Fireball message. Where does ball lightning appear?

Introduction.

The physicists of the Soviet Union, the USA and Great Britain began to work on the problem of structuring hot plasma in a magnetic field and keeping it in a small volume of a thermonuclear reactor at about the same time. I.V. Kurchatov, speaking in 1956 about the most "secret" thermonuclear research in the USSR, noted that physicists from three different countries came to the same conclusion: the only way to keep the plasma and not let it cool is to use a magnetic field. Closed magnetic field by strong net lines of force will keep the hot plasma away from the walls of any vessel - after all, in contact with them, it could melt them. In order for a thermonuclear reaction to begin in a hydrogen plasma, it is necessary to heat this plasma to millions of degrees Celsius and keep it in this state for some time.

The average energies of different types of particles that make up a plasma can differ from one another. In this case, the plasma cannot be characterized by a single temperature value: one distinguishes between the electron temperature Te, ion temperature Ti, (or ion temperatures, if there are several kinds of ions in the plasma) and the temperature of neutral atoms Ta(temperature of the neutral component). Such a plasma is called non-isothermal, while a plasma for which the temperatures of all components are equal is called isothermal. It is customary to consider low-temperature plasma with Ti = 105°K, and high-temperature plasma with Ti=106–108°K and more. The possible values ​​of plasma density n (the number of electrons or ions per cm3) are located in a very wide range: from n~10 to the 6th power in intergalactic space and n~10 in the solar wind to n~10 to the 22nd power for solids and even greater values ​​in the central regions of stars.

To keep the plasma, for example, at a temperature of 10 to the 8th power of K, it must be reliably thermally insulated. It is possible to isolate the plasma from the walls of the chamber by placing it in a strong magnetic field. This is provided by the forces that arise during the interaction of currents with a magnetic field in the plasma. Under the action of a magnetic field, ions and electrons move in spirals along its lines of force. In the absence of electric fields, high-temperature rarefied plasma, in which collisions rarely occur, will only slowly diffuse across magnetic field lines. If the lines of force of the magnetic field are closed, giving them the shape of a loop, then the plasma particles will move along these lines, being held in the region of the loop.

The idea of ​​magnetic thermal insulation of plasma is based on the well-known property of electrically charged particles moving in a magnetic field to bend their trajectory and move in a spiral of magnetic field lines. This curvature of the trajectory in a non-uniform magnetic field causes the particle to be pushed into a region where the magnetic field is weaker. The task is to surround the plasma from all sides with a stronger field. Magnetic confinement of plasma was discovered by Soviet scientists, who, back in 1950, proposed confining plasma in magnetic traps - the so-called magnetic bottles.

In practice, it is not easy to achieve magnetic confinement of a plasma of sufficiently high density: magnetohydrodynamic and kinetic instabilities often arise in it. Magnetohydrodynamic instabilities are associated with bends and breaks in magnetic field lines. In this case, the plasma can begin to move across the magnetic field in the form of bunches; in a few millionths of a second, it will leave the containment zone and give off heat to the chamber walls, instantly melting and evaporating them. Such instabilities can be suppressed by giving the magnetic field a certain configuration. Kinetic instabilities are very diverse. Among them are those that disrupt orderly processes, such as the flow of a direct electric current or a stream of particles through a plasma. Other kinetic instabilities cause a higher plasma transverse diffusion rate in a magnetic field than that predicted by collision theory for a quiet plasma.

A simple system for magnetic confinement of plasma with magnetic mirrors or mirrors was built by employees of the Institute of Atomic Energy named after I.V. Kurchatov under the direction of M.S. Ioffe. Rectilinear conductors were located under the coils that create the magnetic field of the plugs. The induction of the longitudinal magnetic field in the center of the chamber was 0.8 T, in the area of ​​the mirrors 1.3 T, the magnetic field induction of the straight conductors near the walls was 0.8 T, the length of the working volume was 1.5 m, the diameter was 40 cm. increased by a factor of 35 compared with the stability that took place in pure mirror cells, and the plasma lived for several hundredths of a second. In 1964, the Ogra-11 installation was put into operation, which also uses the principle of combined magnetic fields.

Thus, the complexity of the magnetic field configuration is the key to creating a long-lived hot plasma. Now magnetic systems with counter-fields have been created (the "Nut" installation), anticorktrons and other very sophisticated installations.

Why am I writing in such detail about thermonuclear fusion in magnetic traps? Yes, because on the Sun and stars thermonuclear fusion with release huge amount energy goes not in their center (core), but in their atmospheres. In the atmosphere of the Sun, for example, there are such magnetic traps that function as thermonuclear reactors that release energy into space. Magnetic traps in the solar atmosphere arise due to the current of electrons from the superdense core of the Sun to its periphery. The cellular structure of the solar photosphere is a collection of peculiar clusters - magnetic traps, in which, probably, thermonuclear synthesis of helium from hydrogen occurs.

Ring structure (dark spot) on the photosphere of the Sun. The cellular structure of the photosphere is clearly visible. It can be assumed that it is in these cells - plasma structures - that thermonuclear processes take place.

Experiments to create analogues of ball lightning - balls of hot plasma held by closed magnetic fields.

What is ball lightning.

Ball lightning is a luminous spheroid with a high specific energy, which is often formed after a linear lightning strike. The disappearance of ball lightning may be accompanied by an explosion causing destruction. The nature of ball lightning is not clear. Lightning - both linear and ball - can cause severe injury and death.

Ball lightning consists of plasma held by a closed magnetic field in a certain volume of space. The results of experiments on the creation of magnetic traps for hot plasma made it possible to get closer to understanding the structure and origin of the mysterious phenomenon - ball lightning. In addition, thanks to these experiments, the work of the Sun has become more or less clear. The Sun, most likely, is not a gas supergiant that arose as a result of the compaction of a hydrogen galactic cloud, but a massive superdense body that, with the help of its powerful gravity, gathered a powerful hydrogen atmosphere in galactic space.

Thus, ball lightning is akin to magnetic traps in the Sun's atmosphere. I would like to specifically point out this relationship of terrestrial plasmoids - ball lightning and structures in the atmosphere of our star, and here's why. Magnetic inhomogeneities and plasma structures on the Sun exist and develop for a very long time - at least for several billion years. In a shorter time on Earth, on the basis of chemical structures and processes, the biosphere and noosphere were formed. On the Sun, on the basis of plasma electromagnetic structures and processes, the heliomagnetosphere could well have formed, no less organized than the biosphere and noosphere of the Earth.

I am not surprised that the facts of “targeted” movement of plasma formations were repeatedly recorded, which suggested that there was some reasonable beginning inherent in these formations. The lack of evidence base provoked a stream of speculation on this subject from the part of enthusiastic impressionable natures. Ufologists consider luminous objects to be aliens from outer space and carriers of alien intelligence.

A fantastic version is widespread among the inhabitants that ball lightning is a passage of a ship of aliens from another galaxy, who may have visited the Earth on a research visit or suffered a technological accident. Or, perhaps, the aliens arrived from a parallel world, or even from the future. People inside the glowing balls allegedly see creatures with outstretched heads and spidery arms, talk to them, find themselves on their ship and are "zombified". Some even show bruises and abrasions that appeared on the body from nowhere - marks of "humanoids". I think that there are no ships and "humanoids" inside such fireballs - they are the fruit of the imagination of observers. But the plasma magnetic structure itself can be so highly organized information system that compared to her, our brain is like a carpenter compared to a cabinetmaker.

Ball lightning "lost" in a coniferous forest.

Maxim Karpenko described ball lightning in this way: “Eyewitness stories about encounters with ball lightning create an image of an amazing creature with an incomprehensible mind and logic - a kind of plasma clot that formed in a place of local concentration of energy and absorbed part of this energy, self-organized and evolved to the awareness of the surrounding world and myself in it.

The behavior of ball lightning in some cases can actually be regarded as reasonable. There is reason to suspect fireballs of involvement in the formation of the famous stone balls in the earth's crust.

In 1988, in the county of Gloucestershire, England, farmer Tom Gwynett observed a luminous red ball the size of a football over the field for about two minutes in the evening, and in the morning he found a circle of curved ears on the field.

Perhaps some crop circles are not the result of a prank by copymaker artists, but an attempt by a plasmoid “mind” to get in touch with the chemical mind (ie ours). After all, otherwise we cannot contact, the difference in energy and the material carrier from which we and they are built is too great.

But there was a time when scientists simply did not believe in the very existence of ball lightning, not paying attention to the stories of eyewitnesses who happened to see it. For them, ball lightning was like a flying saucer for modern scientists. However, as time went on, the number of observations of ball lightning increased, now it is a generally recognized natural phenomenon that can no longer be denied. Nevertheless, even today there are many scientists who do not recognize the reality of the existence of ball lightning, despite the fact that ball lightning and magnetic traps for hot plasma have learned to be made in scientific laboratories.

Thus, in the preface to the Bulletin of the Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences for Combating Pseudoscience “In Defense of Science”, No. 5, 2009, the following formulations were used: “Of course, there is still a lot of obscurity in ball lightning: it does not want to fly into the laboratories of scientists equipped with appropriate devices” . The bulletin further states: “A theory of the origin of ball lightning that meets the Popper Criterion was developed in 2010 by Austrian scientists Joseph Peer and Alexander Kendl from the University of Innsbruck. They suggested that evidence of ball lightning can be interpreted as a manifestation of phosphenes - visual sensations without light affecting the eye, that is, in translation into ordinary human language, ball lightning are hallucinations. The calculations of these scientific skeptics show that the magnetic fields of certain lightnings with repeated discharges induce electric fields in the neurons of the visual cortex, which appear to a person as ball lightning. Phosphenes can show up in people up to 100 meters away from a lightning strike.” This theory was published in the scientific journal Physics Letters, now supporters of the existence of ball lightning in nature must register ball lightning with scientific equipment, and thus refute the theory of Austrian scientists about phosphenes.

Strange formulation of the question: why should supporters of the reality of ball lightning refute the hypothesis of phosphenes, and not vice versa? Why is it necessary to bring fireballs to scientists' laboratories so that scientists, using the equipment they have, can confirm that these plasma balls are not hallucinations? The phosphene hypothesis has no advantages over other hypotheses explaining the origin of ball lightning. Rather, the phosphene hypothesis is the weakest of all hypotheses in this regard.

I believe that sometimes the RAS Commission for Combating Pseudoscience brings its efforts to the point of absurdity, for example, when, as in the case of ball lightning, it begins to deny obvious facts known to very many people. Such denial of the obvious resembles outright obscurantism, which turns science into one of the forms of religion, which instead of a censer has synchophasotrons and colliders in its hands. This reminds me of the denial of meteorites by the French Academy of Sciences at the end of the 19th century. on the basis that "stones cannot fall from the sky, since there are no stones in the sky." But it turned out that there are stones in the sky, and they quite often fall to the Earth.

Eyewitness accounts of ball lightning.

Case in France: One of the first mentions of the observation of ball lightning dates back to 1718, when on one of the April days during a thunderstorm in Coignon (France), eyewitnesses observed three fireballs with a diameter of more than one meter. And in 1720, again in France, in one of the cities, a fireball fell to the ground during a thunderstorm, bounced off it, hit a stone tower, exploded and destroyed the tower.

Thunderstorm at Widecombe Moor: On October 21, 1638, ball lightning appeared during a thunderstorm in the church of the village of Widecombe Moor in England. A huge fireball about two and a half meters across flew into the church. He knocked out several large stones from the walls of the church and wooden beams. The ball then allegedly broke benches, smashed many windows, and filled the room with thick, dark, sulfur-smelling smoke. Then it split in half; the first ball flew out, breaking another window, the second disappeared somewhere inside the church. As a result, 4 people died and 60 were injured. The phenomenon, of course, was explained by the “coming of the devil”, and two people who dared to play cards during the sermon were blamed for everything.

Case on board the Catherine & Marie: In December 1726, some British newspapers printed an extract from a letter from a certain John Howell, who was on board the sloop Catherine and Mary. “On August 29, we were walking along the bay off the coast of Florida, when suddenly a ball flew out of a part of the ship. He broke our mast into many pieces, smashed the beam to pieces. Also, the ball tore three boards from the underwater side plating and three from the deck; killed one person, injured the hand of another, and if it were not for the heavy rains, the sails would have been simply destroyed by fire.

The case of Georg Richmann.

Incident aboard the Montag: Admiral Chambers aboard the Montag in 1749 went up on deck around noon to measure the coordinates of the ship. He spotted a fairly large blue fireball about three miles away. The order was immediately given to lower the topsails, but the ball was moving very fast, and before it could change course, it flew up almost vertically and, being no more than forty or fifty yards above the rig, disappeared with a powerful explosion, which is described as a simultaneous volley of a thousand guns. The top of the mainmast was destroyed. Five people were knocked down, one of them received multiple bruises. The ball left behind a strong smell of sulfur; before the explosion, its size in cross section reached the size of a millstone (about 1.5 m).

Death of Georg Richmann: In 1753, the physicist Georg Richmann, a full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, died from a ball lightning strike. He invented a device for studying atmospheric electricity, so when he heard at the next meeting that a thunderstorm was coming, he urgently went home with an engraver to capture the phenomenon. During the experiment, a bluish-orange ball flew out of the device and hit the scientist right in the forehead. There was a deafening roar, similar to the shot of a gun. Richman fell dead, and the engraver was stunned and knocked down. The engraver later described what happened. A small dark crimson spot remained on Richman's forehead, his clothes were scorched, his shoes were torn. The doorposts shattered into splinters, and the door itself was blown off its hinges. Later, M.V. personally inspected the scene. Lomonosov.

Case of the Warren Hastings: A British publication reported that in 1809 the Warren Hastings was "attacked by three fireballs" during a storm. The crew saw one of them go down and kill a man on deck. The one who decided to take the body was hit by the second ball; he was knocked down and had minor burns on his body. The third ball killed another person. The crew noted that after the incident, there was a disgusting smell of sulfur above the deck.

Remarque in the literature of 1864: In A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer talks about "ball lightning". In his description, lightning appears as a slowly moving fireball of explosive gas, which sometimes descends to the earth and moves along its surface. It is also noted that the balls can split into smaller balls and explode "like a cannon shot."

Description in the book Lightning and Glow by Wilfried de Fontvieille: The book reports about 150 encounters with ball lightning. “Apparently, ball-shaped lightning is strongly attracted by metal objects, so they often end up near balcony railings, water and gas pipes. They do not have a specific color, their shade may be different, for example, in Köthen in the Duchy of Anhalt, lightning was green. M. Colon, Vice President of the Geological Society of Paris, saw the ball slowly descend along the bark of a tree. Touching the surface of the ground, he jumped and disappeared without an explosion. On September 10, 1845, lightning struck the kitchen of a house in the village of Salagnac in the Correze Valley. The ball rolled through the entire room without causing any damage to the people there. When he reached the barn bordering the kitchen, he suddenly exploded and killed a pig accidentally locked there.

In the 19th century, a French writer described a curious case , when a fireball flew into the kitchen of an apartment building in the village of Salagnac. One of the cooks yelled at the other, "Get that thing out of the kitchen!" However, he was afraid, and this saved his life. Ball lightning flew out of the kitchen and went to the pigsty, where a curious pig decided to sniff it for something to eat. As soon as she brought her piglet to her, she exploded. The poor pig died, and the entire pigsty suffered significant damage. Ball lightning does not move very fast: some have even seen them stop, but this does not make the balls less destructive. Lightning that flew into the church of the city of Stralsund, during the explosion, threw out several small balls, which also exploded like artillery shells.

Ball lightning flies out of a burning fireplace.

Case from the life of Nicholas II: The last Russian emperor, in the presence of his grandfather Alexander II, observed a phenomenon that he called a “ball of fire”. He recalled: “When my parents were away, my grandfather and I performed the rite of the all-night vigil in the Alexandria Church. There was a strong thunderstorm; it seemed that lightning, following one after another, was ready to shake the church and the whole world right to the ground. It suddenly became completely dark when a gust of wind opened the gates of the church and put out the candles in front of the iconostasis. There was more thunder than usual, and I saw a fireball fly through the window. The ball (it was lightning) circled on the floor, flew past the candelabra and flew out through the door into the park. My heart sank with fear and I looked at my grandfather - but his face was completely calm. He crossed himself with the same calmness as when the lightning flew past us. Then I thought that it was inappropriate and unmanly to be afraid, like me. After the ball flew out, I looked at my grandfather again. He smiled slightly and nodded at me. My fear disappeared and I was never afraid of a thunderstorm again.

A story from the life of Aleister Crowley: The famous British occultist Aleister Crowley spoke of what he called "ball-shaped electricity," which he observed in 1916 during a thunderstorm on Pasconee Lake in New Hampshire. He took refuge in a small country house when “he noticed in silent astonishment that at a distance of six inches from his right knee a dazzling ball of electric fire three to six inches in diameter had stopped. I looked at him, and he suddenly exploded with a sharp sound that could not be confused with what was rampant outside: the noise of a thunderstorm, the sound of hail, or streams of water and crackling wood. My hand was closest to the ball and it only felt a slight impact."

Case in India: April 30, 1877 ball lightning flew into the central temple of Amristar (India) Harmandir Sahib. The phenomenon was observed by several people until the ball left the room through the front door. This incident is depicted on the Darshani Deodi gate.

Case in Colorado: On November 22, 1894, in the city of Golden, Colorado (USA), ball lightning appeared, which lasted an unexpectedly long time. As the Golden Globe newspaper reported: “On Monday night, a beautiful and strange phenomenon could be observed in the city. rose strong wind and the air seemed to be filled with electricity. Those who happened to be near the school that night could watch the fireballs fly one after another for half an hour. This building houses electric dynamos from possibly the finest factory in the state. Probably, last Monday a delegation arrived at the dynamos directly from the clouds. Definitely, this visit was a success, as well as the frantic game that they started together.

Case in Australia: In July 1907, on the west coast of Australia, the lighthouse at Cape Naturalist was struck by ball lightning. Lighthouse keeper Patrick Baird lost consciousness, and the phenomenon was described by his daughter Ethel.

Ball lightning on submarines: During World War II, submariners repeatedly and consistently reported small fireballs occurring in the confined space of a submarine. They appeared when the battery was turned on, turned off or incorrectly turned on, or in the event of a disconnection or incorrect connection of highly inductive electric motors. Attempts to reproduce the phenomenon using the submarine's spare battery ended in failure and explosion.

Case in Sweden: In 1944, on August 6, in the Swedish city of Uppsala, ball lightning passed through a closed window, leaving behind a round hole about 5 cm in diameter. The phenomenon was observed not only by local residents - the system for tracking lightning discharges at Uppsala University, created at the department for the study of electricity and lightning, worked.

Case on the Danube: In 1954, the physicist Tar Domokosh observed lightning in a severe thunderstorm. He described what he saw in sufficient detail. “It happened on Margaret Island on the Danube. It was somewhere around 25–27°C, the sky quickly covered with clouds and a strong thunderstorm began. Nearby there was nothing to hide, there was only a lone bush nearby, which was bent by the wind to the ground. Suddenly, about 50 meters away from me, lightning struck the ground. It was a very bright channel 25-30 cm in diameter, it was exactly perpendicular to the surface of the earth. It was dark for about two seconds, and then a beautiful ball with a diameter of 30-40 cm appeared at a height of 1.2 m. bush. The ball sparkled like a small sun and rotated counterclockwise. The axis of rotation was parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the line "bush - impact site - ball". The ball also had one or two red curls, but not so bright, they disappeared after a fraction of a second (~0.3 s). The ball itself slowly moved horizontally along the same line from the bush. Its colors were clear, and the brightness itself was constant over the entire surface. There was no more rotation, the movement took place at a constant height and with constant speed. I didn't notice any size changes. About three more seconds passed - the ball disappeared abruptly, and completely silently, although due to the noise of the thunderstorm I might not have heard it.

Case in Kazan: In 2008, ball lightning flew through the window of a trolleybus in Kazan. The conductor, using a ticket checking machine, threw it to the end of the cabin, where there were no passengers, and a few seconds later an explosion occurred. There were 20 people in the cabin, no one was hurt. The trolley bus was out of order, the ticket checking machine got hot and turned white, but remained in working order.

Ball lightning indoors. This plasmoid is clearly in a non-equilibrium state, as evidenced by the halo around the ball.

Most often, ball lightning moves horizontally at the same height, bending around uneven terrain. Pay attention to the heterogeneity of this ball lightning.

Case in the Czech Republic: In 2011, on July 10, in the Czech city of Liberec, ball lightning appeared in the control building of the city's emergency services. A ball with a two-meter tail jumped to the ceiling right out of the window, fell to the floor, bounced again to the ceiling, flew 2-3 meters, and then fell to the floor and disappeared. This frightened the employees, who smelled burnt wiring and believed that a fire had started. All computers hung (but did not break), communication equipment was out of order for the night until it was repaired. In addition, one monitor was destroyed.

Case in the Brest region: On August 4, 2012, ball lightning frightened a villager in the Pruzhany district of the Brest region. According to the newspaper "Rayonnyya Budni", ball lightning flew into the house during a thunderstorm. Moreover, as Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ostapuk said, the windows and doors in the house were closed, and the woman could not understand how the fireball entered the room. Luckily, the woman figured out that she shouldn't make any sudden movements, and just stayed where she was, watching the lightning. Ball lightning flew over her head and discharged into the electrical wiring on the wall. As a result of an unusual natural phenomenon, no one was injured, only the interior decoration of the room was damaged, the newspaper reports.

Ball lightning can explode in a person's hair without causing harm, or it can destroy an entire house. Most often, the existence of ball lightning ends with an explosion; it is not uncommon for it to fall apart. For the most part it is still an explosion accompanied by a loud bang due to the rapid collapse of the gas in the volume previously occupied by ball lightning. At the same time, destruction of light objects (for example, a light country house, a transformer booth) is noted, asphalt breaks out within a radius of 1–1.5 meters, stones are scattered, glass is broken, wire insulators are broken, logs on the pier are split, etc.

There is a known case when ball lightning flew into the room and exploded over the table, catching on the metal suspension of a kerosene lamp. None of the people sitting at the table were hurt. However, in another case, a lightning explosion occurred in the hair on the head of a person, as a result of which he felt a strong blow and lost consciousness, but did not die. When meeting with ball lightning, it is better to treat it like an unfamiliar dog - stand or sit still, watching its behavior.

A case in the Kemerovo region. Vitaly Shumilov witnessed an unusual phenomenon. It was after the storm. Returning home after work, already in the twilight, he suddenly saw a bright rainbow in the sky. She obscured the forest and seemed to lean on the roof of his house. He called the neighbors - they stood for 15 minutes and looked at the strange phenomenon. After some time, the rainbow began to fade, and then everyone saw a fast-moving luminous object in the sky. Flying over the gardens, the UFO seemed to flare up and disappeared behind the forest. The leaves of the maple, which grows just in the place where the rainbow "leaned", were covered with white spots, as if they had been burned with something. The diameter of the "spot" in which the burnt trees ended up was three meters. Dmitry Malashenkov, a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, having examined the leaves under a microscope, came to the conclusion that this was not a chemical burn, but the result of some high-temperature radiation, probably ultraviolet or infrared.

The formation of ball lightning in a linear lightning discharge.

The internal plasmoid magnetic structure of ball lightning is elegant and intricate. This structure can accumulate not only energy, but also information.

Case in Kemerovo: Associate Professor of the Kemerovo Technological Institute Lev Ivanovich Konstantinov said: “About midnight, while observing a meteor shower through a telescope, I noticed an unusually bright glow in the sky and, looking closer, I saw a rainbow. It was strange: we didn't have a thunderstorm. After 25 minutes, the rainbow faded, a long strip before my eyes "folded" into a ball, which moved faster and faster across the night sky. Two minutes later there was a flash, and the object disappeared. Going to bed, he felt that the tips of his fingers hurt, as if from a slight burn. In the morning, the researcher found that they were reddened and covered with bubbles. Not so much from pain, but out of curiosity, I went to the doctor. He made a diagnosis - "a burn of the first or second degree" and recommended ointments and dressings. It was all gone in three days. However, it turned out that not only he, but also many acquaintances saw the rainbow and the flying ball that night. Lev Ivanovich conducted a survey of 47 eyewitnesses, and they said that for the first 7–10 days, almost everyone complained of headaches and severe weakness. At night, some were tormented by nightmares, others, on the contrary, fell into a deep sleep and saw strange dreams: as if they are traveling in an unfamiliar area, talking in incomprehensible language with amazing creatures the likes of which have never been seen.

In December 1975, the journal Science and Life addressed its readers with a questionnaire containing questions concerning ball lightning. The journal asked to answer the questionnaire and send letters describing the circumstances of the observation and various details. During 1976, 1,400 letters were received. Let's get acquainted with excerpts from several letters.

“I saw from a distance of about 10 m that a ball lightning of light yellow color with a diameter of 30–40 cm jumped out of the ground at the site of an ordinary lightning strike. Having risen to a height of 6–8 meters, it began to move horizontally. At the same time, it pulsated, taking either a spherical or an ellipsoidal shape. Having covered a distance of about 50 m in 1 minute, she stumbled upon a pine tree and exploded.

“I met ball lightning in the evening before a thunderstorm when I went hunting. It was about 25 cm in diameter, white, moving horizontally, following the terrain.”

“I saw ball lightning 10 cm in diameter pass through a hole in a window 8 mm in diameter.”

“After a strong thunderclap in open door a white-blue spherical mass with a diameter of 40 cm flew in and began to move rapidly around the room. She rolled under the stool I was sitting on. And although she was right at my feet, I did not feel the heat. Then the fireball was attracted to the central heating radiator and disappeared with a sharp hiss. She melted a section of the battery with a diameter of 6 mm, leaving a hole 2 mm deep.

“A severe thunderstorm broke out in the city with a downpour. Ball lightning flew into the open window of the kitchen window on the second floor. It was a uniform yellow ball 20 cm in diameter. The ball slowly moved horizontally, slightly descending; He walked a distance of about 1 m. He floated in the air, as a body floats inside a liquid. Thin reddish stripes began to form inside the ball. Then, without falling apart or falling, he quietly, without a sound, disappeared. The entire observation took about 30 seconds.”

“I saw ball lightning when I was 14 years old. I rested in the village with my aunt. There was a thunderstorm ... and it has already subsided. They sat quietly, talked, in the villages they sit quietly in a thunderstorm. Suddenly, out of nowhere, three balls appeared. The first with a big apple, the second ball is smaller, and the third one is quite small, the balls moved slowly. Auntie shouted: “Run out of the house,” we all scatter. I have to say, it was scary. This is the most vivid impression of my childhood.”

“I saw ball lightning as a child when I was fishing in the lake. I looked - it started to rain, I sat down under a tree, I sit waiting, I began to think: what if lightning strikes a tree. I looked - a meter away from me, some ball the size of a bluish tennis ball, while I was thinking what it was, the ball began to fly in zigzags towards me, I got scared and swam across the lake in clothes - so that I didn’t even notice, and when I turned around , then I saw that the tree under which I was sitting was smoking a little.

Photo of ball lightning attacking a flying aircraft.

In 1936, the English newspaper The Daily Mail reported a case in which an eyewitness observed a red-hot ball descending from the sky. First, he hit the house, damaged the telephone wires and set fire to the wooden window frame. The ball ended its journey in a barrel of water, which immediately boiled.

Ball lightning also flew into airplanes. In 1963, British professor R.S. Jennison. According to his story, first ordinary lightning struck the plane, then ball lightning flew out of the cockpit. She slowly swam along the cabin, pretty much frightening the passengers. The professor reported that the lightning was about eight inches in diameter and glowed like a 100-watt light bulb. Ball lightning did not radiate heat, the ball had an ideal spherical shape, and, according to Jennison, this ball "appeared to be a solid body."

Usually the average lifetime of ball lightning does not exceed a few minutes. In size, it ranges from a few centimeters in diameter to the size of a soccer ball. Ball lightning is usually white, but there are lightning in red, yellow, green and, according to eyewitnesses, even gray and black. Ball lightning is able to maneuver and fly around various obstacles in its path. However, it also has the ability to pass through solid bodies. While moving, ball lightning often emits a sound reminiscent of crackling high-voltage lines, buzzing or hissing.

There are several options for a possible explanation of the phenomenon, says Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University Leonid Speransky. Ball lightning is one of the most striking mysteries modern science and its nature is still unclear. There are cases when ball lightning passed through glass, leaving only a tiny hole. correct form. To drill this, you need a diamond drill and several hours of painstaking work. How does ball lightning manage to do this? All this suggests that it has a temperature comparable to that which reigns on the surface of the Sun, and great energy. The speed with which ball lightning moves can be small, but it can exceed the sound speed by several times.

There are more than a hundred different hypotheses trying to explain the origin of ball lightning, but so far none of them has found full acceptance as a theory in the scientific community. We can assume that the question of the nature of natural ball lightning is still open. According to the most curious hypothesis, ball lightning is an intelligent plasmoid.

Structural inhomogeneity of an artificial plasmoid formed around a powerful electric discharge.

A linear lightning strike led to the formation of several fireballs. It should be noted that lightning struck near a high-voltage power line.

The structure and formation of ball lightning.

During the experiments, moments of mass generation of plasmoid formations (elven fog) were recorded. It resembled the boiling of water during its transition from one state of aggregation to another. Light spots, like air bubbles in the water column, occupied all free space.

Physicist Nikolo Tesla holding two fireballs in his laboratory.

Several statements have been made about the production of ball lightning in laboratories, but in general, a skeptical attitude has developed towards these statements in the academic environment. The question remains open: are the phenomena observed in laboratory conditions identical to the natural phenomenon of ball lightning? The first experiments and statements about artificial plasmoids can be considered the work of Nikolo Tesla at the end of the 19th century.

In his brief note, he reported that under certain conditions, igniting a gas discharge, he, after turning off the voltage, observed a spherical luminous discharge with a diameter of 2–6 cm. However, Tesla did not report the details of his experiment, so it turned out to be difficult to reproduce this installation. Eyewitnesses claimed that Tesla could make fireballs that lived for several minutes, while he took them in his hands, put them in a box, covered them with a lid, and took them out again.

The first detailed studies of a luminous electrodeless discharge were carried out only in 1942 by the Soviet electrical engineer Babat. He managed to get a spherical gas discharge inside a low pressure chamber for a few seconds. P.L. Kapitsa was able to obtain a spherical gas discharge at atmospheric pressure in a helium medium. Additives of various organic compounds changed the brightness and color of the glow. The literature describes a scheme of an installation in which the authors reproducibly obtained some plasmoids with a lifetime of up to 1 second, similar to "natural" ball lightning. Russian mathematician M.I. Zelikin suggested that the phenomenon of ball lightning is associated with the superconductivity of the plasma. Most theories agree that the reason for the formation of any ball lightning is associated with the passage of gases through a region with a large difference in electrical potentials, which causes the ionization of these gases and their compression into a ball.

The internal structure of ball lightning.

The cross section of a toroid is a model of ball lightning.

Plasmoid with several fireballs inside.

The two figures at the top and left show a cross-section of toroids - models of ball lightning. A plasma toroid is a plasma structure that is pulled together by two intrinsic magnetic fields. In cross section, the toroid looks like two plano-convex ovals with their flat sides facing the central hole. The longitudinal field in the diagram is colored blue, the transverse field is green. In the diagrams, these fields are conventionally depicted one on top of the other, but in reality they mutually penetrate each other.

Nitrogen and oxygen ions move in spirals on the periphery of the toroid and form a closed oval “pipe” of large diameter. Inside this “pipe”, protons and electrons move in spirals of small diameter along a closed ring. During the formation of the toroid, part of the proton spirals shifted upward, and part of the electron spirals shifted down the oval tube. Separated protons and electrons form electric field, in other words, a charged electric capacitor.

Observers report that sometimes several fireballs jump out of a brightly luminous ball that appears at the lower end of a linear lightning discharge. Eyewitnesses observed fireballs, which are divided into several small fireballs. Ball lightning was observed, from which, even during the explosion, ball lightning of a smaller size jumped out.

Of course, the models proposed in these diagrams are just hypotheses, but they give an idea that ball lightning has a complex dynamic structure, that this structure has an electromagnetic nature.

When linear lightning is discharged into a magnetic field with cold plasma, several spatially separated portions of hot plasma fly into the cold plasma. Each separate portion of hot ions and electrons (a kind of hot plasma gear) together with cold plasma form a magnetic structure with electrons moving in spirals in the form of a “pipe” closed into a toroid. As a result, inside each heated toroidal tube in a magnetic field, electrons and protons move along their spiral paths, both those that were there and those that flew into the cold plasma along with a portion of the hot plasma. Moving in a non-uniform magnetic field inside the ion tube, protons and electrons are partially separated, forming an electric field. If the resulting autonomous toroids did not have time to unite, having interlocked with their own transverse magnetic fields, then they are pushed into the atmosphere separately, and if they managed to unite, then one large ball lightning is pushed out in the form of an elongated oval.

Apparently, ball lightning can include several autonomous ball lightning. Autonomous lightning toroids are strung on one common axis passing through the central holes of the toroids. Each toroid is covered locally by its own longitudinal magnetic field, and the toroids' own transverse magnetic fields, when added, form one common transverse magnetic field, covering all autonomous toroids and closing through a common central hole of ball lightning. When an instability occurs, the combined lightning can split, sometimes with an explosion, with one of them exploding, while the rest may survive the explosion.

The second figure shows a complex ball lightning, consisting of three autonomous lightning, each of which is covered and held by its own longitudinal magnetic field, conventionally colored blue. The transverse magnetic fields of autonomous lightnings were summed up into one common transverse magnetic field (colored green), covering the outside and holding all three lightnings and closing through a common central opening of the lightning. Inside large toroids, as well as between them, both single spirals of protons and electrons, and small toroids of combined spirals of the same charges of the same particles can be in motion.

The proposed ball lightning model is based on the theoretically predicted force-free magnetic configuration sferomak . It originates in the channel of linear lightning during repeated discharges in the areas of development of instabilities such as constrictions on it. The weak magnetic field of the Earth serves as the initial poloidal magnetic field. During the compression of the current sheath, the poloidal magnetic field increases and becomes comparable with the azimuthal magnetic field of the pinch. As a result of the reconnection of the lines of force of the poloidal magnetic field, force-free magnetic configurations with a closed magnetic field are formed in the waist region, which are the basis of ball lightning. Depending on the number of merged powerless cells, the energy and dimensions of ball lightning can vary over a wide range. In the outer region, the magnetic field lines are not closed and go to infinity. The main energy of ball lightning is stored in it in the form of magnetic field energy.

Sometimes in the sky you can observe such spiral glows that have an electromagnetic nature.

The moment of formation of ball lightning from closed linear lightning.

At the boundary with air near ball lightning, a thin shell of non-isothermal plasma is formed. In it, a diamagnetic current flows along the inner surface, shielding it from the magnetic field of the plasmoid. A double electric layer appears on the outer surface of the shell of a nonisothermal plasma, which is a potential barrier for electrons. As a result of intensive condensation of water vapor on negative and positive ions in air, a water film is formed at the boundary of the double layer. Water molecules also play an important role in the formation of clusters in the double electric layer, resulting in a significant decrease in the magnitude and energy of the ion flux. In addition, the nonisothermal envelope plasma serves as a reflective screen for intense cyclotron radiation of electrons from the central force-free region. In general, the outer shell of lightning is an effective thermal and magnetic shield. Due to the strong electrostatic pressure in the electrical double layer, the energy density in ball lightning reaches about 10 J/cm3.

The proposed model of ball lightning. Designations: 1 – neck of the external magnetic field; 2 - water film; 3 – double electric layer; 4 – shell of non-isothermal plasma; 5 – transitional current layer; 6 - separatrix; 7 – area of ​​force-free magnetic field.

The flattened powerless spheromak is a stable magnetic trap. As a result of partial absorption of cyclotron radiation, the electron temperature is maintained in the shell of the nonisothermal plasma. Due to the different diffusion rates of electrons and ions, the central region of the plasmoid is charged with a negative charge. Ball lightning also has electric and magnetic dipole moments directed along its axis of symmetry.

Ball lightning moves under the influence of gravity, air currents and electromagnetic forces. Its movement at a low electromagnetic force is similar to the movement of a soap bubble. In the electric field of the induced charge in the dielectric (glass), it takes such a position that the direction of its electric dipole moment coincides with the direction of the field. As a result, it comes into contact with the glass in the region of the neck of its external magnetic field. Trapped particles escaping along the magnetic field lines melt the glass in that area, making a hole in it. Under the influence of the pressure difference outside and inside the room, ball lightning overflows through this hole.

The main energy in it is stored in the form of magnetic field energy. The weight of ball lightning is determined by the weight of the water film. The explosion of ball lightning is accompanied by the generation of a powerful electromagnetic pulse. It is a source of intense X-rays. The main contribution to the radiation in the visible spectrum comes from the nonisothermal shell plasma. The presence of a water film in ball lightning is confirmed by the observation of several light shades in it, “exotic” black ball lightning, as well as by the features of its movement. The blue halo around ball lightning is due to X-ray and ultraviolet radiation.

The violet glow near its boundary is caused by electrons that overcome the potential barrier in a double electric field. Observation of bound fireballs, magnetization of metal objects, etc. indicates the presence of a magnetic field. In the stage of extinction of ball lightning, an external magnetic field may be absent. The structure of ball lightning is most accurately described in a unique observation by M.T. Dmitriev. Ball lightning can serve as a source of neutrons if it is filled with deuterium or other thermonuclear raw materials. Based on this model, it is possible to give a satisfactory description of the behavior of ball lightning under various conditions.

In Transcarpathia, three such fireballs “walked” around the center of Khust.

Ball lightning outside the window.

Ball lightning can cause fires and electric shock to people. Structures that rise above surrounding structures are often subjected to direct lightning strikes, for example, non-metallic chimneys, television and other towers, fire stations, buildings standing separately in open area. A lightning strike on an aircraft can lead to destruction of structural elements, disruption of radio equipment and navigation instruments, blinding and even direct damage to the crew. When such lightning strikes a tree, the discharge can strike people near it; also dangerous is the voltage that occurs near the tree when the lightning current flows from it to the ground.

Ball lightning is influenced by both the gravitational and electric fields of the Earth, which increase strongly before and during a thunderstorm. Around the surface of the Earth there are so-called equipotential, invisible to us surfaces, characterized by a constant value of the electric potential. These surfaces follow the terrain. They go around buildings and treetops. Being a light freely wandering charge, ball lightning can "sit down" on any equipotential surface and slide over it without energy consumption. From the side, it seems that it is hovering above the surface of the Earth and moving along it, repeating the terrain.

Ball lightning in a spacious room.

Ball lightning in a room in front of a window (Austria).

Ball lightning tends to penetrate into enclosed spaces, flying in through windows, leaking through cracks, holes in glass, etc. In this case, ball lightning temporarily takes the form of a sausage, a cake or a thin thread, and then, after passing through a hole, again turns into a ball. The shape of a ball for ball lightning is energetically more favorable. AT enclosed spaces the electric field of the Earth is shielded, and the oppression of the powerful electric field of the Earth is partially removed from the ball lightning. That is why it is no coincidence that, flying in through the window, lightning often drops to the floor.

Ball lightning is often attracted to metal objects. This can be explained by the law of electromagnetic induction. Being a charged body, ball lightning, when approaching metal objects, induces a charge of the opposite sign in them, and then is attracted to them, as to oppositely charged bodies. Ball lightning can also move along electrical wires. The surface of a current-carrying conductor carries electric charge negative sign. Therefore, ball lightning, positively charged, is attracted to current-carrying wires.

Under natural conditions, most often ball lightning seems to “come out” of a conductor or is generated by ordinary lightning, sometimes descends from clouds, in rare cases it suddenly appears in the air or, as eyewitnesses report, it can come out of some object (tree, pole) . In laboratory conditions, similar to ball lightning, but short-lived hot plasmoids have been obtained in several different ways. The Israeli installation for producing hot plasmoids resembles a microwave oven in principle.

The explosion of ball lightning is accompanied by the generation of a powerful electromagnetic pulse. During an explosion, ball lightning is a source of intense X-ray radiation.

Some hypotheses explaining the occurrence of ball lightning.

Kapitza's hypothesis. Academician P.L. Kapitsa in 1955 explained the appearance of ball lightning and some of its features by the occurrence of short-wave electromagnetic oscillations in the space between thunderclouds and the earth's surface. A standing electromagnetic wave arises between the clouds and the ground, and when it reaches a critical amplitude, a breakdown of air occurs in some place (most often, closer to the ground), a gas discharge is formed. In this case, ball lightning turns out to be "strung" on the lines of force of a standing wave and will move along conductive surfaces. standing wave then it is responsible for the energy supply of ball lightning.

However, Kapitsa failed to explain the nature of short-wave oscillations. In addition, ball lightning does not necessarily accompany ordinary lightning and can appear in clear weather. Energy is supplied to ball lightning with the help of electromagnetic radiation of the microwave frequency range (decimeter and meter wave range). Ball lightning itself is considered as an antinode of the electrostatic field of a standing electromagnetic wave, located at a distance of a quarter of a wavelength from the surface of the earth or any conductive object. In the region of this antinode, the field strength is very high, and therefore a strongly ionized plasma is formed here, which is the substance of lightning.

P.L. Kapitsa suggested that ball lightning occurs when a powerful beam of decimeter radio waves is absorbed, which can be emitted during a thunderstorm. Despite the many attractive aspects of this hypothesis, it still seems untenable. The fact is that it cannot explain the nature of the movements of ball lightning, its bizarre wandering and, in particular, the dependence of its behavior on air currents. Within the framework of this hypothesis, it is difficult to explain the well-observed clear lightning surface. In addition, the explosion of such ball lightning should not be accompanied by the release of energy at all. If, for some reason, the supply of electromagnetic radiation energy suddenly stops, the heated air cools quickly and, compressing, produces a loud bang.

According to hypothesis A.M. Hazen ball lightning often moves above the ground, copying the terrain, because the luminous sphere, having a higher temperature in relation to environment, tends to swim up under the action of the Archimedean force; on the other hand, under the action of electrostatic forces, the ball is attracted to the wet conductive surface of the soil. At some height, both forces balance each other, and the ball seems to roll along invisible rails. Sometimes, however, ball lightning makes sharp jumps. They can be caused either by a strong gust of wind or a change in the direction of the electron avalanche.

An explanation was found for another fact: ball lightning tends to get inside buildings. Any structure, especially a stone one, raises the level of groundwater in a given place, which means that the electrical conductivity of the soil increases, which attracts the plasma ball. If too much energy is supplied to the spherical "vessel", it eventually bursts due to overheating or, having fallen into the region of increased electrical conductivity, is discharged, like an ordinary linear lightning. If the electron drift dies out for some reason, the ball lightning quietly fades away, dissipating its charge in the surrounding space.

A.M. Hazen proposed a scheme for the occurrence of ball lightning: “Let's take a conductor passing through the center of the antenna of a microwave transmitter. Along the conductor, as in a waveguide, an electromagnetic wave will propagate. Moreover, the conductor must be taken long enough so that the antenna does not electrostatically affect the free end. We connect this conductor to a high voltage pulse generator and apply a short voltage pulse to it, sufficient for a corona discharge to occur at the free end. The pulse must be formed in such a way that near its trailing edge the voltage on the conductor does not drop to zero, but remains at some level insufficient to create a corona - a constantly luminous charge on the conductor. If you change the amplitude and time of the DC voltage pulse, vary the frequency and amplitude of the microwave field, then in the end, at the free end of the wire, even after turning off the alternating field, a luminous plasma bunch should remain and, possibly, separate from the conductor. However, the need for a large amount of energy makes it difficult to implement this experiment.

Hypothesis B.M. Smirnova. True, this hypothesis was first proposed by Dominic Arago, and in the mid-70s of the twentieth century. it was developed in detail by B.M. Smirnov. B.M. Smirnov believed that the core of ball lightning is a cellular structure with a strong frame and low weight, and this frame is formed from plasma filaments. Ball lightning has a chemical nature. It consists of ordinary air (having a temperature of about 100 degrees above the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere), contains a small admixture of ozone, nitrogen oxides. A fundamentally important role is played by ozone, which is formed during the discharge of ordinary lightning; its concentration is about 3%. Inside ball lightning, chemical reactions take place, they are accompanied by the release of energy. In this case, approximately 1 kJ of energy is released in a volume with a diameter of 20 cm. This is not enough, for all registered ball lightning of this size, the energy reserve should be approximately 100 kJ. The disadvantage of the considered physical model is also the impossibility of explaining the stable form of ball lightning and the existence of its surface tension.

D. Turner explained the nature of ball lightning by thermochemical effects occurring in saturated water vapor in the presence of a sufficiently strong electric field. The energy of ball lightning in his hypothesis is determined by the heat chemical reactions involving water molecules and ions.

New Zealand chemists D. Abrahamson and D. Dinnis found that when lightning strikes soil containing silicates and organic carbon, a ball of silicon and silicon carbide fibers is formed. These fibers gradually oxidize and begin to glow. This is how a "fire" ball is born, heated to 1200-1400 ° C, which slowly melts. But if the temperature of ball lightning goes off scale, then it explodes. But even this theory does not confirm all cases of the occurrence of ball lightning.

Fernandez-Rañada hypothesis. This hypothesis is difficult to explain without resorting to mathematical formulas. It is about a formation similar to a ball, only consisting not of threads of yarn, but of lines of a magnetic field. Ball lightning is a combination of magnetic and electric fields, which ensures the continuation of one of them while the other exists, and so on. When these fields combine and mutually reinforce each other, a strong pressure is generated within them, holding the entire structure. In short, something appears - a "magnetic bottle". Energy is stored inside this bottle.

There are quite a few hypotheses suggesting that ball lightning itself is a source of energy. The most exotic mechanisms for extracting this energy have been devised. According to the idea of ​​D. Ashby and C. Whitehead, ball lightning is formed during the annihilation of antimatter dust particles that enter the dense layers of the atmosphere from space and are then carried away by a linear lightning discharge to the earth. But so far, no suitable antimatter particles have been discovered. Various chemical and even nuclear reactions are called as a hypothetical source of energy. But at the same time, it is difficult to explain the spherical shape of lightning - if the reactions go in gaseous environment, then diffusion and wind will lead to the removal of the “thunderstorm substance” from a twenty-centimeter ball in a matter of seconds and deform it even earlier. In addition, not a single reaction is known that would proceed in the air with the energy release necessary to explain ball lightning. It is possible that ball lightning accumulates the energy released during a linear lightning strike.

Hypothesis of I.P. Stakhanov, or Cluster theory. A cluster is a positive or negative ion surrounded by a kind of “fur coat” of neutral molecules. If an ion is surrounded by water molecules with oriented dipoles, then it is called hydrated. Water molecules, due to their polarity, are held near the ions by electrostatic attraction. Two or more hydrated ions can combine to form a neutral complex. It is from such complexes that it consists, according to the hypothesis of I.P. Stakhanov, the substance of ball lightning. Thus, it is assumed that in ball lightning each ion is surrounded by a “fur coat” of water molecules. According to this theory, ball lightning is a self-existing body (without a continuous supply of energy from external sources), consisting of heavy positive and negative ions, the recombination of which is strongly inhibited due to ion hydration. Recombinations are hindered by water molecules oriented by their dipoles.

Why is lightning shaped like a ball? There must be a force capable of holding the particles of "thunder stuff" together. Why is a water drop spherical? This shape is given to it by surface tension, which occurs due to the fact that its particles strongly interact with each other, much stronger than with the molecules of the surrounding gas. If the particle is near the interface, then a force begins to act on it, tending to return the molecule to the depth of the liquid.

In gases, the kinetic energy of particles so much exceeds the potential energy of their interaction that the particles turn out to be practically free and there is no need to talk about surface tension in gas portions. But ball lightning is a gas-like body, and the “thunderstorm substance”, nevertheless, has surface tension, it is this that provides the plasmoid with the shape of a ball, which ball lightning most often has. The only substance that can have such properties is plasma, an ionized gas.

Plasma is made up of positive and negative ions. The energy of interaction between them is much greater than between atoms of a neutral gas; in this case, the surface tension of a plasma bunch is also greater than that of a portion of a neutral gas. However, at temperatures below 1000 degrees Kelvin and at normal atmospheric pressure, ball lightning from plasma could only exist in thousandths of a second, since ions under such conditions quickly turn into neutral atoms and molecules.

However, ball lightning sometimes lives for several minutes. At temperatures of 10–15 thousand degrees Kelvin, the kinetic energy of plasma particles becomes too large, much more power their electrical interaction, and ball lightning should simply fall apart with such heating. Therefore, P.L. Kapitsa and introduced into his model a powerful electromagnetic wave capable of constantly generating a new low-temperature plasma. Other researchers, who assume that the lightning plasma is hotter, had to come up with a mechanism to keep too hot plasma in the form of a ball.

Let's try to use water, which is a polar solvent, to stabilize ball lightning. Its molecule can be roughly thought of as a dipole, one end of which is positively charged and the other negatively charged. Water is attached to positive ions with a negative end, and to negative ions - positive, forming a protective layer around the ions - the so-called solvate shell. Water can drastically slow down plasma recombination. An ion together with a solvate shell is called a cluster.

When linear lightning is discharged, almost complete ionization of the molecules that make up the air, including water molecules, occurs. The formed ions begin to quickly recombine, this stage takes thousandths of a second. At some point, there are more neutral water molecules than the remaining ions, and the process of cluster formation begins. It also lasts a fraction of a second and ends with the formation of a "thunderstorm substance" - a substance similar in its properties to plasma and consisting of ionized air and water molecules surrounded by solvate shells.

Ball lightning can occur in thunderclouds. Here you can see its internal heterogeneity.

At the end of the 1960s, a detailed study of the lowest layer of the ionosphere, layer D, located at an altitude of about 70 km, was carried out with the help of geophysical rockets. It turned out that despite the fact that there is very little water at such a height, all ions in the D layer are surrounded by solvate shells consisting of several water molecules.

In the cluster theory, it is assumed that the temperature of ball lightning is less than 1000°K, therefore, in particular, there is no strong thermal radiation from it. Electrons at this temperature easily "stick" to atoms, forming negative ions, and all the properties of "lightning matter" are determined by clusters. In this case, the density of the lightning substance turns out to be approximately equal to the density of air under normal atmospheric conditions. Lightning can be somewhat heavier than air and fall down, it can be somewhat lighter than air and rise, and, finally, it can be in suspension if the densities of the "lightning substance" and the density of air are equal. Therefore, hovering is the most common type of ball lightning movement.

Clusters interact with each other much more strongly than neutral gas atoms, which results in the formation of an interface between a portion of the space filled with clusters and air. The resulting surface tension is quite enough to give the lightning a spherical shape. Large lightning bolts more than a meter in diameter are extremely rare, while small ones are more common. The energy of ball lightning, according to this hypothesis, is contained in clusters. During the recombination of two clusters - negative and positive - energy is released - from 2 to 10 electron volts.

Usually, the plasma of linear lightning loses quite a lot of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Electrons, moving in a linear lightning, acquire very large accelerations, which is why they generate electromagnetic waves. The substance of ball lightning consists of heavy particles, it is not easy to accelerate them, therefore the electromagnetic field is weakly emitted by ball lightning, and most of the energy is removed from the lightning by a heat flux from its surface. The heat flow is proportional to the surface area of ​​ball lightning, and the energy storage is proportional to the volume. Therefore, small lightnings quickly lose their relatively small reserves of energy, and therefore small lightnings live too short.

So, in a state of disequilibrium with the external environment, lightning with a diameter of 1 cm cools down in 0.25 seconds, and with a diameter of 20 cm - in 100 seconds. This last figure roughly coincides with the maximum observed lifetime of ball lightning, but significantly exceeds its average lifetime of several seconds.

A large lightning "dies" due to the violation of the stability of its boundary. During the recombination of a pair of clusters, a dozen light particles are formed, which at the same temperature leads to a decrease in the density of the “thunderstorm substance” and a violation of the conditions for the existence of lightning long before its energy is exhausted.

When the surface instability is lost, ball lightning throws out pieces of its substance and, as it were, jumps from side to side. The ejected pieces cool almost instantly, like small lightning bolts, and the fragmented large lightning ends its existence. But another mechanism for its decay is also possible. If for some reason the heat removal worsens, the lightning will start to heat up. In this case, the number of clusters with a small number of water molecules in the shell will increase, they will recombine faster, and the temperature will further increase. The end result is an explosion.

But if the temperature of ball lightning is low (about 1000°K), then why does it glow so brightly? During the recombination of clusters, the released heat is rapidly distributed among colder molecules. But at some point, the temperature near the recombined particles can exceed the average temperature of the lightning matter by more than 10 times. This gas, heated to 10-15 thousand degrees, glows so brightly. There are few such "hot spots" in the ball, so ball lightning remains translucent.

Only a few grams of water is needed to form lightning with a diameter of 20 cm, and during a thunderstorm there is usually plenty of it. Water is most often dispersed in the air, but in extreme cases, ball lightning can "find" it for itself on the surface of the earth. During the formation of lightning, some of the electrons may be "lost", so the ball lightning as a whole will be positively charged, and its movement will be determined by the electric field. The electric charge allows ball lightning to move against the wind, be attracted to objects and hang over high places.

The color of ball lightning is determined not only by the energy of the solvate shells and the temperature of the hot "volumes", but also by the chemical composition of its matter. When linear lightning strikes copper wires ball lightning appears, colored blue or green - the usual "colors" of copper ions. It is quite possible that excited metal atoms can also form clusters. The appearance of such "metal" clusters could explain some experiments with electric discharges, as a result of which luminous balls appeared, similar to ball lightning.

Cluster theory explains a lot, but not everything. So, in his story V.K. Arseniev mentions a thin tail stretching from ball lightning. While the reason for its occurrence is inexplicable. There is an opinion that ball lightning is allegedly capable of initiating a microdose thermonuclear reaction, which can serve as an internal source of energy for ball lightning. Along with an increase in density in the center of ball lightning, an increase in the temperature of matter in the central region to a value where thermonuclear fusion is possible is also predicted. This, in particular, can explain the appearance of microscopic holes with melted edges when ball lightning passes through glass.

How to protect yourself from ball lightning.

The main rule when ball lightning appears is not to panic and do not make sudden movements, do not run! Lightning is very susceptible to air turbulence. You can break away from ball lightning only by car, but by no means on your own. Try to quietly move out of the way of the lightning and stay away from it, but do not turn your back on it. If you are in an apartment, go to the window and open the window. With a high degree of probability, lightning will fly out. Don't throw anything into the fireball! It can not just disappear, but explode like a mine, and then severe consequences (burns, sometimes loss of consciousness and cardiac arrest) are inevitable.

If ball lightning touched someone and the person lost consciousness, then it must be transferred to a well-ventilated room, wrapped warmly, artificial respiration done and be sure to call ambulance. Technical means of protection against ball lightning have not yet been developed. The only currently existing "ball lightning rod" was developed by the leading engineer of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering B. Ignatov, but only a few such devices have been created.

Conclusion.

All the above hypotheses, rather, do not make it easier, but rather make it difficult for us to understand the nature of ball lightning. In order to simply and clearly describe the causes and structure of this phenomenon, we first need to understand the nature electromagnetic field in general, to operate with field structures, and not with the structures of matter. We are still able to talk about the field only when it is displayed in some way in the substance. We are talking about field lines, but in fact they are lined up metal filings visible to our eyes, which we decided to turn into virtual concepts. Are there any lines near the field at all? ...

We can also perceive such a complex phenomenon as ball lightning only as a material phenomenon, but in fact it is not such. We can talk about the shell of ball lightning, and here the Cluster theory seems to be preferable, but what is hidden under this salvate shell? What is the general nature of the field substance inside ball lightning and how inhomogeneous is it? How and in what terms to describe this heterogeneity? All this is still beyond the limits of human consciousness. Whatever general field theories we create, it is physically impossible to test them not only on the scale of the planet and the universe, but even on the scale of the macro- and microworld. But the laws of the field organization must operate at all levels of its organization ... In the meantime, there is no intelligible and sensible idea about the field structure of the world, all attempts to describe private field substances look unconvincing and full of contradictions. Probably, in order to understand the structures of the field itself, it is necessary to develop a special abstract vision - vision not with the eyes, ears and skin, but with the mind, since the mind-consciousness, most likely, is also a trivial structure built into the substance and organizing it in its own image and likeness.

Based on materials A.V.Galanina. 2013. .

Electronic media " interesting world". 02.11.2013

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The unusually high-quality rains that have taken place in Kyiv over the past two weeks somehow made me think about atmospheric phenomena, these same accompanying rains - I heard thunder, saw lightning, there was wind, wet water was, but somehow I did not see ball lightning. And it became interesting to me - what kind of natural phenomenon is this and what is written about it. The result of a short review of modern ideas about ball lightning is this note in two parts.

Since then, to this day, reports of ball lightning have been documented and studied ... much like UFOs. There are many of them, they are different and from different sources. Ball lightning can move in all directions, against and with the wind, be attracted or not attracted to metal objects, machines and people, explode or not explode, be dangerous or harmless to people, cause or not cause fires and damage, smell of sulfur or ozone (depends on the worldview system?). In 1973, the properties of a "typical" ball lightning were published, based on an analysis of observational statistics:

- appears simultaneously with a lightning discharge into the ground;
- has a spherical, cigar-shaped or disc shape with uneven edges, as it were, even "fluffy";
- diameter from one centimeter to a meter;
- the brightness of the glow is approximately the same as a 100-200 watt electric light bulb, it can be seen well during the day;
- the colors are very different, there are even black (sotona !!!), but mostly yellow, red, orange and green;
- exist from one second to several minutes, 15-20 seconds is the most common time;
- as a rule, they move somewhere (up, down, more often straight) at a speed of up to five meters per second, but they can also simply hang in the air, sometimes rotate around their axis;
- they practically do not radiate heat, being "cold" (have you tried it to the touch, or something?), but heat can be released during an explosion (gas pipes);
- some are attracted to conductors - iron fences, cars, pipelines (gas, and explode with heat), and some simply pass through any matter;
- when they disappear, they can leave quietly, without noise, or they can loudly, with a bang;
- they often leave behind the smell of sulfur, ozone or nitrogen oxides (depending on the worldview and the circumstances of the disappearance?).

Scientists, in turn, are conducting interesting experiments on recreating the effects of ball lightning. Russians and Germans are in the lead. The most simple and intelligible things can be done right at home, using a microwave oven and a box of matches (if you want the lightning to explode with the release of heat, in addition to matches, you also need a file and a gas pipe with gas in it).

It turns out that if you put a just extinguished match in the microwave and turn on the oven, the head will blaze with a beautiful plasma flame, and luminous balls similar to ball lightning will fly closer to the ceiling of the oven chamber. I’ll say right away that this experiment will most likely lead to a breakdown of the oven, so you shouldn’t run and conduct it right now if you don’t have an extra microwave.

There is a scientific explanation for the phenomenon - in the pores of conductive coal on a burnt match head, many arc discharges are formed, leading to a glow and the appearance of a plasma right in the air. The strong electromagnetic radiation of this plasma, as a rule, leads to the breakdown of the oven and the nearby TV.

A safer, but slightly less accessible experiment is to discharge a high-voltage capacitor into a jar of water. At the end of the discharge, a cloud of luminous low-temperature steam-water plasma of green color is formed above the can. She is cold (does not set fire to a piece of paper)! And it does not live long, about a third of a second ... German scientists say that you can repeat this until you run out of water or electricity to charge the capacitor.

Their Brazilian brethren get a more fireball-like effect by evaporating silicon and then turning the resulting vapor into plasma. Much more difficult and high-temperature, but for that - the balls live longer, they are hot and smell of sulfur!

Of the more or less scientific justifications of what it is, there are about 200 different theories, but no one can sanely explain it. The simplest guesses come down to the fact that these are self-sustaining plasma clots. After all, the effect is still associated with lightning and atmospheric electricity. True, it is not known how and why the plasma is kept in a stable state without visible external replenishment. A similar effect is produced by the evaporation of silicon by an electric arc.

Steam, condensing, enters into an oxidation reaction with oxygen, and such burning clouds can occur when lightning strikes the ground. At the same time, merciless Russian scientists - nanotechnologists from Rosgosnanotech believe that ball lightning is an aerosol of nanobatteries that are constantly short-circuited, except for jokes!

Rabinowitz believes that these are miniature black holes left over from the Big Bang and passing through the Earth's atmosphere. Their mass can be more than 20 tons, and the density is 2000 times higher than gold (and they cost 9000 times more). As a confirmation of this theory, attempts were made to detect traces of radioactive radiation in the places where ball lightning appeared, however, nothing unusual was found.

Quite severe Chelyabinsk residents believe that ball lightning is a spontaneous self-current reaction of thermonuclear fusion on a microscopic scale. And if you take a deep breath, it turns out that this is, in fact, light in its pure form, compressed by clots of air and running along air light guides, without the possibility of escaping from the strong walls of this very compressed air.

And I also like this explanation from the Russian Wikipedia, merciless as nuclear nesting dolls - "These models of ball lightning (heterogeneous plasma under the conditions of AVZ and SVER) with an energy flux density of the primary electron beam, discharge or ionization wave of the order of 1 GW/sq.m at an electron concentration of the primary beam of about 10 billion/cm3 due to the AVZ of the SVER, the Debye radius is determined by the concentration, charge and average velocity of the aerosol, and not by ions and not by electrons, it is unusually small, diffusion and recombination are unusually small, the surface tension coefficient is 0.001..10 J/sq.m., CMM is a warm, long-term non-recombining heterogeneous plasma ball, the product of the lifetime and the volumetric energy density is 0.1..1000 kJ*s/cc. This corresponds to the properties of ball lightning observed in nature."

It is for such pearls that I try to never use it.

Personally, I prefer an explanation independently obtained experimentally by various groups of scientists in the US and Europe. According to them, as a result of the impact of a strong electromagnetic field on the human brain, he has visual hallucinations that almost completely coincide with the description of ball lightning.

Hallucinations are always the same, after irradiation of the brain, a person sees one or more luminous balls flying or moving randomly. These galloons last a few seconds after the impact of the impulse, which coincides with the lifetime of most ball lightning according to the testimony of their witnesses (the rest, apparently, just "flatten" longer). The effect is called "transcarnial magnetic stimulation" and sometimes occurs in patients in tomographs.

If we remember that almost all fireballs occur during a thunderstorm, immediately after a normal lightning discharge, and it is accompanied by a strong electromagnetic impulse, then it is quite likely that a person, being close to the source of such an impulse, could also see fireballs.

What do we conclude from this? Are there fireballs or not? There are as many discussions here as there are about UFOs. It personally seems to me that in the case when there is direct damage to property by ball lightning, this is just a reason to attribute undesirable consequences to mysterious and inexplicable natural phenomena, that is, ordinary fraud. From the series - I did everything, but then a terrible computer virus came and everything was erased, and the computer broke down. Cases of simple observation of harmless balls are the same hallucinations caused by exposure to a strong electromagnetic impulse on the human brain. So, if an incomprehensible kind of luminous ball flies to you during a thunderstorm, do not be alarmed - it may soon fly away. Or wear a tin foil cap 🙂

Ball lightning - what is it

All over the world, scientists have been showing interest in ball lightning for quite a long time. Over a century and a half of their scientific study, dozens of conceivable and unthinkable hypotheses have been put forward to explain the nature of such a phenomenon. Often it is identified with such an anomalous atmospheric phenomenon as a UFO. This is just the case when they try to explain one incomprehensibility to another ... Let's try to touch this mystery of nature and we.

It is not difficult to imagine what horror our distant ancestors could experience when they encountered such an incomprehensible and frightening phenomenon. The first mention of ball lightning in Russian archives is a vivid example of this. 1663 - “a denunciation from the priest Ivanishche” from the village of Novye Yergi came to one of the monasteries, which said: “... fire fell on the ground in many yards, and on the tracks, and in the mansions, like tows of grief, and people ran from it , and he rolled after them, but did not burn anyone, and then rose up into the cloud.

In ancient times, myths and legends represented ball lightning in a variety of guises. More often, she was depicted as monsters with fiery eyes or as guarding the entrance to hell. From time to time he goes out for a walk on the surface of the earth. Meeting with him brings grief, and sometimes Cerberus leaves behind charred remains. The Serpent Gorynych, well known to everyone from fairy tales, is from this series.

On the bank of the Vakhi River (Tajikistan) there is a mysterious high mound made of rounded stones. Scientists say that he appeared at the time. But the local folklore from generation to generation conveys the legend of the fiery underground kingdom and those living there. From time to time they appear at the top of the mound, surrounded by a "black glow" and the smell of sulfur. Describe these demons always in the form of a huge dog with burning eyes.

English folklore is full of stories of "ghostly dogs spewing flames from their mouths."

There is the first documentary evidence of ball lightning since the time of the Roman Empire. Ancient manuscripts describe the events of 106 BC. e.: “Giant red crows appeared over Rome. They carried hot coals in their beaks, which fell down and set fire to houses. Half of Rome was on fire."

There is documentary evidence of this kind of phenomena in medieval France and Portugal. Magicians and alchemists, from Paracelsus to the enigmatic Doctor Thorallba, have sought to gain power over the spirits of fire.

Myths and legends that tell about fire-breathing dragons and similar evil spirits exist in almost all peoples of the world. This cannot be explained by mere ignorance. There were scientists interested in this topic. Large-scale studies were carried out, and the conclusion was quite unambiguous: many myths, fairy tales, legends are quite possibly based on real events. All this looks like evidence of some mysterious natural phenomena. The presence of glow, the ability to penetrate through material objects and explosiveness - why not "tricks" of ball lightning?

Encounters with ball lightning

A group of enthusiasts led by the Moscow electrical engineer S. Martyanov became interested in an unusual phenomenon near Pskov. In a quiet place in the Pskov region. there is the so-called Devil's meadow. In summer and autumn, according to the stories of the local population, there are so many mushrooms in those places that even a scythe. However, old-timers bypass this place, and visitors will definitely be told about a strange black creature with burning eyes and a fiery mouth.

Here is how S. Martyanov described his impressions of visiting the Devil's Meadow: “It was there that a mysterious black ball rolled out of the bushes on me. I was literally stunned: flashes of fire ran across its surface. Nearby was a huge puddle of rainwater. The dark object sparkled and hissed across the puddle. A thick cloud of steam rose into the air, and a loud bang was heard. After that, the ball instantly disappeared, as if it had fallen through the ground. Only withered grass remained on the ground.

S.Martyanov tried to find the key to this natural phenomenon. His research group included the theoretical physicist A. Anokhin. On the next visit to Devil's Meadow, several electrical appliances were taken that are capable of registering powerful electrical discharges. Sensors were placed around the clearing and began to guard. A few days later, the instrument needles flinched and went sharply to the right. In the middle of the clearing, a crimson flame flared up, which soon went out. But suddenly, “something dark gray” appeared from under the ground. The black color of the ball is by no means a curiosity, since scientists have long recorded dark-colored fireballs. Then miracles began.

The ball began to behave like an intelligent being - it went around the entire clearing in a circle, burning sensors there one by one. An expensive video camera and a tripod melted, and "something dark gray" returned to the center of the clearing and was sucked into the ground, as if into blotting paper. The expedition members were still in a state of shock for a long time. The mystery didn't stop. It is known that ball lightning most often occurs during a thunderstorm, but that day the weather was perfect.

A possible clue to this mysterious phenomenon was proposed by A. Anokhin. Scientists have long known the fact that thunderstorms also occur underground. AT different regions Earths constantly exist or unexpectedly, faults of crystalline rocks of the earth's surface arise. During deformation, electrical potentials of high power appear in the crystals and a piezoelectric effect takes place. Probably, underground lightning is knocked out to the surface.

In the western part of Novosibirsk, not far from the Tokhmachevo airport and near the Krasny Prospekt metro station, fiery objects have been observed for several years. They have a diameter of several centimeters to several meters, appear on different height and sometimes burst right out of the ground. Geologists attribute this phenomenon to the fracture of crystalline rocks.

Researchers who study ball lightning often affectionately refer to them as "balls" or "koloboks."

1902 - a curious incident occurred on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. 9-year-old Mihkel Meatlik was walking with his friends along the shore of Lake Kaali. Suddenly, a mysterious creature appeared in front of them - a small gray ball "no more than a span in diameter", which silently rolled along the path. The boys wanted to catch him, but, forcing him to run after him, the "bun" disappeared into the roadside bushes. The search turned up nothing.

The famous Russian writer Maxim Gorky became an eyewitness to an unusual phenomenon. Resting in the Caucasus with A.P. Chekhov and V.M. Vedeneev, he watched as "the ball hit the mountain, tore off a huge rock and burst with a terrible crash."

In the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" dated July 5, 1965, a note "The Fiery Guest" was printed. It contained a description of the behavior of a ball lightning with a diameter of 30 cm, observed in Armenia: “After spinning around the room, the fireball entered the kitchen through the open door, and then flew out the window. Ball lightning hit the ground in the yard and exploded. Fortunately, no one was hurt."

The mysterious properties of ball lightning can also be judged from the case of the Oryol artist V. Lomakin. 1967, July 6 - while working in his workshop, at 13.30 he saw how, right from the wall with a rustle resembling the rustle of book sheets, a creature covered with wool, with two dark brown eyes, very slowly crawls out. The length of his body was about 20 cm, some kind of wings were observed on the sides.

Having flown from the wall a little more than a meter, the creature hit the ruler with which the artist was working and disappeared. On the floor, V. Lomakin saw a ball that looked like a ball of twine. The surprised artist bent down to pick it up and throw it away, but found only a thick cloud of gray. It dissolved in a second.

1977, November 20 - at about 19.30, engineer A. Bashkis with passengers drove along the highway near Palanga in his Volga. They saw how an irregularly shaped ball about 20 cm in size, slowly floating, crossed the highway. The top of the "kolobok" was black, and the edges were red-brown. The car passed over him, and the "creature" turned in the other direction and continued on its way.

1981 - retired colonel A. Bogdanov saw ball lightning over Chistoprudny Boulevard. A dark brown ball with a diameter of 25-30 cm suddenly became hot and exploded, stunning numerous passers-by.

In the city of Mytishchi near Moscow in March 1990, two female students, returning to their hostel, encountered a mysterious dark-purple ball. He slowly floated through the air, half a meter from the ground. Arriving at the hostel, they saw the same ball on the windowsill. Frightened, the girls climbed headlong under the covers, the ball at that time began to decrease in size and change color. When they ventured to look out, there was nothing.

October 9, 1993 - The Youth Newspaper of Karelia also published an article about the mysterious ball. Mikhail Voloshin lived in Petrozavodsk in a private house. For some time now, a small ball with a diameter of 7 to 10 cm began to appear here, it moved absolutely silently and arbitrarily changed direction. He always disappeared suddenly, in the morning.

In the same year, a curious incident happened to M. Barentsev, a resident of Ussuriysk. On the Shlotovsky plateau near the rock, he saw small clots of spherical fog rolling along the ground. One of them suddenly began to grow, clawed paws and a mouth with bared teeth appeared from it. A sharp headache pierced M. Barentsev, and the ball took its original size and disappeared.

In the summer of the same year, engineers from St. Petersburg had a chance to encounter ball lightning. Husband and wife rested in a tent on the bank of the river. Vuoksa. A thunderstorm was approaching, and the couple decided to bring some things into the tent. And then in the middle of the trees they noticed a flying ball, behind which stretched a thick foggy plume. The object moved towards the river parallel to the bank. Then it turned out that their transistor receiver was out of order, and my husband's electronic watch was broken.

Western sources of information contain earlier evidence of this mysterious phenomenon. During a thunderstorm on April 14–15, 1718, three fireballs with a diameter of more than one meter were seen in Couegnon, France. In 1720, during a thunderstorm, a strange ball fell to the ground in a small French town. Bouncing off, he hit a stone tower and destroyed it. In 1845, in Paris, on the Rue Saint-Jacques, ball lightning entered the room of a worker through a fireplace. A gray lump randomly moved around the room, after rising up the chimney it exploded.

In the newspaper "Daily Mail" (England) dated November 5, 1936, an article about ball lightning was published. An eyewitness reported seeing a hot ball descend from the sky. He hit the house, damaging the telephone wires. A wooden window frame caught fire, and the “ball” disappeared into a barrel of water, which then began to boil.

The crew of the US Air Force KS-97 cargo plane experienced several unpleasant minutes. 1960 - at an altitude of almost 6 km, an uninvited guest appeared on board. A luminous round object about a meter in size entered the cockpit of the aircraft. He flew between the crew members and just as suddenly disappeared.

Tragic Encounters with Ball Lightning

However, a meeting with ball lightning is far from always without consequences for a person.

Lomonosov's assistant, the Russian scientist G.V.

A tragic incident occurred in Tucumari, New Mexico, in 1953. Ball lightning flew into a large tank of water and exploded there. As a result, several houses were destroyed and four people died.

July 7, 1977 - two large luminous balls descended on the territory of an open cinema in Fujian province (China). Two teenagers were killed, and about 200 more people were injured in the resulting panic.

A group of Soviet climbers high in the Caucasus mountains was attacked by ball lightning. 1978, August 17 - a bright yellow luminous ball flew into the tent to the sleeping athletes. Moving around the camp, he burned sleeping bags and attacked people. The wounds were much more serious than simple burns. One climber died, the rest were seriously injured. The results of the examination of athletes baffled doctors. The muscle tissue of the victims was burned to the very bones, as if a welding machine had worked here.

1980 - in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), the appearance of a luminous ball also led to a tragedy. Several houses burned down, the ball pursued people, setting fire to their clothes.

The "Literaturnaya Gazeta" for December 21, 1983 describes an explosion of ball lightning. Local people worked in the mountain valley. A huge cloud appeared in the sky, as if glowing from within. It began to rain, and people rushed to the mulberry tree to take cover. But there was already ball lightning. She literally scattered people in different sides many lost consciousness. As a result, three people died.

What is ball lightning?

The list of tragic consequences from encounters with ball lightning can be continued, but let's better try to figure it out - what kind of ball lightning is this? Scientists have calculated that about 44,000 thunderstorms rage on Earth every day, up to 100 lightning strikes the earth every second. But these are, as a rule, ordinary linear lightning, the mechanism of which is well studied by specialists. Ordinary lightning is a type of electrical discharge that is formed by high voltage between different parts of the cloud or between the cloud and the ground. Rapid heating of the ionized gas causes it to expand - this is sound wave i.e. thunder.

But no one has yet been able to give an unambiguous explanation of what ball lightning is. According to the researchers, the efforts of specialists will be required in different areas sciences from quantum physics and ending with inorganic chemistry. At the same time, there are clear signs by which ball lightning can be separated from others. natural phenomena. Description of various theoretical models of ball lightning, laboratory studies, thousands of photographs enable scientists to determine many of the parameters and characteristic properties of such a phenomenon.

1. First, why are they called ball? The vast majority of eyewitnesses say they saw the ball. However, there are other forms - a mushroom, a pear, a drop, a torus, a lens, or simply shapeless foggy clots.

2. The color scheme is very diverse - lightning can be yellow, orange, red, white, bluish, green, from gray to black. By the way, there is a lot of documentary evidence that it can be of a non-uniform color or is able to change it.

3. The most typical size of ball lightning is from 10 to 20 cm. Less common are sizes from 3 to 10 cm and from 20 to 35 cm.

4. The opinions of experts differ on the account of temperature. The most commonly mentioned is 100-1000 degrees Celsius. Lightning can melt glass by flying through a window.

5. Energy density is the amount of energy per unit volume. Ball lightning has a record. Those catastrophic consequences that we sometimes observe make it impossible to doubt this.

6. Intensity and glow time vary from a few seconds to several minutes. Ball lightning can shine like a normal 100 watt light bulb, but sometimes it can be blinding.

7. It is widely believed that ball lightning floats, slowly rotating, at a speed of 2-10 m/sec. It will not be difficult for her to catch up with a running person.

8. As a rule, lightning ends its visits with an explosion, sometimes it breaks into several parts or simply fades away.

9. The most difficult thing to explain is the behavior of ball lightning. She is not stopped by obstacles, she loves to enter houses through windows, vents and other openings. There is evidence of its passage through the walls of houses, trees and stones.

It is noticed that she is not indifferent to sockets, switches, contacts. Once in water, ball lightning can quickly bring it to a boil. Moreover, the balls burn through and melt everything that can meet on their way. But there were also completely amazing cases when lightning burned linen, leaving outerwear. She shaved off all the hair from a person, pulled out metal objects from her hands. The man himself was thrown over long distances.

There was a case when ball lightning melted all the coins in the wallet into a common ingot without damaging the paper money. Being an intense source of electromagnetic microwave radiation, it is able to disable telephones, televisions, radios and other devices where there are coils and transformers. Sometimes he does unique "tricks" - when meeting with ball lightning, rings disappeared from people's fingers. Low-frequency radiation has a bad effect on the human psyche, hallucinations, headaches, and a feeling of fear appear. We spoke about tragic encounters with ball lightning above.

The occurrence of ball lightning

Consider the most characteristic hypotheses for the emergence of this mysterious natural phenomenon. True, it should immediately be noted that the stumbling block is the lack of a reliable method for the reproducible production of ball lightning under controlled laboratory conditions. Experiments do not give unambiguous results. Researchers studying this “something” cannot claim that they are studying ball lightning itself.

The most common were chemical models, now they have been replaced by "plasma theories", according to which the energy of tectonic stresses of the earth's interior can be released not only through earthquakes, but also in the form of electrical discharges, electromagnetic radiation, linear and ball lightning, as well as plasmoids - clots concentrated energy. The German physicist A. Meissner is an adherent of the theory, according to which ball lightning is a ball of hot plasma, revolving furiously due to some initial impulse given to the clot by linear lightning.

The famous Soviet electrical engineer G. Babat during the Great Patriotic War conducted experiments on high-frequency currents and unexpectedly reproduced ball lightning. Thus, another hypothesis was born. Its essence lies in the fact that the centripetal forces, seeking to break the fireball into pieces, are opposed by the forces of attraction between the stratified charges that appear at a high speed of rotation. But even this hypothesis is not able to explain the duration of the existence of ball lightning and its tremendous energy.

Academician P. Kapitsa did not remain aloof from this problem either. He believes that ball lightning is a three-dimensional oscillatory circuit. Lightning picks up radio waves that occur during lightning discharges, that is, it receives energy from the side.

Another supporter of the chemical model of ball lightning was Francois Arago. He believed that when an ordinary linear lightning is discharged, burning balls of gas or some explosive mixtures appear.

The well-known Soviet theoretical physicist Ya. Frenkel believed that ball lightning is a formation caused by the creation of gaseous chemically active substances during an ordinary lightning strike. They burn in the presence of catalysts in the form of smoke and dust particles. But science does not know substances with such a colossal calorific value.

Employee of the Research Institute of Mechanics of the Moscow state university B. Parfenov believes that ball lightning is a toroidal current sheath and an annular magnetic field. When they interact, air is pumped out of the internal cavity of the ball. If electromagnetic forces tend to break the ball, then air pressure, on the contrary, tries to crush it. If these forces are balanced, then ball lightning will become stable.

From purely scientific hypotheses, which remain so, let's move on to more accessible, and sometimes naive versions.

A supporter of a rather original assumption about the occurrence of ball lightning is the researcher of anomalous phenomena Vincent X. Gaddis. He believes that, on Earth, for a long time, in parallel with the protein form of life, there is another one. The nature of this life (let's call it elementals) is similar to the nature of fireballs. Fire elementals are creatures of alien origin, and their behavior speaks of a certain intelligence. If desired, they can take a variety of forms.

Physicochemist from Maryland David Turner devoted several years to the study of ball lightning. He suggested that such supernatural phenomena, like and, are associated with ball lightning. These mysteries are based on similar electrical and chemical processes. But in laboratory conditions, this assumption has not yet been confirmed.

Attempts have long been made to link the UFO phenomenon to ball lightning. However, all of them turned out to be untenable - the sizes, duration of existence, forms and energy saturation of these two phenomena are too different.

There are supporters of even more original versions of the origin of ball lightning. In their opinion, they are just ... an optical illusion. Its essence lies in the fact that with a strong flash of linear lightning, due to photochemical processes, an imprint in the form of a spot remains on the retina of the human eye. Vision can last for 2-10 seconds. The failure of this hypothesis is refuted by hundreds of real photographs of ball lightning.

We have considered only some hypotheses and theories concerning such a mysterious phenomenon as ball lightning. You can accept or not accept them, agree with them or reject them, but none of them has yet been able to fully explain the mystery of strange "koloboks", and therefore tell a person how he should behave when he encounters this natural phenomenon.

Ball lightning. This mysterious phenomenon of nature is still very little studied. There are many cases when this clot of crushing energy enters our homes. It penetrates the room through the slightest cracks, chimneys and even through smooth glass. Ball lightning is a fleeting phenomenon, but sometimes it can be observed for 20 seconds.

Ball lightning is considered a special type of lightning, which is a luminous fireball floating through the air (sometimes it looks like a mushroom, drop or pear).

Getting into the apartment, ball lightning behaves differently: it either goes out, or "splashes" with a crash. Its sizes vary. The most common lightning is about 15 cm in size. But there are times when it reaches 1 meter or more in diameter. In contact with a person, in general, the matter ends tragically. But in rare cases this does not happen. Not so long ago, such a contact happened in China: surprisingly, having hit the same person 2 times, she did not kill him (the incident was shown on TV).

A case of such a meeting with ball lightning is described: in Zimbabwe (Africa), a young woman escaped with such contact with only the loss of her dress and hairstyle. In Pyatigorsk, a roofing worker burned his hands while trying to brush off a small ball that seemed to be hovering over him. I had to be treated for a long time, because such burns do not heal for a long time. But there are many more cases that end tragically. In the summer there was a case when a still not old man was killed, who was grazing public cattle in the pasture. Ball lightning destroyed him along with his horse.

There have been instances where aircraft encounter these fireballs. But the death of the aircraft or the crew has not yet been recorded (only minor damage to the skin was noted).

What does ball lightning look like?

Ball lightnings come in different shapes: round, oval, conical, etc. The color of lightning also has a full range of colors. There are red with different shades, green, orange, white. Some types of lightning have a luminous "tail". What is this natural phenomenon? Scientists say that ball lightning is a clot of plasma, the temperature of which can be 30,000,000 degrees. This is higher than the solar temperature at its center.

Why does this happen, what is its nature of occurrence. Observations of the appearance of these "balls" from nowhere were noted - on a sunny clear day, mysterious orange balls moved close to the surface, in a place where there were no high-voltage wires and other types of energy sources. Maybe they arise deep in the bowels of our planet, maybe in its faults. In general, this mysterious phenomenon has not yet been studied by anyone. Our scientists know more about the origin of stars than about what goes on under their noses from age to age.

Types of ball lightning

Based on eyewitness accounts, two main types of ball lightning are distinguished:

1. The first is a red fireball descending from a cloud. When such a heavenly gift touches some object on earth, such as a tree, it explodes. Interesting: ball lightning can be the size of a soccer ball, it can hiss and buzz menacingly.
2. Another type of ball lightning travels along the earth's surface for a long time and glows with a bright white light. The ball is attracted to good conductors of electricity and can touch anything - the ground, a power line, or a person.

Time of existence of ball lightning

Ball lightning exists from a few seconds to several minutes. Why is it so?

One theory claims that the ball is a small copy of a thundercloud. Here's how it might happen. The smallest dust particles are constantly in the air. Lightning can impart an electrical charge to dust particles in a certain area of ​​the air. Some dust particles are positively charged, others are negatively charged. In a further light presentation lasting up to many seconds, millions of small lightnings connect oppositely charged dust particles, creating in the air the image of a sparkling fireball - ball lightning.

There are more than 400 hypotheses explaining its occurrence.

They always appear suddenly. Most of the scientists involved in their study have never seen the subject of research with their own eyes. Experts have been arguing for centuries, but have never reproduced this phenomenon in the lab. Nevertheless, no one puts it on a par with a UFO, Chupacabra or poltergeist. It's about ball lightning.

Scientists propose to concentrate efforts to search for a signal from extraterrestrial civilizations in the transit zone Scientists from Germany insist on narrowing the search zone for potentially habitable planets. Rene Hellery and Ralph Pudritz spoke about this in an interview with Astrobiology magazine. According to them, there are currently several methods to search for exoplanets - planets that orbit other stars. The main one is the so-called transit method, the essence of which is that astronomers observe a decrease in the brightness of a star when a planet passes between an observer from the Earth and a star.

DOSSIER ON THE HELL BALL

As a rule, the appearance of ball lightning is associated with severe thunderstorms. The overwhelming majority of eyewitnesses describe the object as a ball with a volume of about 1 cubic meter. dm. However, if we analyze the testimonies of aircraft pilots, they often mention giant balls. Sometimes eyewitnesses describe a ribbon-like "tail" or even several "tentacles". The surface of the object most often glows uniformly, sometimes pulsing, but there are rare observations of dark ball lightning. Rarely, bright rays are mentioned erupting from the inside of the ball. The color of the glow of the surface is very different. Also, it can change over time.

Meeting with this mysterious phenomenon is very dangerous: many cases of burns and deaths from contact with ball lightning have been recorded.

VERSIONS: GAS DISCHARGE AND PLASMA BLOCK

Attempts to unravel the phenomenon have been made for a long time.

Back in the 18th century the outstanding French scientist Dominique Francois Arago published the first, very detailed work on ball lightning. In it, Arago summarized about 30 observations and thus laid the foundation for the scientific study of the phenomenon.

Of the hundreds of hypotheses, until recently, two seemed the most probable.

GAS DISCHARGE. In 1955, Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa presented a report "On the nature of ball lightning". In that work, he tries to explain the very birth of ball lightning, and many of its unusual features the occurrence of short-wave electromagnetic oscillations between thunderclouds and the earth's surface. The scientist believed that ball lightning is a gas discharge moving along the lines of force of a standing electromagnetic
waves between clouds and earth. It does not sound very clear, but we are dealing with a very complex physical phenomenon. However, even such a genius as Kapitsa could not explain the nature of the short-wave oscillations that provoke the appearance of the "hellish ball". The assumption of the scientist formed the basis of a whole direction, which continues to develop to this day.

PLASMA CLOCK. According to the outstanding scientist Igor Stakhanov (he was called "a physicist who knows everything about ball lightning"), we are dealing with a bunch of ions. Stakhanov's theory agreed well with eyewitness accounts and explained both the shape of lightning and its ability to penetrate through holes, reassuming its original form. However, experiments to create a man-made bunch of ions were unsuccessful.

ANTIMATTER. The above hypotheses are quite working, and research is ongoing on their basis. However, it is worth giving examples of a more daring flight of thought. Thus, the American astronaut Jeffrey Shears Ashby suggested that ball lightning is born during the annihilation (mutual destruction with the release of a huge amount of energy) of antimatter particles that enter the atmosphere from space.

CREATE LIGHTNING

To create ball lightning in the laboratory is an old and not yet fully realized dream of many scientists.

EXPERIENCES OF TESLA. The first attempts in this direction at the beginning of the 20th century were made by the brilliant Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately, there are no reliable descriptions of either the experiments themselves or the results obtained. In his working notes there is information that under certain conditions he managed to "ignite" a gas discharge, which looked like a luminous spherical ball. Tesla allegedly could hold these mysterious balls in his hands and even throw them around. However, Tesla's activity has always been shrouded in an eagle of mystery and riddles. So it is not possible to understand where the truth and fiction are in the story of hand-held fireballs.

WHITE CLOTS. In 2013, the US Air Force Academy (Colorado) managed to create bright balls by exposing a special solution to powerful electrical discharges. Strange objects were able to exist for almost half a second. The scientists cautiously chose to call them plasmoids rather than fireballs. But they expect that the experiment will bring them closer to the solution.

Plasmoid. The bright white ball existed for only half a second.

UNEXPECTED EXPLANATION

At the end of the XX century. A new method of diagnosis and treatment has appeared - transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Its essence is that by exposing a part of the brain to a focused strong magnetic field, one can force nerve cells(neurons) react as if they received a signal through nervous system.

So you can cause hallucinations in the form of fiery disks. By shifting the point of influence on the brain, the disk can be made to move (as perceived by the subject). Austrian scientists Joseph Peer and Alexander Kendl suggested that during thunderstorms, powerful magnetic fields can arise for a moment, which provoke such visions. Yes, this is a unique combination of circumstances, but they rarely see ball lightning. Scientists note that there are more chances if a person is in a building, an airplane (statistics confirm this). The hypothesis can only explain part of the observations: encounters with lightning that ended in burns and deaths remain unsolved.

FIVE BRIGHT CASES

Messages about meetings with fireballs come constantly. In Ukraine, one of the latest took place last summer: such a "hellish ball" flew into the premises of the Dibrovsky village council in the Kirovohrad region. He did not touch people, but all the office equipment burned down. In science and popular science literature, a certain set of the most famous collisions of man and ball lightning has formed.

1638. During an autumn thunderstorm in the village of Widecombe Moor in England, a ball with a diameter of more than 2 m flew into the church. According to eyewitnesses, lightning broke pews, smashed windows and filled the church with sulfur-scented smoke. In the process, four people died. The “guilty ones” were soon found - they were declared two peasants who allowed themselves to be thrown into cards during a sermon.

1753. Georg Richman, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, conducts research on atmospheric electricity. Suddenly, a bluish-orange orb appears and hits the scientist in the face with a bang. The scientist is killed, his assistant is stunned. A small crimson spot was found on Richman's forehead, his camisole was burned, and his shoes were torn. The story is familiar to everyone who studied in the Soviet era: not a single physics textbook of that time could do without a description of Richmann's death.

1944. In Uppsala (Sweden), ball lightning passed through a window pane (a hole about 5 cm in diameter was left at the penetration site). The phenomenon was observed not only by people who were on the spot: the system for tracking lightning discharges of the local university also worked.

1978. A group of Soviet climbers stopped for the night in the mountains. A bright yellow ball the size of a tennis ball suddenly appeared in the tightly buttoned tent. He, crackling, chaotically moved in space. One climber died from touching the ball. The rest received multiple burns. The case became known after publication in the journal "Technology - Youth". Now, not a single forum of UFO fans, the Dyatlov Pass, etc., can do without mentioning that story.

2012. Incredible luck: in Tibet, ball lightning falls into the field of view of spectrometers, with which Chinese scientists studied ordinary lightning. The devices managed to fix the glow with a length of 1.64 seconds. and get detailed spectra. Unlike the spectrum of ordinary lightning (nitrogen lines are present there), the spectrum of ball lightning contains many lines of iron, silicon and calcium - the main chemical elements of the soil. Some of the theories of the origin of ball lightning have received weighty arguments in their favor.

Mystery. This is how they depicted a meeting with ball lightning in the 19th century.