Ball lightning in the common mind is somewhere between flying saucers and meetings with the yeti. Until now, the "fireball" remains one of the most mysterious and even terrible phenomena. To meet her, they say, is not good.
Fear has big eyes
Everything that can be explained with difficulty, human consciousness transforms into "unbelievability". The same happened with ball lightning: it is supposedly capable of "chasing" and killing animals, passing through people, depriving them of hair, teeth and "rewarding" them with radiation, boiling water in various containers, chipping off whole rocks or "breaking through" tunnels. It has also long been believed that seeing ball lightning is a disaster. All these numerous stories are nothing more than myths, - at least, says the full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Samvel Grigoryan.
Illusion or fact?
Precisely because of the "supernatural stories" that eyewitnesses told, scientists for a long time did not take ball lightning seriously, considering it, rather, an optical illusion that appears as a result of damage to the retina of the eye by a bright flash of linear lightning.
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The report of the famous astronomer and physicist Dominique François Arago, published in 1838, marked the beginning of an era of serious approach to the study of ball lightning. Arago managed to collect and systematize numerous eyewitness accounts, however, most of the stories still provoked skeptical discussions in scientific circles.
In the 80s of the last century, a book by J. Bari was published in the United States, in which all eyewitness testimonies are checked for reliability, including an American specialist using the method of comparative analysis, comparing different stories about the same fact.
The researches of the American made it possible to draw a "portrait" of ball lightning. A luminous physical body of a spherical shape is capable of moving in the air, overcoming long distances, and at the same time maintaining integrity. The size of the ball ranges from a few centimeters to one and a half meters. The lifespan of lightning is extremely short: from a few seconds to two minutes. In most cases, a "fireball" is born during a thunderstorm, although it can occur in clear weather.
There are more questions than answers
All new attempts to find answers only multiply the questions. For example, what substance does lightning consist of if, according to numerous testimonies, it easily penetrates not only through windows or doors, but also small cracks, again assuming its original shape? If it is gas, then why does lightning not soar like a balloon, since its contents are heated to at least hundreds of degrees? Where does the radiation come from: from the surface or from the entire volume? What determines the temperature difference in ball lightning? Indeed, along with evidence of translucent "balls", the temperature of which hardly exceeds 5 thousand degrees, there are observations of objects, the color of which allows us to speak of a temperature of at least 8 thousand degrees. Finally, what is the energy carried by the ball lightning spent? If only for light radiation, then the "ball" should glow for many hours.
Oh, "lucky"
Another controversial issue is the frequency of occurrence of ball lightning. In 1966, researchers from NASA conducted a survey of two thousand people who were asked to answer two questions: did they see ball lightning, and if yes, was the phenomenon accompanied by standard lightning discharges? Scientists have tried to determine the frequency of occurrence of ball lightning in comparison with linear discharges. Of the respondents, only 409 people observed linear lightning in the immediate vicinity, while only 200 respondents encountered ball lightning. Scientists were lucky: among the participants in the experiment there was even one "lucky" who observed the "fireball" eight times. His testimonies have added to the piggy bank of circumstantial evidence that ball lightning is not such a rare occurrence.
Cluster theory
Professor Igor Pavlovich Stakhanov made a huge contribution to the study of the issue. His book "On the physical nature of ball lightning" is based on numerous eyewitness accounts, which the scientist subjected to physical analysis. This allowed him not only to describe the main characteristics and parameters of ball lightning, the conditions for their appearance, movement and principles of interaction with the outside world, but also made it possible to formulate a cluster hypothesis.
According to Stakhanov, ball lightning is nothing more than a concentration of a bunch of ions, which are "covered" with shells of polar molecules, for example, water. Stakhanov's cluster theory easily agrees with numerous eyewitness stories and explains both the structure of lightning in the form of a ball (the presence of effective surface tension) and the ability of lightning to penetrate through holes, re-assuming its original shape. However, Stakhanov's practical experiments on creating a bunch of cluster ions were unsuccessful.
Alternative energy source
Throughout the history of studying the issue, many hypotheses have been put forward, the general idea of which boils down to one thing: ball lightning itself is a source of energy. One of the most fantastic is the theory of NASA astronaut Jeffrey Shears Ashby. In his opinion, ball lightning is born during the annihilation of particles of antimatter, which from space fall into dense atmospheric layers, and then, carried away by a linear discharge, end up on the ground. This hypothesis is still impossible to prove due to the fact that it is not possible to detect a suitable antimatter in space.
Today scientists do not reject the possibility of learning how to create artificial ball lightning. Stakhanov's theory can help in this. If it turns out to be correct, then humanity will receive an alternative source of energy, which can be created from a moisture-saturated atmosphere, changing the concentration of vapors and water droplets and producing controlled powerful linear explosions.