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Ball Lightning

  A Strange Light in the Sky In Derbyshire, UK…

This story concerns several people who were travelling through a
Derbyshire Dale. One woman, who, one night was driving back to her home
from Manchester in 1969, was shocked when the /whole sky/ was lit up
like daylight - she described seeing all the features of the terrain so
clearly - everything was illuminated. The light stayed for quite a few
minutes as she completed her journey and was still there when she raced
into the house to call her husband. He immediately came out, but the
light was gone (of course!) but curiously, the bonnet of the car, even
though she had just finished a long journey, was coated in ice.

Of course, she may have been hallucinating, but there were 2 other
similar stories from different people in the same area. A couple of
years later, the same woman got a call one night from the Youth Hostel
warden a couple of miles down the road, saying they could see bright
lights on the hill. The woman and her husband went straight over and
took the mountain rescue equipment in a land rover (the husband assumed
the people were watching a flare from a climber in trouble). Several
people at the YH watched the lights for quite a few minutes, but again
by the time the land rover had got there, the lights had extinguished.
The husband continued with a friend to go up onto the hillside to see if
they could find a climber, taking with them a large gas lantern
spotlight. People from the YH were still watching and could see the gas
lantern from below. Keeping in touch by walkie-talkie, they described
how the gas lantern was extremely dim in comparison to the lights they
had seen.

A third story from the same area was different again. A mother and
daughter were driving along one night and 5 brilliant white spheres
"appeared" above the dashboard at the front of the car. Both women were
quite frightened, but didn't stop. For about 10 minutes, the spheres
remained, slowly moving through the car to exit near the base of the
rear window. They both said they had seen nothing like it before or since.


  A Strange Light in the Sky In Connecticut, US…

This story was submitted to me by Karen, who at the time lived in
Conneticut. She is one of the few people to have witnessed this
intriguing phenmonenon…

    "In Groton, Connecticut, I was watching a summer thunderstorm as a
    child sometime in the mid-80's (I regret I cannot recall the exact
    year, or my age, other than 8 - 13) The image of what occurred is
    still very sharp in my mind. We were watching the lightning from our
    porch, which was a favourite pastime of my entire family. The
    lightning was rather exuberant that afternoon, and we saw many good
    flashes. Then I saw possibly the most exciting thing I had ever seen
    during a thunderstorm.... A large fork of lightning branched down
    directly in front of our porch...by counting the seconds, we judged
    the hit to be about 2 - 3 miles from our home. The fork flickered a
    couple of times, as lightening will, and then broke into perhaps a
    dozen and a half large balls. I assume they were large, since they
    appeared marble-sized to us, and we were at least two miles away.
    The balls were bluish-white in colour, and floated lazily downward,
    many flickering out, some enduring until we lost sight of them
    beneath the tree line. I would approximate perhaps 20 seconds passed
    between the formation of the balls and the time we lost sight of the
    last one. I never heard reports of whether or not any of the
    lightning balls reached the ground, and I have never again seen such
    a wonderful sight./ / 

    There are of course those who doubt the existence of lightening
    balls. I, however, am firmly convinced that they do exist; indeed, I
    cannot see how it is possible that they do not....I saw a fork of
    lightening strike ground and then disintegrate into balls of the
    same color...I do not know what else it could possibly be, although
    I am certain someone would be more willing to call it a UFO than a
    ball of lightening. Some may also blame it on the inability of a
    young child to know what she has seen, but the event was also
    witnessed by my sister and my father, who is a rather keen observer. 

The accounts below come from the book "Arthur C. Clarkes Mysterious
World" (which is a very interesting read, by the way). It also lists
some historical descriptions of what may be BL phenomena.

There was an extraordinary manifestation of the phenomenon at the small
Scottish seaside resort of Crail in August 1968. On the afternoon in
question, Mrs Elizabeth Radcliffe was returning home from a walk along a
concrete path near the seashore. 'I looked up and saw what I thought was
a sort of light, and almost instantaneously it turned itself into a
ball, between the size of a tennis ball and a football. It crossed the
path and changed colour slightly into the colour of the path. Then it
passed over the grass and turned greenish, and, very quickly disappeared
towards a café and went bang.' Inside the café, Mrs Evelyn Murdoch was
in the kitchen, cooking for the customers.

'The café was busy, everything was normal. Then, all of a sudden there
was an awful disturbance: terrible cracking sounds, and they increased
ail the time. I looked through the kitchen window, and people were
running from the beach screaming and shouting, and the noise got louder.
Then, all of a sudden, there was one vicious crack. It seemed to go all
through the hut, and the whole kitchen lit up with a luminous glare. I
never saw anything like it in the whole of my life.... 'The customers
all ran out of the café, and a man with a wooden leg who usually sat at
a table just next to the counter was gone with all the rest. You never
saw anybody move so quickly in your whole life.'

Later, Mrs Murdoch found that the thick cast-iron top of the cafe's big
stove had been split from end to end. Mrs Murdoch's daughter, Mrs Jean
Meldrum, was visiting the beach café when the fireball struck. She had
left her baby son outside in his pram and, as the strange noise grew
louder and louder, she rushed to rescue him. It was then she saw the
ball of fire. It was luminous orange in the middle and pure white all
round the side, and it rolled right along the wall of the café. I came
to the window, and, when I stood up to see what it was, the thing came
out of the window and battered across the front of my chest, and then
just vanished.

At a nearby caravan site, Mrs Kitty Cox was out walking her two dogs.

'Suddenly, there was a tremendous clap of thunder, and the from the land
right across in front of us I heard screaming, and children ran away,
and this hissing came in front of trailing what looked like a copper
ribbon two or three inches wide at the back of it. My dogs panicked, and
I watched as it went past very quickly, hissing and whirring, and went
right across into the sea.'

Now, an increasing number of scientists have themselves seen Ball
Lightning or at least experienced its effects. At Edinburgh University's
Department of Meteorology a hole was found window of the building after
a storm, and, since the glass was fused on the inside, the event has
been attributed to ball lightning One of the most detailed sightings by
a scientist was mad March 1963 by Professor RC Jennison of the
Electronics Laboratories at the University of Kent in unusual and
alarming circumstances. He reported in Nature that he had been sitting
at the front of the passenger cabin of an Eastern Airlines night flight
from New York to Washington, when the aircraft was caught in a violent
electrical storm. Not only was it then 'enveloped sudden bright and loud
electrical discharge', but, Professor Jennison wrote, 'some seconds
after this a glowing sphere a little r than twenty centimetres in
diameter emerged from the pilot's cabin and passed down the aisle of the
aircraft approximately fifty centimetres from me, maintaining the same
height and course over which it could be observed.' One aspect of this
sighting casts doubt on one widely held theory about ball lightning:
that it was no more than an optical illusion, : 'after-image' on the
retina of the eye of a conventional lightning flash. For Professor
Jennison also reported that the ball was witnessed by another person, 'a
terrified air hostess who was strapped in her seat on the opposite side
and farther to the rear of the aircraft. She saw the ball continue to
travel down the aisle and finally disappear towards the lavatory at the
end.'


      BL in the Laboratory?

Ball lightning has also been photographed, although some scientists are
wary of such evidence, believing that it is easy to confuse some other
light phenomenon for the real thing. One man, however, has obtained not
just still photographs but 16 mm film of what may be a ball lightning
event. He is Professor James Tuck, who was born in England but is now an
American citizen. In a distinguished scientific career, he worked as
Chief Scientific Adviser to Winston Churchill's colleague Lord Cherwell,
and then went on to join the Manhattan project, which made the atomic
bomb, at Los Alamos. Today, Professor Tuck still lives in Los Alamos,
and it was here that he began an experiment to study ball lightning in
the laboratory: something that many researchers had attempted in vain.
Professor Tuck had heard that ball lightning occurred from time to time
in submarines, as a result of an incorrect manipulation of switch gear
taking power from the battery. If an error was made, fireballs, it was
said, would come out of the rear of the switch gear and sometimes burn
the clumsy submariners' Legs. Tuck's attempts to investigate the
phenomenon actually on board a submarine were frustrated, but he
discovered that, at Los Alamos itself, there was a two-million-dollar
submarine battery that had been installed for another research
programme, but was now lying idle. He was given permission to work with
it, and a series of 'bootleg' experiments thus began, with Tuck and his
colleagues working on the project during their lunch hour or outside of
their normal working periods. Although they produced some extremely
large power discharges from the battery, James Tuck and his colleagues
were unable to produce anything like ball lightning. As the months went
on, they found themselves under pressure to finish their experiments, so
that the building that housed the battery could be cleared to make room
for another research programme. Suddenly there was no time left.
Outside, the bulldozers were ready to begin work. The scientists had
tried almost everything they could think of, but had produced no ball
lightning. As a final desperate attempt to achieve their aim, they
decided to add something to the atmosphere around the switch. Thus, they
built a small cellophane box around the switch and blew a low
concentration of methane into it. They had thought that the amount of
gas was small enough to be non- inflammable - nevertheless, they were,
fortunately, crouching behind sandbags, when the switch was turned on.
There was a sheet of flame and a thundering roar, and all any of them
later remembered seeing was the roof of the building lifting off. It was
the end of their experiment, but it was not until film of the event,
taken from different angles by two cameras, came back from processing,
that they discovered what else had happened. On about 100 frames, there
was a ball of light about 10 cm in diameter. Professor Tuck is certain
that it is not something produced by a defect in the film or by the
processing That said, he is not certain what it is, except that it may
be some phenomenon related to ball lightning. Tuck is now attempting to
classify the characteristics of ball lightning, and, has isolated
several potentially important factors. Among them that the phenomenon
usually occurs after stroke of conventional lightning, the ball is, on
average 15 cm radius, usually coloured yellow to red, is not markedly
hot and often gives off a hissing sound. From picking through these
characteristics, a theory acceptable to most scientists may emerge, Tuck
favours a chemical reaction the origin of ball lightning, but the
scientific: literature is full of other theories, from 'anti-matter
meteorites' to variations on the optical illusion theme.

There is also another experimenter who claims he can produce BL on
demand - he has set up an experiment, again using submarine batteries,
and a kind of "pendulum". At the bottom of it's swing, the pendulum
makes a fleeting contact with a metal pan, which is partly filled with
water and a circuit is momentarily made. Using the enormous batteries, a
current of several 10's of thousands of amps can be produced. At the
point of contact, numerous small spheres "spark" out, and seem to float
on the water for several seconds. The experimenter claims this is ball
lightning - others are skeptical.


      What is Ball Lightning (BL)?

Of course some people don't believe it exists, though others claim it
can be reproduced in a laboratory, given the correct equipment. Could
Ball Lightning be produced when rock is put under stress? This is one
theory - perhaps BL is one manifestation of Earthlights. What is the
Physics involved in this process? How could BL be self-sustaining?

BL is thought to be made up of Plasma - the state of matter beyond Gas.
(Stars are made up of Plasma). The process by which it can be produced
terrestrially is open to some speculation as, according to "orthodox"
science, it is very difficult - if not impossible - to reproduce in a
laboratory. It seems clear, if one accepts its existence, that it is
strongly associated with electrical storms - common in many reports.
Some people seem to think its appearance may also be associated with
high voltage power lines. Or even high pwer tv transmitters. It is often
seen in clouds, or dropping down from them. It seems it is commonly
spherical in shape, but can be discoid or ellipsoid. It can penetrate
solid walls and if it is indeed made up of gas plasma, it will be
electrically charged and will therefore be influenced by magnetic fields
and possibly metal objects. BL could explain some UFO sightings -
particularly those involving cars, where the UFO approaches, the lights
of the car and / or radio go dead. The colours reported for BL - red,
orange and blue are also common in UFO reports. From some reports of BL,
it would appear it can hiss, crackle, disappear suddenly or even
explode. Additionally, if BL was picked up on RADAR, it could produce a
stronger echo because it is electrically charged - the operator of the
RADAR could easily over-estimate the size of a BL UFO. Sudden
dissipation of the BL plasma (if that's what it is) would cause the UFO
to myseriously disappear into thin air.

It has been noticed that a Nitrogen Laser is red at low energy and blue
at high energy - could this be what BL is - Nitrogen Plasma? Also, BL is
thought to produce Microwaves and this could explain the heating effect
sometimes reported.