All truth and fiction about ball lightning

Riddle Lightning

“Dear editors, please explain the incident that happened to me on August 19, 1960. I walked from the bus to Borisovka, where my parents live, and noticed a luminous headlight of a motorcycle moving towards me from the forest. But how can a motorcycle move after a rain along a loamy field? She stopped and began to look carefully.

The Farah stopped at a distance of 300 meters from me. Then I noticed that there were no signs of any car. "Farah" suddenly went straight at me and in 2 ... 3 steps stood up - and I stand, trying to unravel what it is maboutIt can be. Then she slowly began to move away, the distance between me and the "headlamp" began to increase, and then she quickly went towards Kukshev. "

Before us is one of the many meetings with a curious natural phenomenon - ball lightning.

This phenomenon has not been recognized in science for a long time. They said about ball lightning that it was an optical illusion and nothing more. The French physicist Mascard called her "the fruit of excited fantasy." And in one of the German physics textbooks at the end of the last century, it was argued that ball lightning could not exist, since it was a "phenomenon that does not meet the laws of nature."

Scientists, as we see, can also be mistaken when confronted with the mysteries of nature. Moreover, they are often mistaken not because they have a "bad character" that does not allow them to be condescending to new scientific ideas or to agree with facts that contradict their ideas. The reasons here are much deeper, including, in particular, the desire to preserve in integrity and completeness the system of views prevailing in natural science on the structure of the world. However, cognition is a process that cannot be stopped while humanity exists. The basis of this process is the principle: I do not know today - I will know tomorrow. A principle that is directly opposite to the religious one: I don’t know and it’s not supposed to know, because everything that is incomprehensible, wonderful is from God, confirmation of his being, and it’s impossible to know. Ball lightning can perhaps be considered a classic example of how, under the pressure of facts, the attitude of scientists changed towards them.

Gradually, a lot of material was collected, indicating that ball lightning is also a reality. A variety of people have reported meetings with this yet mysterious companion of thunderstorms.

In 1975, the journal Science and Life, together with the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation of the USSR Academy of Sciences, published a questionnaire containing a number of questions about ball lightning and a request for eyewitnesses of this phenomenon to answer questions. The editors received more than a thousand letters describing cases of observation of ball lightning. The authors are scientists, engineers, teachers, pilots, meteorologists ...

Judging by the stories of people who have seen this "miracle of nature", ball lightning sometimes reaches the size of a soccer ball and even more. She moves in the air rather slowly. It is easy to follow her eyes. Sometimes such a luminous ball almost stops, and reaching any obstacle, it often explodes, causing destruction. In other cases, ball lightning disappears quietly.

When this ball moves, a slight whistle or hiss is heard in the air. The color of the balls is different. Observers say that they saw red, and dazzling White, and blue, and even black! In addition, lightning is not always spherical - there are also pear-shaped, egg-shaped. Many eyewitnesses managed to photograph her.

The connection of ball lightning with conventional, linear lightning is confirmed by a number of facts. P. Grishnenkov from Murom saw a ball lightning thirty to forty centimeters in diameter jump out of the ground at the site of a linear lightning strike.A student of Tomsk University A. Sozonov saw three ball lightnings of bright white color, separated from the middle part of the channel of linear lightning and began to slowly fall. Electric locomotive driver A. Orlov described a case where ball lightning flew upward when a linear lightning struck a steel support of a power transmission line.

A university professor A. Timoshchuk spoke in detail about his meeting with a fireball.

Lightning struck wires near the post. At the same moment, a yellow-green flash appeared on the wire, which began to “flare up”. A ball formed, which slowly rolled along a sagging wire. He gradually turned red. The ball jumped to the bottom wire, and then fell onto poplar branches. There was a strong crack, red sparks flew and several small balls rolled down the branches. The ball began to jump along the pavement, jumping and scattering sparks around itself. Finally, it crumbled into several pieces that quickly went out. All this happened in about ten seconds and was observed by another person.

Hypotheses only

We must immediately make a reservation: there is no generally accepted scientific explanation of the nature of ball lightning, but there are many assumptions and hypotheses. And not all of them deserve attention. But some assumptions about the origin of this electric miracle are largely justified. One of them belongs to academician P.L. Kapitza.

Ball lightning, in his opinion, is fed by radio emissions arising from lightning discharges of atmospheric electricity. If, he writes, “there are no sources of energy in nature that are not yet known to us, then on the basis of the law of conservation of energy we have to accept that during the glow energy is continuously supplied to ball lightning, and we are forced to look for this source of energy outside the volume of ball lightning. Ball lightning occurs where radio waves reach the highest intensity. "

An explanation of ball lightning proposed by a prominent Soviet scientist is in good agreement with many of its features; and with the fact that it sometimes rolls on the surface of various objects without leaving burns, and with the fact that it most often penetrates inside rooms through chimneys, windows and even small gaps.

Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences I.P. Stakhanov suggested that ball lightning occurs when a significant amount of water enters the channel of ordinary lightning. When connecting (recombination), water molecules adhere to positive and negative ions, forming a shell around them. This shell stops the bonding of ions, interfering with their direct contact.

The occurrence of such water shells around ions in solutions is known. But can the same thing happen in gases? Apparently, yes, since it is now known that in the lower layers of the ionosphere there are many similar ions associated with water molecules.

Medium-sized ball lightning (ten to twenty centimeters in diameter) can form from a large dew drop that has fallen into a thunderstorm discharge channel. On the other hand, as calculations have shown, for the stability of ball lightning it is necessary that the density of its substance does not differ much from the density of ambient air.

“If ball lightning,” writes I.P. Stakhanov, - falls into such conditions when its temperature rises above a certain limit (for example, due to a decrease in heat transfer in an enclosed space), then a chain reaction of destruction of the water shells begins, which leads to an explosion. Under ordinary conditions, the lightning substance slowly "burns out" due to recombination. This leads to a change in density, and as a result, lightning "falls apart", throwing pieces of substance that eyewitnesses take for sparks. "

Scientists are not content, of course, with collecting reliable evidence of the appearance of ball lightning. They are trying to get it in the laboratory, experimentally checking their theoretical assumptions and mathematical calculations.

Mezentsev V.A. Encyclopedia of Miracles. Prince I. Normal to unusual. - 3rd ed. - M., Knowledge.1988.