Ball Lightning Caught On Video and Spectrograph

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ball Lightning Caught On Video and Spectrograph

Posted by Unknown on Monday January 20, 2014 @04:04PM 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."

32 of 120 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Error in summary by Carnildo · 2014-01-20 16:11 · 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 VortexCortex · 2014-01-20 16:59 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  The latter may be responsible for the stories of the former basing fantasy on bits of unexplained fact, as is often the case with ancient legends, e.g., the Christian's god was probably a volcano.
  What about a Foo Fighter or Saint Elmo's Fire? One thing I find interesting is how many events can have a common cause. As is often the case in science, it's not a stretch to think such disparate things could someday be understood as a variation of "the same thing": A change in static electric charge.
2. Re:Error in summary by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 19:29 · 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...
3. Re:Error in summary by angel'o'sphere · 2014-01-20 21:25 · Score: 2
  
  the Christian's god was probably a volcano.
  I always thought it was a burning bush, aka an open oil spring somewhere in the desert.
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
4. Re:Error in summary by LynnwoodRooster · 2014-01-20 21:27 · Score: 3
  
  It was also the Hebrew god, later adopted by Christianity, and further later by Islam...
  
  --
  Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
5. Re:Error in summary by dkleinsc · 2014-01-21 01:14 · Score: 2
  
  And a great deal of trouble might have been prevented had the god in question had not granted the land between the Euphrates and the Red Sea to all 3 groups!
  
  --
  I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
6. Re: Error in summary by germansausage · 2014-01-21 02:04 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Interesting theory on the origin of the word gyp, but around here gyp no longer has any trace of that connotation, and is in no way associated with any racial or ethnic slur.
7. Re: Error in summary by khellendros1984 · 2014-01-21 08:06 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  As a further note, avoid all uses of the words "hooligan", "uppity", "peanut gallery", "hip hip hooray", "vandal", "barbarian", "assassin", "spade", "maroon", or any other word, phrase, figure of speech, or expression that has ever been deemed offensive by anyone at any time.
  
  Also, take care to avoid using the words "hysteria", "orchid", "seminar", "avocado", "mastodon", "manatee", "fundamental", or other words with similarly sexual etymologies around underage people.
  
  Words come from places and take meanings and connotations that don't match their origins. Get over it.
  
  --
  It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
link to video? by noh8rz10 · 2014-01-20 16:12 · Score: 2

can anybody find a link to the actual video? I followed the link in the summary but got to a series of other pages about the video, but not the video itself.
1. Re:link to video? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 16:20 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  It's available here: http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5
  Not much to see though.
2. Re:link to video? by c0lo · 2014-01-20 16:42 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  It's available here: http://physics.aps.org/article...
  Not much to see though.
  From the link, with my emphasis:
  
  That is what Ping Yuan and co-workers from Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, China, now report. They had set up spectrometers on the remote Qinghai Plateau of northwest China to investigate ordinary lightning, which is frequent in this region. During one late-evening thunderstorm in July 2012, they saw ball lightning appear just after a lightning strike about 900 meters from their apparatus and were able to record a spectrum and high-speed video footage of the ball.
  
  (groan) ... seems there are publications much slower than /. - this was supposed to be news one year and a half ago.
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
3. Re:link to video? by slashmydots · 2014-01-20 16:45 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Except that you can see it clearly start at high energy level on the spectrograph then drop in energy level to lower wavelengths of light closer to red like a mega-hot star quickly burning out. I thought that was fascinating and obvious proof that it's ball lightning.
4. Re:link to video? by Rick+in+China · 2014-01-20 17:02 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yes, it's a ripoff of youtube from 2006. It's also one of the largest (the largest perhaps?) video portals on the internet. It's sad that you're stuck in a little bubble of "everything from China is terrible", and that _is_ the video, even though it sucks. Your name is deceiving, "noh8rz", yet your comment reeks of nothing but hate -- someone asked for the video, this is the f'in video, from "the" video portal from the country this article's team is from, I'm being helpful - you're just being a douche bag.
5. Re:link to video? by AthanasiusKircher · 2014-01-20 17:18 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  (groan) ... seems there are publications much slower than /. - this was supposed to be news one year and a half ago.
  To be fair, ball lightning sightings and claims to have photographed it or caught it on video are quite frequent, with a very high rate of hoaxes or mistaking other phenomena for it. (Almost as bad as UFO sightings and "evidence.")
  It wouldn't surprise me at all if a few extra months were added to the researchers' analysis and to the peer review just to substantiate that this is what it says it is, and all the analysis is correct. Ball lightning is just one of those things that so many people have claimed to see, and it seems odd that scientists have so much trouble catching evidence of natural occurrences... so when you finally think you've got it, you want to be sure.
  Not saying it explains the whole delay, but maybe part of it.
6. Re:link to video? by c0lo · 2014-01-20 17:37 · Score: 2
  
  Ball lightning is just one of those things that so many people have claimed to see, and it seems odd that scientists have so much trouble catching evidence of natural occurrences... so when you finally think you've got it, you want to be sure.
  Also on the speculative path... I reckon one must be a Chinese scientist to get out on field trips and actually do something with a (2 actually) spectrograph...
  Seems their "westernized" counterparts are busy fighting for grants (i.e. survival) and organizing sneaker nets to smuggle scientific journals
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
7. Re:link to video? by SumDog · 2014-01-20 17:50 · 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.
8. Re:link to video? by jimshatt · 2014-01-20 20:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  So, just for my understanding, you were science-minded at first, and then you saw something that scientists are actually researching and now you're all into paranormal stuff? Why? Just because something that *you* can't explain, does not mean there is no explanation for it. That's what science is all about!
9. Re:link to video? by dbIII · 2014-01-20 21:11 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  There appears to be no universally agreed definition of ball lightening
  A low sperm count?
Warning: No video or pictures by PapayaSF · 2014-01-20 16:22 · 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 dotancohen · 2014-01-20 18:35 · Score: 2
  
  How the heck does someone stutter using a keyboard?
  Emacs
  
  --
  It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
2. Re:Warning: No video or pictures by Sockatume · 2014-01-20 21:45 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It's in the first-linked article, directly underneath the picture.
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Video by cold+fjord · 2014-01-20 16:26 · 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
Stories by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 17:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

A grandmother of mine told a story about ball lighting that she saw in her kitchen. During a thunderstorm a bolt of lighting struck near her home and a bright hissing ball jumped out the phone, fell to the floor, moved a little ways across the floor leaving small scorch marks and vanished. This would have been the 1940's and the phone was probably a wall mounted rotary.
She was a sober and modest person with a sound mind throughout her life. I don't doubt the story.
1. Re:Stories by cusco · 2014-01-20 17:31 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  It wasn't until the 1960s that scientists finally admitted that ball lightning actually existed. Since they couldn't explain how it could exist they declared it an 'old wives tale'.
  My grandmother was terrified of lightning storms, and I used to sit with her during them growing up. She said that in the 1940s lightning hit the telephone pole outside and blew the telephone right off the wall, starting a fire in the wall she put out with a pan of water. Another time my dad, who would have been about 5 years old, and my grandfather were in the barn trying to calm the cattle. Looking out the window she saw a ball of lightning roll in one end of the barn and then out the other without lighting the mounds of straw and hay inside on fire. She could never abide thunderstorms after that.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
2. Re:Stories by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 21:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I was video taping with a digital camera and I believe I actually have ball lighting on tape... I viewed it several times trying to see if it wasn't some glare from lighting [obviously it was dark when the storm rolled thru] I am trying to determine where I should send a copy of the video, with details with elapsed time when they appear and then disappear.
  It tough to know how large they are but they had a multi color glow, I would like to have a University or NOVA to have a look to see these things were just from natural glare [at a distance] or if it is possible they are ball lighting, or some other event that occurs during thunder storms.
3. Re:Stories by jbeaupre · 2014-01-21 02:54 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I remember reading stories like that as a kid. Never thought I'd see it. Then we moved to a neighborhood where it was common. Yes, common.
  When there were dry thunderstorms, ball lightening would form above a tree down the street. One or two at a time, but dozens during a storm. About 30 to 60 cm in dia, they would drift down from the tree, changing colors until they popped.
  My brother and I would watch it from behind a screen door during at least 3 different storms I can think of. Wild to think it was common enough to recognize the sound and say "The ball lightning is back, let's go watch!"
  The great irony was we were living in family housing at a large research university. The never knew what they had happening on their own campus. I figured they wouldn't believe some kid.
  
  --
  The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Re:Saw one as a kid by scotts13 · 2014-01-20 17:10 · Score: 2

In the woods when I was at summer camp. Sometimes I wonder if ball lightning isn't simply an unlucky bird that got turned into instant plasma.
Maybe sometime, but I've been within five feet of a fair sized ball, and a vaporized bird would not be my first choice for an explanation. It melted the screen in my bedroom window.
Re:Not the first time by a long shot by wonkey_monkey · 2014-01-20 20:07 · Score: 2

and [...] spectrograph
It's just another poorly worded summary.

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Re:Not the first time by a long shot by shutdown+-p+now · 2014-01-20 20:29 · 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.
Ball Lightning and Will O' the Wisp by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-20 21:09 · Score: 2, Funny

Are two VERY different things.
Will O' the Wisp is a B 0/1 Flying regenerating creature
Ball Lightning is an RRR 6/1 trample haste creature that has to be sacrificed at the end of turn.
Similar? really???
Re:For. Fuck's. Sake. by Sockatume · 2014-01-20 21:46 · Score: 4, Informative

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

--
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Not the first time by a long shot by DMUTPeregrine · 2014-01-21 05:34 · Score: 2

Yep. The ball lightning being caught on video isn't that interesting, it's the spectrograph. That tells us what it's made of due to the emission lines in the spectrum. From this we can conclude that at least one type of ball lightning is caused when soil is heated and becomes a plasma. Getting more spectra of ball lightning will tell us if there are other types formed in nature, since other types have been made in the lab.

--
Not a sentence!