MadSci Network: Earth Sciences
Query:

Re: lightning

Area: Earth Sciences
Posted By: Steven Schimmrich, Grad student Dept of Geology, University of Illinois, Urbana IL
Date: Wed Mar 27 15:08:00 1996


Brad,

That's a very good question but no one really knows how ball lightning forms. Ball lightning is a rare and mysterious phenomenon that has been reported for hundreds of years. People have observed glowing spheres of electricity associated with severe thunderstorms which freely float through the air, some hissing and crackling and others silent, which then disappear either suddenly or with a loud explosion. Most reports are of balls 10 cm to 100 cm in diameter although larger ones have been seen.

The problem for scientists is that ball lightning is so rare, and we can't reproduce it exactly in the laboratory, so we're not exactly sure what it is and how it forms. Many theories have been proposed but none of these theories can be rigorously tested until we find a better way to study ball lightning in the laboratory.

There are some scientists who even believe that ball lightning doesn't exist and reports of this phenomenon are cases of people mistaking other things for ball lightning.

A recent review of scientific publications about ball lightning was written by Hiroshi Kikuchi (p. 167-187) in the 1995 Handbook of Atmospheric Electrodynamics, Volume 1 edited by Hans Volland and published by CRC Press in Boca Raton. This article is very technical and written at a college level but it does give many references to scientific literature on the subject.

Most scientists seem to think that ball lightning, if it does indeed exist, is some form of plasma. You probably already know that matter can exist as a solid (like a rock), liquid (like water), or gas (like the air you breathe). Matter can also exist as a plasma, which is like a very hot gas where most of the atoms making up the gas have had their electrons removed so that the gas also has an electrical charge. The material which makes up the sun is a plasma and so is the glowing gas in neon lights.

So, in summary, we're not even sure that ball lightning exists and if it does, no one really knows how it forms or exactly what it is. Maybe if you take some math and physics courses in high school and college, you can study ball lightning yourself and find out the answer to this difficult problem!

If you want to know more about lightning in general, there are several good sources for information about lightning on the Web.

- Steve

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