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Ball Lightning Caught On Video and Spectrograph

Posted by Unknown on from the x-files dept.

symbolset writes "Ball lightning has been reported for hundreds of years, and experimentally produced, but for the first time a natural will 'o wisp has been captured on video and amazingly, spectrograph, accidentally by researchers studying ordinary lightning."

9 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Error in summary by Carnildo · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd just like to note that a will o' the wisp is not the same thing as ball lightning.

    --
    "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
    1. Re:Error in summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      This actually was ball lightning if you bother reading the article. They just decided to use whatever file photo they could grab when they posted the article but the photo they chose has nothing to do with the actual ball lightning captured on video during a thunderstorm in china. The researchers were originally photographing normal lightning when ball lightning occurred near enough. The actual link to the actual article/video: http://physics.aps.org/article...

  2. Re:link to video? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's available here: http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5

    Not much to see though.

  3. Warning: No video or pictures by PapayaSF · · Score: 4, Informative

    Warning: This is another of those annoying website articles that describe a visually fascinating thing, but don't actually include any pictures or videos of said fascinating thing. Not even the the spectrograph, though that seems to be in the paper behind the paywall. The only picture is of some earlier lab-made ball lightning.

    --
    Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
    1. Re:Warning: No video or pictures by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's in the first-linked article, directly underneath the picture.

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      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  4. Video by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ball lightning video

    (Don't complain that it is the Daily Mail, it worked better than the Puffington Hosts.)

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  5. Re:link to video? by SumDog · · Score: 5, Informative

    It takes a long time to get stuff published. They had to take their results, form a paper, get people to analysis it and then it goes under peer review. For us to have all this information a little over a year out is actually quite good. Also, we know it's gone under review. It could still have bad information in it, but it's less likely.

  6. Re:Not the first time by a long shot by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Informative

    My understanding is that it's the first time when we have sufficient review to conclude that this is real and is actually of the phenomenon it purports to document.

  7. Re:For. Fuck's. Sake. by Sockatume · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's embedded in the first article, on the right hand side, under the picture.

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    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?