very_cool_stuff

This one seems to be inside a domestic oven.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgMnsdqHwew&feature=related

Both of these could be fake of course.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[Chris Mattern]

Professor: No. Plus, you lose at life. Move to New York City and start a new life if you ever want to be anything but a hick.
Jed: Sheee-oot!

I thought he had to move to Beverly. Hills, that is. Swimmin' pools. Movie stars.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[forand]

Have you spent any time trying to look up anything? It isn't my field but I have been seeing research results about ball lightning for a while now. If memory serves there was a Youtube video where it was created in a lab. The only thing as yet unknown (as far as I understand things) is how it behaves. Some reports make it sound like it floats around chasing people like something out of a horror movie; such behavior has not been explained nor observed.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Here is one of the videos from the lab experiment.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/401413/ball_lightning_created_in_a_laboratory_very_cool_stuff

Bouncing bits of burning metal. Some people theorize that this is behind many ball-lightning reports. Notice that it follows a ballistic trajectory -- no gliding, no hovering. It's kind of cool, but anybody who ever welds sees this all the time.

This one seems to be inside a domestic oven. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgMnsdqHwew&feature=related

And again, if you're inside an environment that's thick with high-intensity standing waves, it's easy to generate cool plasmas. But the volume around a thunderstorm is not like the volume inside a microwave oven -- there's no easily-coupled, sustained source of hundreds of watts of high-frequency energy.

Both of these could be fake of course.

No, I think they're both perfectly legit, and the first one may well be the same mechanism as a lot of reported "ball lightning". But I'm still looking for an explanation for the floating, drifting, long-lifetime balls.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Interesting. They mention the burning-droplet hypothesis, but seem to settle on what amounts to a "fire tornado". I've seen footage of these, and they're very impressive, but I think it's a loooooong reach to propose this as an explanation for persistent and non-ballistic ball lightning.

Then again, as I said earlier, people are bad at making accurate observations of unusual events. Between burning droplets, burning vortexes, sparks, arcs, visual afterimages, and inaccurate perception and interpretation, maybe there isn't that much left unexplained.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[Councilor Hart]

Yeah well, I have seen ball lighting being produced in a demonstration at my university. The problem is that I can't remember the name of the student who did it (it was a master project, if you can believe it), nor do I know if the results are already published. Besides this article, I didn't find anything else. If you want to know more, contact the professor (Kroesen) of this group: http://www.phys.tue.nl/EPG/ He will know for certain. I am not working for this group, although I know the people there.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[tabrnaker]

um ok. Car crashes are easy to film, they happen around cars. Most of the time though we just film the aftermath, most of the filmed car crashes you've seen have either been in movies or cop car chases. Lightning comes in bunches if you didn't know, very easy to film, come on, you can actually smell a lightning storm coming. Meteors are visible for a lot longer than a few or fractions of a second. Nothing you mentionned comes even close to the parameters of catching ball lightning on film.

At least come up with comparable examples. What are those things called, red herrings? Strawmen? or just plain absence of logic?

Somehow, i don't trust the logic of a mind that is clumsy and prone to almost blowing itself up.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[jeffb (2.718)]

um ok. Car crashes are easy to film, they happen around cars.

um ok. "Ball lightning is easy to film, it happens around thunderstorms."

Most of the time though we just film the aftermath, most of the filmed car crashes you've seen have either been in movies or cop car chases.

What's your point? Sure, most car-crash footage is filmed after the fact, not when an accident is actually happening. For that matter, most "footage" has nothing to do with crashes at all. But, as the number of cameras has increased, so has the number of captures of actual accidents as they happen.

Lightning comes in bunches if you didn't know, very easy to film, come on, you can actually smell a lightning storm coming.

Okay, my bad here. I should have said "close-up footage of a direct lightning strike". You may, of course, point out that most footage of lightning is still from far away, but again, more cameras = more captures of actual strikes "in the foreground".

Meteors are visible for a lot longer than a few or fractions of a second. Nothing you mentionned comes even close to the parameters of catching ball lightning on film.

Ball lightning, if it exists at all, is probably much rarer than meteors, or conventional lightning strikes, or maybe even car crashes. But, based on the apparent frequency with which it's reported, it's common enough that someone should be getting it on a cell phone at least.

At least come up with comparable examples. What are those things called, red herrings? Strawmen? or just plain absence of logic?

Somehow, i don't trust the logic of a mind that is clumsy and prone to almost blowing itself up.

Well, if you'd rather not pay attention to an argument from someone who's willing to be wryly up-front about his limitations, that's fine. But groping around for the term you want, and then lurching directly into a textbook ad hominem fallacy, doesn't exactly strengthen your own argument.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[tabrnaker]

You mean fallacy of genus not ad hominem. Sometimes i like to play dumb to see how anal people are :) Forest for the trees and all that.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[jeffb (2.718)]

You mean fallacy of genus not ad hominem.

Maybe I do, but I've never heard of "fallacy of genus", and as a matter of fact, neither has Google. On the other hand, "I don't trust your logic because of one of your personal characteristics" is, in fact, a textbook example of ad hominem. (If you insist, I'll try to dig out my old introductory logic textbooks and provide a citation.)

Sometimes i like to play dumb to see how anal people are

Feel free to stop whenever you're ready.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[tabrnaker]

I'd suggest "Logical Reasoning". ad hominem is to attack the man not the argument. Genus is to discard the argument based on the source. Subtle differences.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[Vitriol Angst]

I suggest that we add to the Lexicon; "The Fallacy of Phallus" wherein someone is being a Dick about a point of view, because it wasn't something they believed.

I'm telling you I saw a ball of glowing energy hit the power lines and ride along it. I also so a glowing ball with no power lines. Twice in my life. I've seen dozens of car crashes -- they happen all the time and seem to be located on streets.

I work with electronics as a hobby off and on, and I tend to be absent-minded and clumsy, so I've seen a lot of glowing electrical things ejected from equipment. It's often quite impressive, and it sometimes does match some descriptions of ball lightning, but it's not going to (for example) coast smoothly along a wire, or hang motionless in midair, or boil an entire tub of water.

Then you didn't see it. And therefore it must not be possible -- quite an amazing scientific mind you have.

Ball lighting is extremely rare. That's why it's not on camera yet.

>> Just last week, they now have proof that mega waves can occur in calm oceans. 100ft + tall waves -- probably caused by a phenomena called a "soliton wave" happen at many times during the year. There were no photos or videos of these events -- but they scanned the oceans with Satellites to look for small changes in elevation. Now, a few thousand sea captains, don't have to be called drunken fools for having an large boat, or oil tanker capsize without a storm.

Re:Okay, so where's the ball lightning?

[WindShadow]

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Although I carry a camera with me virtually everywhere I go, I rarely get a picture of any transient phenomena lasting less than six seconds. Unless you have the camera ready to go it's unlikely that you will get a picture, particularly a clear and unambiguous picture, of anything lasting only a few seconds, due to your reaction and camera startup time. Add to that the phenomena being rare, and often in conjunction with a lightning strike, and it's not surprising that there isn't much in the way of images, and what exists is subject to interpretation.

Anyone who has been really close to a lightning strike knows that you probably spend a few seconds on "That was close!" (or "Holy shit!"), followed a quick inventory of functional body parts with particular attention to bladder control. Then anything you have seen in those seconds gets processed for action.

Re:Question

[armanox]

Use html for formatting. /> gives you a line break.

HAARP

[Sanat]

HAARP High frequency Active Auroral Research Program - This messes with the Earth's natural energy fields as well as the ozone layer. This project has some strange side effects such as lightning from a cloudless sky, large fragments of ice simply falling from thin air, and other odd disturbances.

This project is located in Alaska away from the prying eyes of citizens in the USA.

There is a lot of stuff on the web about it... some very hysterical and some fairly factual.

Most of humanity has not heard of this project.

 

Re:HAARP

[Anonymous Coward]

That is so true because I watched it on Discovery! Wait, what??

Re:HAARP

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, that was an interesting description. You might note that any US auroral research is best performed in Alaska more for reasons of auroral proximity than prying eyes -- and there are a number of US citizens in Alaska, anyway.

But, while I find myself unable to share your paranoia (the ability for humans to perceive false correlation with such things is legendary -- ask the 1000s of hams whose neighbors suddenly "start" suffering TV interference when they see a new tower put up), that is a very interesting facility -- 3.6MW of RF is nothing to sneeze at, and pumping the ionosphere with HF to transmit ELF is damn cool. Thanks for the info, and here's a link for others who may be interested.

73 de ab9ul

Re:HAARP

[ErikZ]

Most of Humanity has not heard of the word "Cheeseburger" either.

Re:HAARP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another insane post on this story.

signed,

The Federation of Angry Scientists.

We'd quite like to kick some sense into you.

Re:HAARP

[CmdrGravy]

So you're saying ice falling from the sky in Alaska is some sort of unnatural "freak" event ?

Re:HAARP

[jameskojiro]

It is possible that HAARP can screw with things, but come one, it is ran by the government and the government has a good track record of always doing the right thing. I am not worried in the least, you can trust the government.

I can recall

[WindBourne]

pilots in the 60 who spoke quietly about these. Of course, scientists said that no such thing exists and as such, most pilots kept real quiet about it. Only at wild 60's parties would I hear some of these guys talking about it.

Re:I can recall

[kiwijapan]

pilots in the 60 who spoke quietly about these. Of course, scientists said that no such thing exists and as such, most pilots kept real quiet about it. Only at wild 60's parties would I hear some of these guys talking about it.

Maybe an even larger, as yet undiscovered type of these ""gigantic jets" can be used to explain the images taken from the shuttle, Mir space station etc. orbiting earth that clearly show something (an object) leaving the earth's atmosphere, and which have for a long time - at least in particular circles - been used to 'prove' the existence of UFOs on earth. If the jets in the article can reach 80km, could it not be possible that some as yet undiscovered phenomena could reach even higher, with enough power to break through the ionosphere into outer space?

Re:I can recall

[Hadlock]

Most videos of "something moving/leaving" in relation to the earth taken by astronauts/NASA are due to random crap (speck of dust sized crap) floating by the window only a couple of inches away from the window. Optically it looks much further away due to the parallax effect not working properly because your eyes/brain aren't used to being able to see 60+ miles without there being a tree/cloud in the way and also due to the curvature of the earth. There are tons of stories of astronauts tapping on the glass of the spaceshuttle to get the dust floating an inch or two away from the glass and then calling over a fellow astronaut and claiming a huge fleet of asteroids is about to hit the earth, or alien invaders surrounding the planet, etc. It's just an optical illusion involving space dust.

awesome

[martas]

go Blue Devils!

Not news. Tesla did this a hundred years ago.

[koelpien]

Not news. Tesla built a wireless electrical transformer a hundred years ago. http://www.teslascience.org/

Re:Not news. Tesla did this a hundred years ago.

[mrmeval]

"For $35 you will receive the watermarked print of your choice" of the 750 photos in their possession.
 

Re:Move along, nothing to see here...

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Ewwww!

Probably written off as UFO sightings

[KitFox]

The best I can figure is that if a ball lightning object is caught on film, people end up calling them UFO scare attempts, then saying "There is no such thing as a UFO, so it must be a hoax".

Consider though: All of the above-mentioned items are visible unambiguously from miles away. They are all large-scale items. Ball lightning is considered to be small and doesn't act like meteors (falling fireball that you can photograph dozens of on the right night). I would expect that in close proximity, ball lightning would be too bright for the camera (or human eyes) to deal with properly, just ending up washing out the light detection device. At a distance, nobody can really determine whether it's ball lightning or just a proliferation of very short-distance lightning strikes within the cloud, or even just a plane.

Sky lightning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Skyghtning!

Re:Question

[TheThiefMaster]

Use "Plain old text" posting mode in the options.
It's not really plain text (that's extrans), it still allows html tags for formatting, but it does automatically add <br> tags for line breaks.

Re:Question

[TheThiefMaster]

Only xhtml has the "/" in the <br> tag

Ozone Repair System?

[Millennium]

I wonder: ozone is known to be created by electric discharges through the air, and a lot of these "new" atmospheric phenomena appear to be related to such discharges. Might this be some sort of failsafe mechanism that could repair a damaged ozone layer, somehow suppressed by a healthier ozone layer but re-emerging when damage occurs?

Re:Ozone Repair System?

[Abcd1234]

Nah, ozone in the upper atmosphere is created when UV radiation from the sun strikes oxygen molecules, producing lone oxygen atoms which combine with O2 to form O3.

How far up...

[hesaigo999ca]

Could we harness this energy to help us send more planes/shuttles into space, or even be able to use those to power the space stations, how far up the sky does this go up into?

It is all over the news in fact

[Ilgaz]

If you watch general TV, you will see `UFO` stuff caught on camera. They are generally ball lightning.

There are also theories that it is related to xenon gas etc. and all relating to earthquake activity. So, I get alerted when some guy on TV says `UFO caught on tape` near my area.

Before the Marmara/Golcuk earthquake which was wrongly called Istanbul quake, there were some TV news mentioning UFO caught on tape, just a week ago before the 7.4 Quake, in same zone...

3 times in a row

[Ilgaz]

There was a guy on Nat Geo TV got hit by lightning 3 times and still alive. Of course, he is not very happy about it.

Re:3 times in a row

[AI0867]

But was he in the same place every time?

Re:3 times in a row

[tsa]

Was he attempting suicide those three times?

Re:3 times in a row

[budgenator]

Some movie characterful said the safest place to be hit with lightening in in the anus,but mooning Zeus seems to be asking for trouble if you ask me; I'm sure there is a goatse joke in there somewhere as well.

What about rogue waves?

[Ilgaz]

Oh, guess this one, disregarded for ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave

Of course, as captains saw it, they spoke openly about it since nobody would send them to psychological checks. This one is seen by pilots mainly and of course if you are a commercial pilot, you don't speak openly about it.

The Wiki link I gave to you has been really vandalized by (citation needed) freaks and missing a very important photo, taken before photoshop age. Here is the photo which finally made scientists think about the possibility, taken in 1980s (as far as I remember)

http://www.automatesintelligents.com/labo/2005/jan/rogue-wave,1.jpg

Someone who got patience left to deal with Wiki people should fix the article to include that evidence.

The Main Strike Goes Up, Not Down

[Anonymous Coward]

"and confirm that they carry as much energy skyward as ordinary lightning strikes carry to the ground"

kdawson, I think you mean "carry as much energy upward from the clouds as ordinary lightning strikes carry from the ground". The initial "leader" strike to ground merely ionizes the air to pave the way for the return strike from the ground to the cloud. The return strike is the one that we see - going UP from ground to cloud. The leader strike is extremely low current, and occurs a fraction of a second before the return strike.

This makes perfect sense, because the electrons that move from ground to cloud have to eventually go somewhere, now we have proof that they continue to discharge outward. The question now is, what happens to all that electricity once it's in the upper ionosphere?

Re:The Main Strike Goes Up, Not Down

[Jake Griffin]

Maybe it creates negative ions in the ionosphere? And maybe all that negativity is what's affecting the ozone layer? Darn clinical depression... it's getting to everyone these days...

Exactly!

[EWAdams]

How much respect does theoretical physics get from the public? How much tax money do you think they are willing to vote for research into something called a charmed, strange, or bottom quark?

When it was electrons and mesons and baryons, physics kicked ass and we got nukes 'n' stuff. Now that it sounds like a line of toys for toddlers from Playskool, or worse, Teletubbies, physics has lost all respect. This is why the LHC was built in Europe, of course.

Re:Exactly!

[Abcd1234]

How much tax money do you think they are willing to vote for research into something called a charmed, strange, or bottom quark?

Very little, just as they don't value funding research into *any* fundamental scientific field, because America has developed a hostility toward all things scientific, and that includes fundamental research and the scientists that work on it. This would be why the US is falling behind in a whole range of fields, no matter how subjectively silly or not silly the naming conventions may appear to the average american idiot (as Greenday would put it).

Waiting for them to blame this on

[Anonymous Coward]

the hoax that is global warming. http://www.discussglobalwarming.com/blog

They are making it up!

[Roger W Moore]

I ask because I've known a number of people into those topics and I can tell you they do not think they are making it up.

Whether they are consciously, or unconsciously making it up does not matter. Unless you truly believe that there are aliens from outer space visiting the US to abduct people and Europe to make crop circles their brains must be making it up. If it is unconscious then perhaps there is some science in trying to understand why the brain does this.

For the conscious cases we know why they do it: they get kicks form people taking them seriously. Hence the best thing to do is have a very heavy dose of skepticism when dealing with such phenomena.

I personally have seen apparitions, left my body, experienced vivid episodes of clairvoyance, and on a handful of occasions had visions of random future events which came to pass.

...and how many times have you had visions of events which did not come to pass? If I toss a coin in the air then 50% of the time I can predict the result correctly but that is hardly unexplainable! I am not trying to say that there are no phenomena that science cannot explain - afterall we only know what about 4% of the Universe is made of so we can hardly claim to understand it all or even most of it. However have you thought about why you keep thse observations to yourself (except for posting them on Slashdot!). Could it be that really, deep down, you yourself have doubts that what you observed actually happened exactly as it appeared to?

If you read my post carefully you would note that I did not generalize: I was careful to say that the vast majority were idiots making stuff up (consciously or unconsciously) but that some were probably genuine unexplained phenomena of the non-psychological kind. My point is simply that it is almost impossible to determine which are the important ones that should be investigated properly. In science you need to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out!

Be careful of your tense

[Roger W Moore]

This argument has effectively shot down your first argument! Since the claims are evaluated against empirically verified reality (note the past tense) this is why they are commonly rejected until more evidence comes to light. Hence you cannot use this to separate the mediocre idiots from the great minds without insisting that the "great minds" go out and find more evidence which is what Einstein was complaining about.

Re:Question

[trapnest]

Thank you.