If you learn to control the energy of ball lightning, then all the need for power plants will disappear. Many scientists believe that humanity will be able to produce energy in any corner of our planet. However, the nature of this phenomenon is not fully understood, and a variety of hypotheses are built around the existence of the miracle lightning.
According to eyewitnesses, ball-shaped lightning bolts usually have a small diameter of only about 30 cm. However, there were also larger specimens, whose diameter reached one meter. They could "sparkle" with all the colors of the rainbow spectrum, and were surrounded by a veil of whitish fog.
Most often, you can observe ball lightning of a red hue, less often - greenish or blue. The appearance of a celestial phenomenon occurs unexpectedly. The ball is “born” as if out of nothing. Similar phenomena could be observed in houses with closed doors and windows, and even in sealed aircraft cabins. How does lightning penetrate a hermetically sealed space? Why does the speed of its movement change from normal soaring to close to supersonic? But there were still cases when the lightning "went out" in front of numerous eyewitnesses!
Tricks of the Mysterious Ball
Ball lightning certainly has a high temperature. However, rare cases were recorded when it moved over the skin of the human body and did not leave any burns on it. There is a known case when a fireball flew up to two children, hiding under a canopy from a heavy rain. One of the guys pushed him away with his foot. The sparkling object flew off a certain distance, and then an explosion occurred. Fortunately, none of the children were hurt.
In the summer of 1924, the small village of Gvozdki, located in the Novgorod region, gained extraordinary fame. The children of the local residents of the Savushkins were alone in the house when the most ordinary summer rain began. A ten-year-old boy Alyosha was looking at the rain through the window, and his older sister Anya was in the entryway. Suddenly there was a loud crash, and the girl lost consciousness.
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When she woke up and rushed into the hut, she saw that frames were flying from the windows, and her brother was gone. Anya ran to the window and saw that Alyosha was sitting in the yard, safe and sound, with broken window frames lying around him. The boy was scared and could not explain what happened to him.
The next story took place in the nineties of the last century near the village of Ukrainka in the Rudny Altai region. When a severe thunderstorm began, an open truck carrying people drove off the road into the forest. People hid from the rain under the car body. Despite the bad weather, they were in good spirits, and from under the artificial shelter every now and then they heard a friendly laugh. Suddenly the laughter and conversation died away. A few meters from the travelers, a small fireball appeared. He then swayed from side to side, then jumped, as if dancing, and then began to slowly move towards the people who were frozen in surprise. They sat and could not move, and the ball hovered around them.
Sometimes he stopped, and people thought that he was considering them. At the same time, the uninvited "guest" changed its brightness and color, as if wishing to impress attentive spectators. At the end of the "show," the ball flashed dazzlingly, and sparks fell from it. Then the lightning darted to the side, swayed from side to side, as if saying goodbye, and disappeared from sight. For a while, everyone present sat in a daze, then people began to ardently discuss what they saw.
In 1961, the cockpit of an American aircraft flying at an altitude of over 6,000 meters was illuminated by a bright sphere about 50 centimeters in diameter. She calmly flew around all the crew members, as if greeting them and, without causing the slightest concern, disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared.
In the history of Soviet aviation, a case was recorded when, a few minutes after takeoff of an Il-18 aircraft at an altitude of over 1000 meters, lightning in the shape of a ball struck it. The crew was blinded by a bright blue flash for a while. One of the crew members claimed that the balloon seemed to be flattened against the plane's glass and turned into a strip. Then he bounced back abruptly and again acquired a spherical shape.
The dire consequences of meeting a fireball
If we compare the energy released during the explosion of ball lightning and TNT equal in volume, it should be noted that the energy released from the explosion of lightning is ten times more. Brightly glowing spheres can easily punch through holes in walls of any thickness.
A friend of Mikhail Lomonosov, Professor V. G. Richman was killed by artificially created lightning in 1753 while conducting experiments. The death of the tester was captured in his painting by the artist I. Sokolov, an eyewitness to the event.
In 1901, the quiet city of Uralsk acquired all-Russian fame. A May thunderstorm broke out, and a group of young people took refuge in the entryway of the house. One of the girls settled down on the doorstep and, after a while, a flame ball hovered over her head. Gradually he began to descend, slid over the girl's shoulder and rushed into the room. There he smashed everything that came in his way, burned through the wall and burst out. The girl died, a black stripe remained on her shoulder, and the boot on her leg melted. Some of the young people lost consciousness, others temporarily lost their hearing and sight.
During a rain with a thunderstorm, this event took place in the village of Kolpino, a sparkling ball appeared in the house of a local resident Kononov. Presumably he entered through an open window in the kitchen. Flying around the house, the lightning plunged into a cast iron that stood on the stove. From there she calmly went to the street, where she killed two passers-by and a horse standing nearby.
Riddles remain mysteries
The behavior of the sparkling balls is inexplicable. They go through any obstacles in an incredible way. Lightning can come out of any household appliance: TV, telephone, radio, etc. Lightning can seep into any microscopic gap. According to a number of physicists, the basis of lightning is plasma. It is a kind of fusion of electrons with ionized atoms of matter. This hypothesis does not explain at all either the properties or the reasons for the strange behavior of lightning.
According to many observers, in the actions of the ball one can see some meaningfulness, curiosity and malice. There are eyewitnesses who point to her ability to respond to human thoughts. So, for example, as soon as a resident of the village Vitim, located in Yakutia, thought about the fact that people are completely in vain frightened by ball lightning, a sparkling sphere immediately appeared in front of her. The woman closed her eyes, mentally admitted that she was terribly frightened and asked to leave her alone. When the villager timidly opened her eyes, she saw nothing unusual.
The unusual behavior of lightning was witnessed by a climber who settled down for the night with his friends in a tourist tent on a mountain slope. The intruder, sparkling with sparks, seemed like an angry beast. He was not attracted by any metal objects. The fire sphere penetrated the sleeping bags with incredible tenacity, and caused wild screams filled with horror and pain. It all ended pretty quickly with the loss of consciousness of the last man. As a result, one of the participants in those events died, and the rest were taken to the hospital in a state of shock.
For many years people have been observing mysterious balls of fire. What is the nature of ball lightning, what is their essence and how can their behavior be explained? These are the questions that we have yet to answer.