It is believed that ball lightning is a clot of plasma formed during thunderstorm weather due to the high intensity of the atmospheric electric field. However, this version of the origin of ball lightning does not allow one to explain the unexpected and sometimes very frightening effects that accompany almost each of their occurrence.
The coming of the devil
Even ordinary lightning, which we can observe during any strong thunderstorm, had no rational explanation for a long time, giving rise to the most ridiculous assumptions and such mythical characters as the thunderer Zeus. But even more mysterious were ball lightning, which appeared very rarely and about which eerie legends were added.
It is believed that the first written evidence of the appearance of ball lightning was a description of the tragic incident on October 21, 1638, when it flew into the church of the village of Widcombe Moore (Devon, England). Eyewitnesses said that a ball of fire more than two meters in diameter knocked out several stones and wooden beams from the walls of the church.
Then he broke benches, smashed many windows, and filled the room with thick sulfur-smelling smoke. Then the ball split into two, with one flying out, and the other disappearing into the church itself. As a result, four people were killed and 60 parishioners were injured. The phenomenon was explained by the coming of the devil and people were accused of him who dared to play cards during the sermon.
Nevertheless, this is far from the first case of the phenomenon of ball lightning recorded in history. Mentions of mysterious fireballs can be found in many sources, starting with the notes of St. Gregory of Tours, dating back to the 6th century. Ball lightning is even captured on the classic painting "The Sermon of St. Martin" exhibited at the Louvre.
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Fear and horror
If we bring together the numerous evidences about ball lightning, then we can find in them signs inherent only to this phenomenon.
It turns out that the shape of ball lightning is not always similar to a sphere - oval, drop-shaped and even rod-shaped specimens are periodically observed. The sizes of spherical and oval zippers vary from a few centimeters to several meters.
Most often reported are relatively small spherical lightning - up to 40 centimeters in diameter. Fireballs are red, yellow-red or yellow - very rarely, witnesses speak of white or green. Sometimes a color change is noted: from red or yellow to white.
The most characteristic property of ball lightning is its movement in space, and often it looks meaningful: lightning behaves like a simple unicellular that explores the territory in search of nutrients.
At some unpredictable moment, lightning can stop, hovering over one arbitrary place, and then suddenly break loose and crash into any grounded object, discharging into it. Some eyewitnesses claim that when lightning flies, sometimes they emit a quiet hiss, and their very appearance is accompanied by a pungent smell - ozone or burning sulfur.
Of course, the touch of ball lightning is extremely dangerous. All such incidents ended with severe burns at the point of contact and loss of consciousness in the victim. Ball lightning can kill. The terrible death of physics professor Georg Richmann in St. Petersburg, who was killed by fireball on August 6, 1753, during an experiment with an electrometer, became canonical.
Mikhail Lomonosov compiled a description of the fatal injury inflicted on Richman: “A red-cherry spot can be seen on the forehead, and a thunderous electric force came out of it from the legs into the boards. The feet and toes are blue, the shoe is torn, not burnt."
Another important effect noted by many observers is the sensation of rolling blind horror that ball lightning seems to generate. Moreover, it occurs shortly before their appearance. Victims often experience stiffness and a sense of fear, and after an incident, they cannot recover for a long time from feelings of depression, nightmares and severe headaches.
Scientific recognition
The unusual properties of ball lightning made the scientific community wary of the phenomenon. Even the death of Richman, despite the testimony of eyewitnesses, tried to explain the usual lightning discharge.
Nevertheless, the professors did not have any serious objections to the phenomenon itself, because it does not contradict scientific criteria.
Moreover, a hypothesis immediately suggests itself, which will satisfy any skeptical academician: ball lightning are optical hallucinations caused by a nearby strong lightning discharge.
In the second half of the 20th century, the scientific world became more interested in ball lightning, which was facilitated by hundreds of credible testimonies and the first dozen photographs depicting the phenomenon. Moreover, prominent scientists (such as, for example, Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa) were engaged in it, and some of them even tried to reproduce ball lightning in laboratory conditions (such an experiment, for example, was carried out by Nikola Tesla).
It was clear to the researchers that ball lightning, most likely, had nothing to do with ordinary lightning, since they are periodically observed in clear dry weather and even in winter. Many theoretical models have emerged describing the origin and evolution of ball lightning - currently there are over 400 of them!
The main difficulty lies in the fact that all these models are reproduced experimentally only with serious limitations, which are absent in the natural environment. If the experiment environment begins to change, bringing it closer to reality, then at best an unstable plasmoid is obtained, which lives for several microseconds.
Natural ball lightning can live up to half an hour, actively move, hover, chase people, walk through walls, cause burns and even explode - the model and reality do not converge in any way.
The last secret
It became clear to scientists that there is only one way to reveal the secret - to catch and study the ball lightning in the field. But how to do that? And then they were incredibly lucky.
On the evening of July 23, 2012, ball lightning hit the field of view of two slitless spectrometers installed on the Tibetan plateau.
With their help, Chinese physicists studied the spectra of ordinary lightning, but here they managed to record one and a half seconds of the glow of the most real natural ball lightning.
And immediately an outstanding discovery was made: unlike the spectrum of ordinary lightning, which mainly contains lines of ionized nitrogen, the spectrum of ball lightning turned out to be filled with lines of iron, silicon and calcium, and all these elements are the main components of the soil.
Thus, one of the popular models has received field confirmation, according to which particles of soil, thrown into the air by an ordinary thunderstorm, burn inside the ball lightning.
At the same time, the Chinese researchers themselves note that the resulting spectrum provides an answer to only one of the possible questions, narrowing the range of further search, but it is premature to say that the secret of the phenomenon has finally been revealed.
Suppose, inside the ball lightning, knocked-out soil particles burn out. But how, then, to explain the appearance of ball lightning at high altitudes? How to explain their ability to penetrate walls or their strong emotional impact on people? And by the way, small fireballs appeared even inside submarines!
We have to admit that science is not yet able to solve the obvious riddle of nature, so the most incredible versions remain in use.
One of them says that ball lightning is somehow connected with the human mind, because there are cases when they repeatedly appear next to the same people, while performing complex evolutions, changing the color and trajectory of movement, as if trying communicate.
Active research on the phenomenon continues. After all, even skeptics are forced to agree that if the secret of ball lightning is ever revealed, humanity will get its hands on a fundamentally new and completely fantastic source of energy.
Anton PERVUSHIN