The first written evidence of the observation of ball lightning dates back to 1638, when in England a two-meter ball lightning flew into the church, which killed and injured many parishioners, and caused serious damage to the building.
Several centuries have passed since then, thousands of observations have been recorded, but there is still no clarity regarding ball lightning. Hundreds of hypotheses have been put forward for the formation and structure of this object, but none of them can explain all the amazing properties of ball lightning. Only the famous Nikola Tesla at one time knew how to make and publicly demonstrated ball lightning, but he never revealed this secret.
Not ball and not lightning
A thunderstorm linear lightning between a cloud and the ground begins with the fact that, due to the high intensity of the electric field, a leader appears in the cloud - a channel of highly ionized air, the tip of which moves to the ground in jumps of several tens of meters with a change in direction.
As a result, a broken electrically conductive channel to the ground is created, along which in the next - the main phase of lightning with thunder and bright glow, the main part of the charge is transferred from the ground to the cloud. At the initial point of the charge movement and at each bend in the trajectory, a vortex component of the electromagnetic field is created, which breaks off from the general field and begins an independent life.
With a low energy, the detached vortex scatters without a trace in space, but with a high energy, its fate can be completely different. With sufficient energy, an electromagnetic vortex ionizes the air to form a plasma. Just as the plasma of the Earth's ionosphere reflects short and medium radio waves without releasing them from this trap into space, just like the plasma of an electromagnetic vortex can form an outer shell that locks the electromagnetic vortex into a trap.
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It turns out what in physics is called a soliton or a solitary wave that can exist in this form for some time. The necessary conditions for this are nonlinearity and dispersion are inherent properties of plasma. This soliton is the ball lightning. Some call it a plasmoid, but this is incorrect, since the root cause of its formation is not plasma, but an electromagnetic vortex. Plasma, on the other hand, is a secondary factor generated by an electromagnetic vortex. Therefore, the essence of ball lightning should be correctly expressed by the term "electromagnetic soliton".
Evaporates jewelry
The plasma of the ionosphere with a perpendicular incidence of the beam reflects electromagnetic waves only of those frequencies that are below the so-called critical frequency, determined by the plasma density. But waves with frequencies above this frequency freely pass through the plasma. That is why short and medium radio waves return to the earth and do not pass into space, and for ultrashort waves the ionosphere is transparent.
The electromagnetic vortex of ball lightning can have a wide spectrum of frequencies. If the critical frequency of the plasma envelope is higher than the frequencies of the vortex spectrum, then the external field of the ball lightning is small and the ball lightning carrying enormous energy does not heat the surrounding objects. But if a small part of the spectrum lies above the critical frequency, ball lightning can have a sufficiently powerful external field that can heat distant surrounding objects - metal objects, objects containing water, including the human body.
In particular, it is for this reason that the imperceptible evaporation of rings and chains in people during the flight of ball lightning, failures and damage to computers and other electronic devices often occurs. The external field of such a ball of lightning can affect the brain activity of a person - a person in this situation may find himself, as if under hypnosis, incapable of any action.
Like a drop of water
But plasma is not just a collection of ions and electrons. Due to the collective forces of interaction between many charged particles, a plasma can behave like a liquid. In this case, plasma formations have surface tension, which determines the tendency to a minimum volume, like a drop of water.
Therefore, after the initial formation of a soliton, the plasma envelope tends to compress the vortex. In this case, the plasma density increases and the shell of the soliton, previously invisible to the eyes, can begin to glow red, orange, and further along the rainbow. With a high density of plasma, the glow can go into the ultraviolet region and then ball lightning at night will generally become invisible to the human eye, but against a light background it will appear gray or black.
Fiery guests from underground
According to statistics, about 20 percent of observations of ball lightning occur in clear weather. It turns out that not only linear lightning can generate ball lightning. During earthquakes, ball lightning flights are often observed. In the scientific laboratories of Denver (USA) and Tomsk (Russia), it was found that under high pressure of rock samples, emission of electromagnetic waves is observed. Devices have already been created to warn miners about the approach of a rock burst.
A glowing ball that circled in the air was captured in 2014
In the bowels of the planet, with real large fractures of rocks, streams of electromagnetic waves of enormous energy can be generated. In this case, the active fault point moves at variable speed along a broken path, which creates vortex components in the electromagnetic flow.
Passing through the overlying rocks, the electromagnetic flow loses some of its energy, but what remains is often enough to heat seawater, cause the sky to glow or burn plant leaves, etc. Such effects are often accompanied by strong earthquakes. Well, electromagnetic vortices, also escaping into the atmosphere, can generate solitons in the form of ball lightning, just like those that arise during a thunderstorm.
If the so-called geological lenses of rocks with a different dielectric constant are encountered along the path of the flow, then the focusing of the electromagnetic flow can occur with a significant increase in the effects produced, including with respect to ball lightning. In such cases, ball lightning can be born even with tectonic dynamics of low intensity, not noticed by people on the surface of the earth.
These are not aliens
A luminous object taken off the Moon in 1970 from the Apollo 13 spacecraft. Ball lightning too?
In addition to thunderstorm activity and tectonic unsteady processes, ball lightning, in principle, can also be generated by electromagnetic vortices coming from space from the Sun and other celestial bodies. By the way, ball lightning can occur not only in the surface layers of the earth's atmosphere.
Pilots often meet them at high altitudes. There they can be large and have a powerful external electromagnetic field. In this case, conflicts may arise between pilots and ground services when these objects, real for pilots, are not observed by centimeter-range radars (they can be observed in the meter and decimeter ranges). Luminous objects are often seen on the moon. We saw them on Mars, although the density of the atmosphere there is much lower than that of the Earth.
It is quite possible that the large balls of light that have puzzled American astronauts on the moon since the Apollo 11 mission were just fireballs, and not alien ships at all. The exhaust of the working spacecraft engines created electromagnetic fields with vortices. At the same time, the exhaust created a local zone of increased atmospheric density.
It turns out that the term "ball lightning" should be recognized as incorrect, since this object is not always related to lightning. In addition, an electromagnetic soliton can have the form of not only a ball, but also other forms of bodies of revolution. Only the familiarity of the term "ball lightning" justifies the use of this term in this context.
BTW
Cats see the invisible
Various cases of observation of ball lightning are described in a large number of publications. Let us recall its main properties. In shape, it can be a ball, ellipsoid, pear, toroid (donut), cylinder. Its size is from a few centimeters to several meters or more. Sometimes ball lightning can be invisible or transparent. Lightning invisible to the human eye is often observed only on radar screens (then they are called angels). Some pets such as cats can also see them.
But somehow, in Moscow, as well as in Canada, at dusk, completely transparent ball lightning was observed, in which only the circumference of the shell was slightly visible. It is clear that during the day or in bright light, such lightning would be completely invisible.
But ball lightning is often well observed, glowing in white, red, yellow or orange. Less commonly, it is green, blue and purple. And it was very rare that gray or black ball lightning was observed.
The lifespan of ball lightning is from ten seconds to several minutes, at the end of the life there is an explosion or disappearance. This end of life is understandable - the energy of the electromagnetic vortex decreases with time, and at the same time the plasma density and critical frequency decrease. Therefore, at some point, the plasma loses its ability to keep the electromagnetic vortex in the trap and the soliton is destroyed. With a wide spectrum of the vortex, destruction occurs smoothly and the lightning disappears without an explosion, and with a narrow spectrum, the soliton is destroyed very quickly, with an explosion.
The trajectory of the ball lightning is practically unpredictable for a person (by the way, it can move against the wind), since the distribution of the electromagnetic potential of the area or room that determines its trajectory, where the ball lightning is located, is unknown to a person. Yes, in addition, lightning itself can change this picture due to electromagnetic induction. That is why it is almost impossible to predict its trajectory. This also determines the "love" of ball lightning to metal objects.
Considering that the basis of ball lightning is an electromagnetic vortex, it becomes clear its ability to pass through glass, clothing, and in general through any dielectrics that are transparent to the vortex. When the glass passes through, the plasma of the soliton naturally extinguishes in the thickness of the glass, but the rest of the plasma envelope is preserved, preserving the electromagnetic vortex itself, for which the glass is transparent. Sometimes a small hole will form in the glass, but this is not necessary - this is a side effect. The known cases of the appearance of ball lightning in the cabin of a flying aircraft without breaking the tightness and in reliably closed rooms prove this.
The only place where the occurrence of ball lightning is in principle impossible is the so-called Faraday cage with mesh or solid metal walls, floor and ceiling.
Let's count
Very powerful boiler
An incident near the town of Perechina in Transcarpathia, which happened in August 1962, when at about 11 o'clock in the evening, a ball lightning the size of a tennis ball hit a trough with water for livestock allows us to estimate the amount of energy in ball lightning. Within ten seconds, the water from the trough completely boiled away, and boiled frogs remained at the bottom of the trough.
There was about 110 liters of water in the trough. The calculation shows that for heating and evaporating such an amount of water, about 80 kWh of energy must be spent, i.e. the order of the monthly power consumption of a small apartment.
At the same time, ball lightning developed a power of about 27 million watts, which is tens of thousands of times higher than the power of a household microwave. The energy of such ball lightning turned out to be quite considerable, but linear lightning, which generates ball lightning, can have much higher energy. Energy emissions from fractures of rocks in the depths can also be very large. Well, and there is nothing to say about electromagnetic vortices of cosmic origin. All these circumstances, by the way, support the above version of the formation and device of ball lightning or, more precisely, do not refute it.
WHAT TO DO?
Don't turn your back on her
Possessing great energy, ball lightning can sometimes cause destruction of buildings and structures, kill and maim people. What should you do if a ball lightning appears near you? First, there is no need to get scared and throw objects at her. After all, tragic cases are very rare. If the situation permits, it is helpful to place metal objects and electronic devices away from you. No need to make phone calls or touch clothes and blankets made of synthetic materials that can electrify. It would be nice to open the window, allowing the ball lightning to fly out into the street.
Secondly, without fuss, you need to stay in place or move away from the dangerous guest with smooth movements, without turning your back to her. If you're wearing synthetic clothing or underwear, it's best not to move. You also need to calmly warn your colleagues or household members about the danger and advise them not to make sudden movements and not to approach ball lightning. If a person struck by lightning has lost consciousness, he needs to provide first aid and immediately after the lightning leaves, call an ambulance.
Well, in the social plane, mankind definitely needs to learn how to create and use ball lightning. Then it will be possible to create electric vehicles with a range of hundreds of kilometers without batteries weighing hundreds of kilograms and thousands of other environmentally friendly and highly efficient devices.