Ball Lightning
We've all heard of it, we all believe it exists - but what does science have to say?
Filed under General Science, Urban Legends
| Skeptoid #192 February 09, 2010 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode 192, February 09, 2010
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4192
Dive under your desk and take cover: A wicked orb of ball lightning is banging around your room! Or, maybe it's just a peaceful, quietly hovering ball of warm light. Or, maybe it's a sparking basketball sized globe chasing you across the plains at night. Or, maybe it's a tiny flaming ball that speeds along and suddenly burns itself out. Whatever it is, it's weird, and it seems to be the first explanation many people will reach for when they hear anything about a round light source: Ball lightning. What is it? More importantly, is it anything at all? What does science have to say on the matter?
Not much, evidently. And, at the same time, way too much. For as many theories as there are attempting to explain it, there is no agreed-upon description of what they're trying to explain. There are innumerable eyewitness accounts, and almost nothing in common among them. For all the scientists who maintain that it's real, none of them has an accepted theory or any testable evidence. For those who cling to the understanding that ball lightning is indeed an accepted phenomenon, consider these points:
- Ball lightning is not reproducible in the lab [microwave oven plasma doesn't count - BD]. All known forms of electrical discharge are.
- There is no standard description of what ball lightning looks like or how it behaves. Reports of its color, its size, its speed, its sound, the conditions under which it appears, its behavior, its shape, and its duration are all over the map.
- Not a single photograph or video of ball lightning exists that is considered reliable and not otherwise explainable.
- Electromagnetic theory makes no prediction that anything like ball lightning need exist. It does predict all known forms of electrical discharge.
No matter how reliable any one given report might be, it is mired in a sea of other contradictory reports, all describing something very different. This means that either most reports are wrong, or everyone's seeing a different phenomenon. Are some of them actually seeing ball lighting? Maybe, but since we don't know which ones, we don't know what kind of characteristics ball lightning might have; and thus even the anecdotal evidence is too widely at variance to support a single explanation.
In 1997, a reader wrote into Scientific American's Ask the Experts column to ask if ball lightning is real. Two experts responded, both giving widely varying descriptions for what it looks like, how it behaves, and where it comes from, but both credulously identifying all such reports as ball lightning. They both had decent sounding hypotheses, though Scientific American referred to them as theories, a status I don't think they've achieved. Both experts, though, displayed what I would consider a red flag. They both speak quite casually using the term "ball lightning" with confidence that it is a real, single phenomenon: Ball lightning has been seen here and here, ball lightning does this or that. In other words, grouping contradictory reports including hoax claims and misidentification of known phenomena all together and explaining them with another unknown, behind which there's no accepted theory.
The first expert, Paul Handel at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, is a long-standing proponent of the hypothesis that ball lightning is a manifestation of a maser caused by regular lightning striking within a standing wave of UHF or microwave radiation. In 1975 he developed what he calls "Maser-Soliton Theory" to describe this. From his description in the Scientific American column:
...The maser is generated by a population inversion induced in the rotational energy levels of the water molecules by the short field pulse associated with streak lightning. The large volume of air that is affected by the strike makes it difficult for photons to escape before they cause 'microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation'... Unless the volume of air is very large or else is enclosed in a conducting cavity, ...collisions between the molecules will consume all the energy of the population inversion. If the volume is large, the maser can generate a localized electrical field or soliton that gives rise to the observed ball lightning. Such a discharge has not yet been created in the laboratory, however.
If you find yourself asking "What the heck is he talking about?" you're not alone. As very few scientists outside of some Russian colleagues of Handel's have written about his "Maser-Soliton Theory", it's fair to say that it appears he has yet to convince any significant number of scientists of its validity. The requirement that there happen to be a standing wave of electromagnetic radiation (of unknown origin) when the lightning decides to strike is one reason.
Handel is not the only one pointing at microwaves, though. The Internet is full of instructions for creating ball lightning in your microwave oven, none of which I recommend that you attempt. Placing carbon veil or fine steel wool in a microwave oven will create a glowing plasma that will damage the roof of your oven unless contained within pyrex. Burning a candle flame with carbon pencil rods or carbon charred toothpicks will produce a similar effect. But referring to these kitchen experiments as "ball lightning" is a bit of a strain. First, the plasma created is not shaped like a ball. Second, being extremely hot (dangerously hot), it rises upward, which is a behavior rarely seen in ball lightning reports. Third, it requires a high-powered microwave oven doing its thing, which probably explains why Paul Handel's "Maser-Soliton Theory"has not produced observable effects in nature.
The second expert who offered his thoughts in Scientific American was John Lowke at Australia's Institute of Industrial Technologies. He proposed the mechanism to be the rapid discharge of electrical energy from a lightning bolt that has struck the ground. As the electrical charge disperses through the ground, it creates a plasma similar to the more familiar corona discharge of St. Elmo's Fire. He proposed that the movement of the ball would be determined by the speed at which the charge moves through the ground, which could explain why some reports state the ball lightning moved against the direction of the wind. But once again, nobody has ever been able to produce this effect artificially, and Lowke acknowledged that "There is no generally accepted theory of ball lightning."
The corona discharge hypothesis is the most interesting, as St. Elmo's Fire is a well understood and well established phenomenon with a sound underlying theory. It's the same thing that makes a fluorescent light glow. When there's a big difference between the electrical charge in the ground and the atmosphere, electrons flow from one to the other. They do this most efficiently out the tips of sharp conductive points; masts on a ship being the most familiar example. Given a strong enough field off this tip, the air is turned into a plasma that fluoresces. St. Elmo's Fire is blue or purple in air. If our atmosphere was neon, it would be reddish orange, and so on for all the other colors that fluorescent tubes come in.
But St. Elmo's Fire has an obvious power source: The powerful flow of electrons coming from the conductive point. Ball lightning, while descriptions of its color are often similar to that of St. Elmo's Fire, has no apparent power source. This might make the microwave hypothesis more attractive, but we have no theory that would explain the concentration of the effect in a sphere, and no theory to explain why there might happen to be a standing microwave. Making light requires energy. Any valid theory of ball lightning has to include the power source for all that light.
No discussion of ball lightning, or any other electrical phenomenon for that matter, is complete with the obligatory mention of the patron saint of eccentric electrical theorists, Nikola Tesla. The popular rumor you always hear is that Tesla was able to produce ball lightning at will in his lab. Regarding what he called "electric fireballs," Tesla reported in 1904 in the journal Electrical World and Engineer "I have succeeded in determining the mode of their formation and producing them artificially." Sadly for the world of science, Tesla's own claims on this matter were never evidenced and have never had any reliable corroboration. There's one oft-repeated quote attributed to Tesla, which seems to be a proposed explanation for fireballs he observed and hoped to recreate:
...It became apparent that the fireballs resulted from the interaction of two frequencies.... This condition acts as a trigger which may cause the total energy of the powerful longer wave to be discharged in a infinitesimally small interval of time... and is released into surrounding space with inconceivable violence. It is but a step, from the learning how a high frequency current can explosively discharge a lower frequency current, to using the principle to design a system in which these explosions can be produced by intent.
Separately, in his Colorado Springs Notes, Tesla attributed ball lightning to resistively heated particles in the air. Just as a light bulb's filament produces heat and light from electrical resistance, so might a carbon particle in the air if exposed to high current. It's a fine speculation, but such a fireball would rise and flame out rapidly (like the plasma created in a microwave), it would not hold a ball shape and hover; even if it did, it would require an extraordinary power source and the presence of carbon particles floating about. That's inconsistent with most ball lightning reports, as are explosions of "inconceivable violence". So really none of what Tesla reported bears much similarity to the ball lightning reports that we commonly hear.
So then, in summary, what about this popular trend of suggesting ball lightning as an explanation for a strange report of a hovering ball of light? It's a little hard to justify. As ball lightning has no established properties, it cannot be argued to be a probable match for any given report. It is fair to say that it's likely that one or more unknown phenomena exist that have triggered eyewitness accounts of hovering balls of light, but there's insufficient theory to support assigning these accounts a positive identification of ball lightning. Indeed, as ball lightning can only honestly be described as an unknown, it would be illogical to use it as an explanation for any report.
© 2010 Skeptoid Media, Inc.
References & Further Reading
Barry, J. Ball Lightning and Bead Lighting: extreme forms of atmospheric electricity. New York: Plenum Press, 1980.
Handwerk, B. "Ball Lightning: A Shocking Scientific Mystery." National Geographic News. National Geographic Society, 31 May 2006. Web. 25 May. 2011. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060531-ball-lightning.html>
Stenhoff, Mark. Ball Lightning: An Unsolved Problem in Atmospheric Physics. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999.
Tesla, N. Colorado Springs Notes. Beograd: Nolit, 1978. 333.
Trefil, J. Ball Lightning, UFOs, and Other Strange Things in the Sky. New York: Scribner's, 1987.
Uman, M., Handel, P. "Ask the Experts." Scientific American. Scientific American, 18 Jul. 1997. Web. 5 Mar. 2010. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=periodically-i-hear-stori>
Reference this article:
Dunning, B.
"Ball Lightning." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
9 Feb 2010. Web.
22 May 2013. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4192>
Discuss!
10 most recent comments | Show all 88 comments
Don't know what to think. When I was a kid I was out slopping the hogs on a dark, stormy night. I saw "something" that looked like a glowing ball of light in the sky above me. It hovered around a bit, then exploded. I thought it looked like a flare, but couldn't for the life of me think of how a flare got set off on the family farm.
I just assumed it was what people call "ball lightning". I know memory can play tricks, but it seems to me that there are a lot of witnesses with no axes to grind mentioning things in this comments section. I suppose it could be a non-understood phenomenon that is hard to understand because there is no way to separate what is actually seen from interpretations that people make about what they see.
I'd suggest that "ball lightning" is something that people report but can't be explained right now, rather than simply doubting the statements from people who seem credible.
Bill Hulet, Guelph/Ontario
January 15, 2013 6:34pm
I do believe that 'ball lighting' -if that's what it is - exists. I have seen it with my own eyes.
I saw this during a thunderstorm in Chicago, where I grew up.
I watched a 'ball' which looked like an aircraft light, descend from the base of a cloud, then curve right back up, into the base of the thundercloud. It was visible for maybe no more than 5 seconds.
This would be very odd behavior for an aircraft pilot to carry out....to be looping into the base of thundercloud, during a storm.... Let alone fly out of a thundercloud, just to climb back in.
For the record, I should mention that I was looking out from the back porch (it was roofed) when I saw the 'light ball'. It was noiseless.
NickKo, Illinois
January 19, 2013 12:15pm
Greetings Brian & fellow Skeptoid fans,
I too have observed what I have always thought was 'ball lightning', but its behaviour is markedly different from these accounts.
In observing electrical storms on the low hills approximately five kilometers from my house (with a very wide & uninterrupted view of same), this, let's call it a 'spherical plasma phenomenon', appears immediately above where a normal, ordinary bolt of lightning appears to begin; it travels a very short distance in precisely the opposite direction to the bolt, it's about as bright as the bolt itself and visible about the same length of time - very briefly - being seen just before the bolt 'strikes', & has 'burnt -out' before the strike. I have observed this phenomena so often I've lost count of the number of times -- I see it every time we have an electrical storm, on the far great proportion of lightning-bolts (though of course one must be looking at the right spot at the right time), but not on all, though I will often see a tiny flash of light where the 'ball' would otherwise have been (so perhaps that's a function of my angle to the lightning 'source'?).
Again, I've always thought this was the so-called "ball lightning", & understood my observing of it with every storm was simply a function of my outback location, giving me my uninterrupted, 'big sky' views, & that it was a quite normal & common-place occurrence, I am thus very surprised at these descriptions -- I've seen nothing like them.
Regards,
RDF, Victoria, Australia
January 20, 2013 10:40am
Lighting in a ball shape (3 feet diameter) traveling slowly over a river, is possible.
Didn't last for more than 20 seconds.
I have seen it, it'S very impressing but I taught it was normal in certains conditions.
It was...
Over, riviere des prairies, near boul Gouin, in montreal, quebec, canada, 20 years ago.
How it appenend ?
...Just before rain, lightning from the sky, hit a transformer then crossing the river to the transformer over my vehicule.
Crossing the river it took the shape of a shere of very high energy. A trace all the way behind the path like if the air was less dense where it whent.
Afer that...BANG.
No more transfo and wires dancing all over tha place and over the car in front of me
It's always in these moments that you say to yourself.
Where is my camera ?
Gillis, Quebec,canada
January 28, 2013 5:12pm
Gillis, Quebec,canada
January 28, 2013 5:24pm
Brian is not saying that "ball lightening" does not exist, but that the observations are so varied that it is likely people are seeing more than one single, as yet, unexplained process. He also points out that no one has come up with a theory that is reproducible. So, following the scientific principle, it would be incorrect to assume they are all the same thing or that they even exist as some unknown process. That does not mean it should not be investigated, but we should not jump to some unsubstantiated conclusion. I have observed a similar phenomena where lightening struck a power line and a glowing ball hovered over the strike for 20 seconds before exploding with a flash and boom. It's movement appeared to follow the power line, perhaps confined to the magnetic fields around the line. After reading other accounts of "ball lightening", I notice that many accounts match mine and suggest that these are the basic characteristics of this phenomena. The other observations should not discount this, which is what many scientist seem to do.
HoP, Lexington Va
January 31, 2013 1:43pm
when i was 10 yrs old i saw a ball of lightning about 2hrs befor a storm hit it appeared for about 5-10 seconds when i noticed it i thought it may have been the sun coming back out through the clouds andnwhen i looked at it it didn't really explode but it did in a way i do remember a very loud boom maybe because it was so close but about 20+ bolts came from it and i couldn't hear anything for the next 2 days and when i told my mother and father about it they kind of just brushed it off i guess becuse i was so young but i had no idea it was a discussed phenomenon.
frklic, fayettville
March 23, 2013 10:11pm
I saw "ball lightning" last year. It was nighttime, and I was in my backyard, smoking with a friend, when I see this fuzzy, bright blue or white ball with a tail streak through the air. I wasn't sure how big or how distant it was, but it looked spectacular. It was only there for a second, before it seemingly just fizzled out. I don't recall it making any noise. My friend said he saw it, too.
Yabeen Sees, Tooleedoo
March 26, 2013 10:59am
As a skeptic, you must find it interesting that all comments in reply to this article are personal accounts of witnessing ball lightning. It appears to be a global phenomena, and since there is absolutely no fame or glory to be received from a near-anonymous report on some website article, I doubt these accounts are all fabricated.
As for me, I have not seen this account. However, my father, who is a computer programmer and has the demeanor of being very serious and logically minded, told me a story of seeing ball lightning when he was a boy. It was strange hearing from him, as he is not the type of person that would tell such a fantastic story. I don't remember much of the details suffice it to say that he was in his parent's house and saw it travel through his home (and, if I remember correctly, pass through a wall) during a storm. He was young in the story so I wrote it off.
Still very interesting to hear. Hopefully, if this phenomena exists, it will be accidentally caught on camera at some point.
Robert Schultz, Marietta, Georgia
March 28, 2013 2:19pm
My mother and I saw ball lightning. We came out of our barn and paused when we had to go through the gate. We both looked up the hill towards our house. This large orange glowing ball about 15 feet in diameter came rolling down the hill. It crossed a dirt road and then it hit our barb wire fence and exploded with no noise. Checked the area the next morning. No burnt grass or wires.
Ken Keefer, Vanderbilt,Pa.
May 10, 2013 6:04am
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I've seen ball lighting twice in my life, the 1st time I was an airman at warner robbins ga. in 1983 staying in a temporary duty barracks(tdy) I was smoking a cig on the 2nd floor balconey a hot and humid night I looked down the wooden rail and saw a softball size light coming toward me It BOUNCED off me went into the room and POPPED! The guy I was rooming with thought I threw something in the room.
The 2nd time 2004 I just had the trees in my yard removed(they were old crappy subdivision stock have since replaced)the day was pretty unstable(august in jersey) I was standing in my kitchen, a ball the size of a softball maybe a little larger came through my back door and traveled into my living room and POPPED almost like the crack of a whip. My wife looked at me and said "WHAT THE F#&? was that? She rarely curses and NEVER heard the F-bomb from her in over 20 yrs of life together it shocked me as much as the ball. When I told her what I thought it was she told me she had once seen a ball of light climb a rain spout after a storm, when she told people the said she was CRAZY (granted this was 1970 and she was raised by a very religious mother)so she never spoke of it again until we both saw it together. I am a firm believer it exist.
fivebyfive, nj
December 22, 2012 7:48pm