- Ball lightning is a mysterious phenomenon that has been observed for centuries and scientists have unsuccessfully tried to investigate and explain it
- For researchers, the stories told by people who claim to have seen ball lightning are not enough to discover what causes it
- Walt Lyons, former president of the American Meteorological Society, points out another interesting climate phenomenon that has been historically overlooked — red sprites.
- You can find more interesting information on the Onet home page
People have been sharing their stories about ball lightning for hundreds of years. According to the Chemical and Engineering News website published by the American Chemical Society, it is likely the oldest report on this unusual phenomenon Manuscript written by an English monk in 1195 He described ball lightning as A “kind of fireball” emerges from a storm cloud and falls into the River Thames.
Almost 600 years later, the scientist George Richman came along He died in his laboratory in St. Petersburg from a “white-blue ball of fire”, Which hit him on the head while conducting the experiment.
Currently, there is no shortage of stories online from people who are convinced they have witnessed this unusual phenomenon.
— says Karl Stefan, an engineering professor at Texas State University who has been studying ball lightning for decades, in an interview with Chemistry & Engineering News.
Most often, people see ball lightning when a storm is brewing nearby. But Stefan says people rarely see it in real life. Instead, they simply notice it A strange, roughly spherical, white, yellow, red, or blue light appears in their field of vision. The light may suddenly disappear from sight, go out, or explode.
– The professor confirms.
Ball lightning is a mystery that scientists have been trying to solve for centuries. If ball lightning were easy to make, We can do it says Martin Ohmann, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Ohman led the International Lightning Research and Testing Center at the University of Florida from 1994 until the Lightning Launch Facility closed in 2022. When the center was active, he and his colleagues launched rockets carrying long ropes of wire into storm clouds. If conditions are right, scientists can fire a lightning bolt and study its properties.
“People often see ball lightning immediately after a lightning strike,” Ohman points out. For this reason, scientists have developed a theory for this phenomenon It is created from matter that is struck by lightning. So researchers tried to find an answer to the question of what substance produces ball lightning.
Ohman’s team was able to conduct several experiments and fire eight lightning bolts that struck a tower made of different materials, such as silicon wafers, freshly cut pine, pond, and various other metal sheets. Of the approximately 100 materials struck by lightning, only four reacted in a spherical manner.
Ohman claims that of all these observations, lightning over metal sheets is most similar to a spherical shape. However, the ball completely separated from the steel plate, and remained suspended there for only a few hundred milliseconds. Then it broke into smaller pieces and disappeared.
– asked the scientist.
Researchers do not rule out that ball lightning could be reliably captured on video. Professor Stefan hopes that by collecting people’s stories he will be able to create the necessary conditions for the production of ball lightning and will be able to investigate this mysterious phenomenon.
Red ghosts are another mysterious phenomenon
“Eyewitness accounts are inaccurate, but they are not completely useless,” admitted Walt Lyons, former president of the American Meteorological Society, who points to another historically overlooked climate phenomenon: red sprites. These are ethereal lights that have a red color depending on their nitrogen emissions. They flash in the mesosphere and stratosphere above storms when powerful lightning strikes the ground.
Red goblins captured from the plane
Since 1886, red sprites have been described in scientific literature, A Sometimes referred to as foreign body activity.
For more than a century, people have reported seeing sparks above storms, but these reports were not taken seriously. In 1989, three researchers tested a new video camera in low light I accidentally took a photo of lights above a distant storm. One scientist contacted Lyons, who at the time was running the Lightning Detection Network at the University of Minnesota, to see if he could explain the phenomenon. Lyons linked the video to a massive storm and soon set off to find the red goblins himself. As he claims, On his first night away from home, he captured 250 red goblins on camera – It turns out it’s surprisingly common.
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