One paper even proposed that ball lightning came from magnetic stimulation in the brain. Theories abound: Ball lightning is the result of a failed lightning bolt, of hot ionized silica, or of chains of charged particles. “In my opinion, there are probably multiple causes for what’s described as ball lightning,” Uman said.ĭespite hundreds of eyewitness accounts from across the world and going back centuries, scientists can’t explain ball lightning or re-create it in the lab. The balls of light typically happen during thunderstorms and may have led, in very rare cases, to burn injuries or deaths. Other reports are widely different, like a luminous ring the size of a truck that lasted 10 minutes, as described by an Austrian woman. People have seen ball lightning outside their windows from a distance, mere meters away in their kitchen, roving down the aisles of airplanes, and coming down their chimneys. The balls appear white, yellow, orange, blue, or (rarely) green and can last from mere seconds to up to a minute before fading, flashing, or exploding into nothing. Hartwig/ NOAA, CC BY 2.0Įyewitness accounts describe hovering balls of light typically about 20 centimeters in diameter, roughly the size of a bowling ball. Hartwig illustrated ball lightning arriving through a chimney. “Revolutionary physics even, if you can believe it.” A Scientific Riddle As it stands, nothing can explain a glowing ball with no fuel source that can last up to a minute, said Sonnenfeld. If ball lightning turns out to be explainable by science, the findings could revolutionize our understanding of physics. When it comes to ball lightning, there are lots of observations, but “nobody has correlated any of the observations with any other measurements.” “This is one thing that hasn’t been done,” said Martin Uman, a lightning scientist at the University of Florida who is not involved in the research. They’ll compare the accounts with weather radar systems to characterize the factors that could lead to ball lightning. A new website hosted by New Mexico Tech physicist Richard Sonnenfeld and Texas State University engineer Karl Stephan is collecting eyewitness accounts to improve the basic understanding of the phenomenon. Get the most fascinating science news stories of the week in your inbox every Friday.īall lightning has been reported for centuries but hasn’t been reliably observed by scientific instruments. “Nobody has correlated any of the observations with any other measurements.” This newsletter rocks. “It’s actually one of the incidents that probably got me interested in lightning in the first place.” Sterpka saw ball lightning again in his twenties while driving near a thunderstorm in Massachusetts. That’s when they heard what the strange sighting may have been: ball lightning. His grandfather had no idea what it was but asked around. Sterpka told his grandfather, a science teacher, when he returned home. He watched the ball of light float down to the ground in the distance and disappear out of sight in a matter of 5–10 seconds. “I remember this blue, kind of fuzzy ball just sort of descended diagonally out of the clouds,” said Sterpka, who conducts research in lightning physics at the University of New Hampshire’s Space Science Center. He was home alone and watching a thunderstorm from a window one summer night. Graduate student Christopher Sterpka remembers the first time he saw ball lightning, as a 9- or 10-year-old staying at his grandparents’ house in West Hartford, Conn.
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