Talk:Ball lightning/Archive 3

Tar Domokos
User Kisdöme (talk | contribs) keeps re-adding info about Tar Domokos without addressing concerns raised. According to his talk - he is Tar Domokos. Regardless, a reference fails the content test without even considering if it is a credible source. Most (or all, I didn't check them all) citations are variations of the same article that are unavailable except at the referenced spots. This seems dubious. I nominate this material for deletion until better and alternate sources for citations are provided and referenced material is actually in reference.Daffydavid (talk) 07:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

About two new external links
There were two links


 * Videos Films, depicting the fireballs (in Russian)
 * Amateur shooting a fireball

which were deleted. One of them was to youtube.com. At the same time, there are other two links to youtube.com
 * A video of a microwave plasma ball experiment
 * CityTV report on lightning striking a car

that do not deleted. What the difference?

Also about link: Videos Films, depicting the fireballs (in Russian). User:Daffydavid supposed that it is Self promotion. It is not so. The Ricky Polser is an author of the Videos Films, and he gave the videos for Perm scientific site. In turn, Perm scientific site add here link for this videos. I do not see reason for deleting of the links. Fedosin (talk) 04:19, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I didn't delete Videos Films, depicting the fireballs (in Russian), a bot did that. I haven't watched the video, but the link doesn't actually point to the video but instead points to a page named after you Fedosin, which in turn has the link on it. The link should go directly to the video not a webpage in Russian. Fix this or it will have to be removed from this section as it is inappropriately labelled.Daffydavid (talk) 05:35, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm removing the links because the video looks like a hundred other supposed ufo/unexplained phenom videos. Beach drifter (talk) 07:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I changed link for that it actually point to the videos. As you can see it is not a ufo, since it is too small for it. It looks like as such unexplained phenomen that is known for all as ball lightning. Fedosin (talk) 14:13, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * For user:Beach drifter. Please explain, what you mean saying: Unnotable, unclear video, coi ? Description of the videos is there at link, so it is not an unnotable videos. I am not agree that it is unclear video. Since the videos were made by infrared camera at night and so it is the best videos for such condition. Please do not delete the link before other users give their opinion on the question. Fedosin (talk) 09:53, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Fedosin, the external links section is not for proposing a hypothesis using weasel language. It is for this reason that I have deleted the extraneous material to bring the links in line with the rest. I think I agree with Beach drifter that the videos are unremarkable. Wikipedia is not for the promotion of every video ever made. Daffydavid (talk) 19:37, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I quite agree with you about limitation of promotion of every video and so on. But the videos in my opinion find new features of ball lightning which are fixed. This are pulsations and rotation of internal structure of ball lightning seen in infrared band. And from the videos we can find new limit of lifetime for ball lightning - almost 6.5 minutes.


 * Of course it is necessary to identificate the data about the videos in the body of article. Only in this case the link will have any value for researchers. May be so:


 * Two videos, video2.avi and lightball.avi, were recorded via an outdoor security infrared camera at Ricky Polser's house in Texas, in the early morning of March 2, 2011. It is supposed that the videos show an example of ball lightning. The two recordings are 3:18 apart because the camera is set for motion detection in a specific range. When the object moved out of range, the recording stopped and restarted when it came back into the detection area. The motion detection is set for only a small area of the total picture. May be this is one object that moved out of range and then came back into the range of motion detection. The object is still visible as it exits at the top of the picture in the second video. There has been nothing similar to this on any recording at the camera before or since. It was 44°F, calm wind, 60% relative humidity, and 26 hours since a thunderstorm passed through the area.
 * This recording was made in total darkness in a rural area by a night vision infrared security camera.


 * After this data must be reference, which is now in external links: Video of Ball Lightning,Lightball Video Two amateur videos of suspected Ball Lightning. The videos also are available in zip-archive, and may be seen with the help of VLC media player.  Fedosin (talk) 06:26, 18 March 2011 (UTC)


 * "But the videos in my opinion find new features of ball lightning which are fixed." Exactly - in your opinion. Where is the verification that these videos are believed by the scientific community to be ball lightning? Richerman (talk) 01:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)


 * For user:Beach drifter. In second time I call you do not delete the external link before other users give their opinion on the question. I can not agree with your reasons. Please explain it here in full before deletion and other actions. According to External links, and in "What can normally be linked', we find:

"3. Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues,[2] amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons."


 * As I noted above Ricky Polser is an author of the Videos Films, and he gave the videos for Perm scientific site. In turn, Perm scientific site add here link for this videos. The videos cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues. So here must be external link.


 * For Richerman and your question: Where is the verification that these videos are believed by the scientific community to be ball lightning? Ricky Polser wrote me: "Through web searches I have found that you are an expert in the field of ball lightning. Please comment this videos". Really I have some works on the problem (see Electron-ionic model of ball lightning), including Patent of the Russian Federation No. 2210195, class 7H05H1/00, G09B23/18, bulletin No. 22, 2003 (Method of production of ball lightning). In the case I beleive that the videos are an exemple of ball lightning. As a result of it the information about the videos was included to page of Perm scientific site about ball lightning. It was very strange for me that first, very shot and simple external link  Videos Films, depicting the fireballs (in Russian) was deleted because User:Daffydavid supposed that it is Self promotion. Of course it is not so since Perm scientific site do not need promotion in Wikipedia.  Fedosin (talk) 07:43, 19 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Fedosin, I did not previously say that the material you added was self promotion, but since you kept saying so, I decided to check your material. In fact it is self promotion and your references all have further self references and or circular references. Even your proposed theory is self referenced and not peer reviewed nor cited by anyone in the 11 years since it was published. As such, this material is inappropriate for Wikipedia. Daffydavid (talk) 10:53, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Please see reference to peer reviewed journals and my papers there:
 * Fedosin S.G., Kim A.S. The Physical Theory of Ball Lightning. Applied Physics (Russian Journal), No. 1, 2001, P. 69 – 87.
 * Fedosin S.G. Kim, A.S.Electron - Ionic model of ball lightning. (2001) Journal of New Energy, 6 (1), pp. 11-18.
 * Here references where the Electron-ionic model of ball lightning was cited in Russian for author (Федосин С.Г.):
 * Николай НОСКОВ. Физическая модель шаровой молнии. НиТ, 2000.
 * Ратис Ю.Л. Шаровая молния и торнадо как вторичные коллективные эффекты при b- распаде короткоживущих изотопов, Самара, Издательство Самарского научного центра Российской Академии Наук, 2006, 230 с.: ил.(ref. N 174)
 * Феномен шаровой молнии, Электронно-ионная модель - Наука и жизнь № 6-7 ’2010.
 * Новая теория шаровых молний.
 * Нурбей ГУЛИА. В поисках "энергетической капсулы". Электрическая капсула.
 * Юрий МАХАНЬКОВ. Условия образования шаровой молнии, НиТ, 2000.
 * Информационные ресурсы
 * Baruzo
 * Шаровая молния
 * Шаровая молния как электромагнитный тор из окиси азота. Виртуальный мир, N 2, 2005.
 * РЕЛЯТИВИСТСКАЯ МОДЕЛЬ ШАРОВОЙ МОЛНИИ, ссылки. Fedosin (talk) 19:01, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Fedosin, You added the material again and provided what you clearly think is justification of this. Unfortunately this material only further damages your position. Despite being published in "peer reviewed" publications in 2001 (one appears to first be printed in 2000), not even once has your work been cited. No citations equals no credibility. Therefore i am removing the material again. Provide proof of citation prior to re-adding this material. Daffydavid (talk) 17:50, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I've respaced the comments per the talk page guidelines for readability. Please thread your posts.  I was asked to comment on my talk page, I will try to review the discussion today or tomorrow and provide an opinion.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 11:12, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

External links should only be in English; foreign language external links are not considered appropriate (NONENGEL). Ball lightning is not an exclusively Russian phenomenon, so links should only be in English. Links to youtube are similarly questionable and generally should be replaced or substituted if possible (WP:YOUTUBE).

Sources do not have to be in English, but it's usually better if they are for verification purposes. All pages should represent a neutral point of view, as demonstrated by the quantity and quality of the sources used to express an idea. If an idea is only expressed in Russian (and in this case are about a decade old with no new research), chances are it does not represent a contemporary, strongly-held, world-wide explanation of an idea with tremendous weight in the scholarly community. That means it should either not appear, or should only have a very brief summary. Though as a fringe topic the bar for sources is lower, that doesn't mean self published sources and webpages are acceptable across the board. If actual peer reviewed sources can replace the citation, the section summarizing the idea should be rewritten using that material. I don't have time to review the sources or material right now, but I will try to do so in the next day or so. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 20:15, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I've witnessed ball lightening firsthand when I as a child, not understanding the significance of it at the time, but understanding the rarity of it enough to remember it fairly vividly. It looked like a regular lightening strike except the end-point was in the sky and it was a circular ball; sort of like a cloud to cloud lightening strike with a big pin-head on it and no second cloud. It lasted for less than a second. It also came from the sky in a falling motion then disappeared mid-way through the sky. The storm it came from was not giving off a lot of lightening; maybe just a couple strikes were noticed beforehand. I do not remember the time of day but I think it was sometime in the evening. It is my theory (as an adult reflecting on the incident) that a meteorite fell through the thundercloud and was struck by lightening. It then vaporized/exploded/melted/whatever midway through decent. I'm disappointed this article does not even mention the word meteorite, because if you google it and ball lightening you can see some people theorize this as the cause. I'm also disappointed this article is quite large and most of it seems to focus on obviously fake mumbo-jumbo that have about as much credibility as any UFO report. To say the size of the ball was "mm" or "meters" in diameter is a farce because the lightening is far away; but to give an estimate it is reasonable to say it was about the diameter of a large meteorite. Perhaps the glow made it appear larger than it was. 05:04, 23 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.119.3.54 (talk)

Cavendish Laboritory, Cambridge
When I lived in Cambridge during the 1980s I remember reports of a ball lighting occurence at the Cavendish Laboratory. Referenced on the web seem weak and contradictory. This article says that Sir Brian Pippard reported seeing Ball lightning saying "It went through a window as a secretary was closing it and passed by without singing her hair.". This other article says "In one such occurrence, Singer reports that staff saw ball lightning, although Brian Pippard, the Head of Department, was skeptical on its reality". This is not something I can justify spending time, but it at least seems worthy of a mention in the article and a summarise what actually was reported by whom. PeterEastern (talk) 08:12, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Opening sentence
There is one editor who insists on calling the phenemenon "hypothetical". However, it has been shown that nothing is hypothetical about ball lightning, since there have been numerous reliable sources showing the existence of the phenemenon whatever it is- whether a misunderstanding of an existing electrical event, or an entirely different event altogether. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.77.103.143 (talk) 07:22, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, if it is an misunderstanding of some sort, or some other event, then this phenom does not exisit, and so using the term "hypothetical" would seem correct, right? The above discussion points out very correctly that there is actually very little solid evidence of what is going on, that it is all very very hypothetical, nothing but guesses. Beach drifter (talk) 02:09, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Hypothetical? With Dr. Igor Alexeff I've published original high voltage DC Ball Lighting experiments in the IEEE Journal. Would somebody who knows WIki please add "Foo Fighters" to the History section of this article? I would rather not have to deal with all the ensuing arguments. 201.193.173.57 (talk) 18:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Nonsensical sentence
In the section Black hole hypothesis there is a sentence that reads

"He and his team found a second event in the peat-bog witness plate from 1982 and are currently trying to geolocate electromagnetic emission consistent with the hypothesis".

Does anyone know what this is supposed to mean? Richerman ''  (talk) 00:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 117, D19107, 7 PP., 2012 doi:10.1029/2012JD017921
It's recommended to revise the wiki page! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.154.147 (talk) 10:41, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Leo Vuyk
In this edit a newly-created IP account added text giving Leo Vuyk credit for originating the hypothesis that ball lightning could be caused by miniature black holes. The ref given was "(in 1992, see patent Espacenet; reactor vessel for the purpose of maintaining, enlarging and making commercial use of a small black hole (or ball lightning))", which leads to to an abstract here. Beyond the parenthetical mention, there is no discussion in the abstract of ball lightning. (The full text is in Danish - not one of my languages.) The patent application, which lapsed on 1994/10/03, states "it is possible to generate a mechanical perpetuum mobile". It sounds to me like Vuyk did not actually go so far as to suggest black holes as a possible explanation for the natural phenomenon (or not) of ball lightning. If his advocate would like to replace such a statement in the article, I would like to first see the passage of the patent were this claim is made. Art Carlson (talk) 14:59, 28 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry for my late reaction to Art Carlson's quest for more clarity on my claims,
 * The translation of the Dutch abstract goes like this:
 * Title of the invention:
 * The invention relates to a reactor vessel for the purpose of maintaining, enlarging and making commercial use of a small black hole (or ball lightning). An important phenomenon associated with so-called miniature black holes is Hawking radiation. This radiation consists, internally, of an outwardly directed flux of electrons and an inwardly directed flux of antiparticles, the positrons.
 * The purpose of the reactor vessel is to exploit the electrical power produced outside the observation horizon of the black hole by conducting the electron flux on the one hand and the positron flux on the other hand in such a way that an inexhaustible D.C. energy can be obtained and utilized. Leo Vuyk Leo Vuyk — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.211.109.180 (talk) 08:58, 29 May 2013 (UTC)


 * My comment was based on the English abstract to which I already gave a link. Your comment does not address the problem. Art Carlson (talk) 09:34, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

YOU WROTE: It sounds to me like Vuyk did not actually go so far as to suggest black holes as a possible explanation for the natural phenomenon (or not) of ball lightning. If his advocate would like to replace such a statement in the article, I would like to first see the passage of the patent were this claim is made. I MADE THE CLAIM BY THE TITLE; "The invention relates to a reactor vessel for the purpose of maintaining, enlarging and making commercial use of a small black hole (or ball lightning). " AND OF COURSE FURTHER IN THE DUTCH TEXT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leo Vuyk (talk • contribs) 17:13, 30 May 2013 (UTC) SEE AT PAGE 6 AND 7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leo Vuyk (talk • contribs) 17:23, 30 May 2013 (UTC)  The words Ball Lightning are in Dutch:  "BOL BLIKSEM" LEO VUYK


 * Leo - your perpetual motion engine is based on the idea of a Kugelblitz, which is not the same phenomenon as is being discussed on this page -- but translates to the same word in English. As a perpetual motion engine, it is also an impossible idea, but you might attempt to suggest it on the ball lightning (astrophysics) page.77.101.47.254 (talk) 15:49, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Toroids etc.
Removed duplicate section and tried to create cites. Kortoso (talk) 23:36, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

A plausible explanation is completely ignored, why?
Er, there's a lot of high-powered physics speculation here, but isn't it entirely possible that "ball lightning" is not a distinct phenomenon at all? So far as I can tell, the evidence consists of a grab-bag of anecdotal reports. It's quite plausible that these are just an assortment of garbled descriptions, misinterpretations, fantasies, hoaxes, and so forth. This article more or less presumes that there is a physical phenomenon called ball lightning and then attempts to speculatively explain it. Isn't that premature? 99.249.153.25 (talk) 02:13, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I might add that the very large number of reports of ball lightning is, paradoxically, evidence against the idea that it is a distinct phenomenon. Video recorders of all kinds are now ubiquitous. If it were that the vast majority of ball lightning reports were not false, we would have a recording of the phenomenon by now. But if we know that the vast majority of the reports are false, then it becomes more plausible that all are false. Although I guess the above wouldn't apply to claims that it is a distinct neurological phenomenon (although I regard those as fairly speculative on their own terms.) 99.249.153.25 (talk) 02:19, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * "Plausible" does not constitute proof one way or the other. It would seem (at least to me) that the article needs to treat the subject as neutrally as possible; whatever the various accounts and so forth mean or do not mean, they do exist, and the article should mention them (and any other theories on the subject) while emphasizing that no scientifically-verifiable evidence or proof of this phenonemon has been forthcoming up to the present time.  That is just my opinion. - Ecjmartin (talk) 02:22, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Right, I'm not suggesting that the article should say there's no such thing as ball lightning; it's just that the article as-is implicitly takes the opposite position -- "there's this bizarre thing called ball lightning, now here's a bunch of wild guesses from physicists about what it might be." I think neutrality would entail a different approach, more like "there's this phrase 'ball lightning' which some people take to refer to a physical phenomenon, and here are some guesses about that alleged phenomenon, but the evidence that it even exists is pretty thin." 99.249.153.25 (talk) 00:20, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Take this from a guy with PhD in Plasma Physics from MIT - this is the only possible explanation. Ball lightning just does not exist. The best argument is that with explosion in number of surveillance and cellphone cameras still no credible video footage has emerged. 67.90.208.98 (talk) 23:08, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've seen one video which shows a ball lightning like phenomenon. It was filmed in Finland in 2010 during a thunderstorm, and appeared to show small white or orange ball dancing around, bobbing in and out of view. According to woman who filmed it, it was maybe 20cm across and seemed to circle a transformer pole. Here is a link to the Finnish newspaper article - unfortunately the video is no longer available, but there is a rather indistinct screen capture. Obviously, I can't completely rule out that it was a fake, though I haven't seen any definite analysis that it was. --Mikoyan21 (talk) 20:33, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like this simple explanation were removed from the article by some possessed people who try to ban any ball lighting nonexistence claims from this article. The article now looks like a good example of a Yellow journalism. sick! We have tons of video footage on youtube. There is even a video how a head of a guy were sucked by an elephant anus. We still have no real documentary of a ball lighting. 91.77.231.190 (talk) 17:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * We do have pictures of ball lightning - the article used to have one, link I posted had another. However, since the phenomenon is by its very nature difficult to photograph, pictures tend to be of poor quality and thus they are open to different interpretations, even if they were real. Hence the 'absence of evidence' -argument cannot be used against ball lightning in same way like with say, Loch Ness monster which should be very much obvious if it really existed. --Mikoyan21 (talk) 21:12, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Does duplicatable always = real, and vice versa? Kortoso (talk) 23:38, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe-in-the-Moor section
Why is this report included here as supporting ball lightning? The only sourced statement just supports a statement about God's wrath. Excepting the timing coincidence with a thunderstorm, as described here the whole incident seems more consistent with a meteor strike than ball lightning. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:22, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi
Uhm, I saw one of these Ball lightning things in my home city of Targu-Mures, in Romania, the whole city saw it, damage was done to steret lighting and stuff like that, it's a city of about 130.000 or something like that, check it out on Wikipedia.

Everybody knows about it, everybody who was in the city when it happened.

I have a good neighbour who's stuff was destroyed by it, completely.

And yeah, I also felt the sulphur like smell, here's what I think it was: it was the demons I still have inside, even right now, and, they were about to leave, if only I would have let them, but, well, you see, I was such a hypocrite that I didn't, because, well, I didn't know what the thing was, and, I felt like I was going to die if they would have left, but, you see, that was a lie. I regretted not letting them go afterwards, and, I thought to myself that I am a complete hypocrite.

I'm just a guest here at this IP address, the owners of this property are not the ones writing this.

And, you know, it was like I even knew all about it, including the fact that some angels told me that it was going to happen right before it happened, and, well, to not masturabte, which, well, I did, out of sin, however, I now realize that that drive was, well, due to the fallen angels I had in me at that time.

I'm not trying to convince anyone about anything, just add this on it as well.

You know what the problem is with these kind of things? They happen to a lot of people, but, because no one ever says anything, it doesn't get recorded anywhere, such as on Wikipedia. If something happens to two people, and they both know it happened, but they never tell anyone else, or, they don't record it somewhere, well, that thing that happened will be forgotten by everyone else around them.

This is why I like Wikipedia so much, it's the world's best research tool so far, because, well, everybody gets to write here and improve what we know, for, well, as far as I can tell, the purpose of doing good. Who would want evil, right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.25.117 (talk) 23:56, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

This could perhaps be added to the historical review.

"It is said that dragons are seen flying in the air which breathe forth shining fire, but this is impossible to my way of thinking, unless there are those vapors which are called "dragons" and about which determination has been made in the book on weather. These have been experienced as glowing, moving, and smoking in the air, and on occasion to fall in a ball into the water, where they shriek like glowing iron. Sometimes when the vapor rises on a wind, they rise again from the water and burst forth and burn plants and everything they touch. Because, then, of this ascent and descent, and the smoke that spreads like a mist at both ends in the shape of wings, the unskilled think this is a flying animal breathing fire." Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus, 13th century. This sounds like a description of ball lightning. The work accepts dragon as a name for a very large nonvenomous reptile occurring in India but is at some pains to discredit the more fabulous accounts.

Martha A. Sherwood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus link for the author — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.155.170.142 (talk) 19:05, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Observation
Ball lightning has been observed and reported in a scientific journal. As of today (16th January 2014) a paper has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. On going to press, part of this article may need to be rewritten! A New Scientist article provides a summary. Other media publications are likely to follow. The research seems to support the experimental work of Jerby in Tel Aviv and the theoretical model proposed by Abrahamson in Canterbury. A link to his research page here due to laziness on not finding secondary sources.

Tomásdearg92 (talk) 23:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The elements may be characteristic of the soil (silicon, calcium, and iron) -- but those elements are among those that one would expect in supernova explosions. Supergiant stars in their death throes produce great quantities of these elements and release them in supernova explosions, and even if they are cooled by traveling hundreds or thousands of years (and light-years) in space, they are still moving fast into the oxygen-rich atmosphere of the Earth. Oxidizable material (uncombined silicon, iron, and especially calcium) striking an oxygen-rich atmosphere at great speeds will of course burn due to frictional drag heating them to high temperatures.

The only oxidizing element that would form in the silicon-producing, calcium-producing, and iron-producing shells of late-stage supergiant stars is sulfur (oxygen would be produced elsewhere -- "higher" in the dying star), but sulfides would themselves burn in those circumstances. Sulfur is about as oxidizable as it is oxidizing. That ball lighting seems to come from nowhere practically begs for an explanation. Uncombined iron is to be found in meteorites, but uncombined silicon and especially calcium are understood to be artificial on Earth.

It's simply conjecture on my part. Experiments will confirm or debunk what I suggest.Pbrower2a (talk) 13:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

François Arago
The article states:

Several theories have been advanced since it was brought into the scientific realm by the English physician and electrical researcher William Snow Harris in 1843, and French Academy scientist François Arago in 1855

François Arago died in 1853. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.25.208.161 (talk) 23:25, 20 January 2014 (UTC)


 * His Meteorological Essays weren't published until 1855. Richerman    (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

book chapter
This is pretty good: V. L. Bychkov (2012), "Unsolved Mystery of Ball Lightning"

From: V. Shevelko and H. Tawara (eds.), Atomic Processes in Basic and Applied Physics, Springer Series on Atomic, Optical, and Plasma Physics 68, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-25569-4 1, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.

I may try to use some stuff from it in the article, but of course anyone wanting to get to it first is welcome to do so.

50.0.121.102 (talk) 23:33, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Item for "Other accounts" section
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. wrote what appears to be an account of ball lightning in his book Two Years Before the Mast. It's some time since I read it, and I don't have the book to hand, but he describes an event at sea when a ball of fire appeared and travelled up or down a mast, moved to another mast and travelled up or down that one. It did not burn the ship and eventually disappeared - possibly with a popping sound - can't remember now. If I find the book I'll add a quote to the article - unless someone else would like to check it out first. There is a slight chance that the passage that I am remembering was not in Two Years Before the Mast, but in Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle - but it's definitely in one or the other. In that book, Darwin says he found glass rods buried vertically in a South American beach, and concluded that lightning rods shooting through the sand had melted the silica and created those rods - so he had an interest in that kind of phenomenon. Sorry I read both books in the 1970s, hence the vagueness. --Storye book (talk) 10:02, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The lightning on the mast sounds like St. Elmo's fire and in fact that article refers to Two Years Before the Mast. The glass rods on the beach were probably fulgurites. 50.0.121.102 (talk) 18:55, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting - thank you for this.--Storye book (talk) 12:17, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Addition of infobox
I have just reverted this edit which was the addition of an infobox with an image. The reasons for reverting the edit are:


 * The image doesn't look like the descriptions given of ball lighting and has no verification as such by a reliable source. I hadn't seen this image in the article before - should it be there at all?
 * The description of how the phenomenon occurs is presented as fact but is just one proposed theory.
 * The phenomenon coming from cumulonimbus is not mentioned anywhere in the article.

In short, I don't think that much of the information presented is correct. Richerman   (talk) 17:37, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I see User:Thelogoontherun has reverted my revert with the summary 'Look here'. The discussion referred to is not particularly relevant as it's about keeping the Weather type infobox with a suggestion it could be used in this article. I have no objections to the infobox itself being used, but I don't believe the information in it is correct as it oversimplifies the phenomenon. The cycle is WP:Bold, revert, discuss - I would be grateful if you would come here to discuss the points I've made rather than edit warring. Richerman    (talk) 00:23, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your words. The image has been on this page before and I moved it to the Infobox. And it is true indeed that they come from a cumulonimbus cloud because this is due to a thunderstorm. This discussion was so that these weather articles could look nicer. Thank you for your time. P.S. If you find information that doesn't seem correct, feel free to edit it! Thelogoontherun (talk) 00:39, 17 September 2015 (UTC)Thelogoontherun


 * I realise that the image was in the article before - although I hadn't seen it. However, the bright part in the image is a number of metres long - much bigger than any other reported sighting. Also, the photographer doesn't give any information about the sighting and I wonder if it's just something that he saw on the photo later, which could have other explanations. I know why cumulonimbus is there but I don't think it really should be, unless it's mentioned in the article - although I've not thought of how to do that yet. I suppose it can just be inferred from the fact that ball lightning only seems to occur during thunderstorms. I've removed the links in the infobox as they were given in the lead already. I've also removed the citations as the information all comes from the main text and is cited there. Richerman    (talk) 09:29, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Supposed image of ball lightning
user:Thelogoontherun insists that the image in the infobox is confirmed as ball lightning (see:this edit with the summary This image has been on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, it is already confirmed). However, as far as I can see it's just an image posted on commons that the poster, who we know nothing about, says is ball lightning and gives very little other information about it. As I pointed out in the previous section (and nothing seems to have changed since then) we just have the poster's word for it. The bright patch could be a photographic artefact, a break in the clouds showing a bright patch of sky, or it could even have been photoshopped. What is it that makes this a confirmed image of ball lightning? Richerman   (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * There is no evidence whatsoever that the image is legitimate. If it is not provided within a week, my plan is to remove the image. Sundayclose (talk) 02:40, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Sightings
1977-1980 Zarate - Buenos Aires big ball lightning more than 10 meters diameter for more than 15 minutes in calm air conditions.(observers: all professional pilots)

recent good vido example:  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.213.78.28 (talk) 05:56, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If you follow the link, it says "This was a really fun couple of nights but it turned out to be a marketing stunt. They used a large quad-copter with really bright LED lights." 193.166.223.5 (talk) 07:18, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikiprojects?
This is listed under "Paranormal" and "Skepticism". Are these warranted? Sounds like we may be confusing "unexplained natural phenomena" with "pseudoscience".
 * Kortoso EMFDYSI (talk) 18:23, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Although ball lightning intrigues both scientists and lay people, there is too little solid agreement on its properties, much less a satisfactory explanation, for it to be considered well established science. It continues to attract advocates of either paranormal or fringe science ideas. Skepticism is warranted.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  19:40, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Medical Doctors Treat Ball Lighting Burned Patients !
Medical sciences treat patients who are touched by such balls - but your language here is surprising !? Written by vatican's agent ? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12792547 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.227.244.217 (talk) 09:27, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:AGF? Isolated anecdotal reports cannot carry much weight. You are welcome to propose improvements here.  jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  15:10, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

"Urban myth"
The article claims that ball lightning was considered an "urban myth" until the 1960s. I don't think that's the right term to use, because according to that article, the term a) wasn't in use until the '60s, and b) refers to "a form of modern folklore consisting of usually fictional stories, often with macabre elements, deeply rooted in local popular culture. These legends can be used for entertainment purposes, as well as for semi-serious explanations for random events such as disappearances and strange objects" - none of which applies to ball lightning. What would be a better term to use? Iapetus (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The cited source http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/ball-lightning.htm doesn't use the term "urban myth", and doesn't very strongly suit the sentence it is used to support ("Until the 1960s, most scientists argued that ball lightning was not a real phenomenon but an urban myth, despite numerous reports from throughout the world"). Keeping the "howstuffworks" source, perhaps change the sentence in the article to "Until the 1960s, most scientists treated reports of ball lighning sceptically, despite numerous reports from throughout the world" ? Ghughesarch (talk) 16:31, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that your rewording is an improvement, and we don't need to repeat the marginal misuse of the term in the source. Reify-tech (talk) 18:51, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

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Cameras are everywhere now
Surveillance cameras are everywhere and many people have smartphones yet we don't have any robust evidence of ball lighting. Surely, there must be some explanation? Alliumnsk (talk) 18:00, 28 June 2018 (UTC) Its a very fleeting phenomenon. The ones seen may be the tip of the iceberg, as many simply go unnoticed or only show up because people are looking for something else.

Shankar Skyrmion
Article below suggests BL comes from an exotic quantum phenomenon, the skyrmion:


 * https://www.livescience.com/61946-ball-lightning-quantum-particle.html

I might eventually get around to adding it but it would be great if someone else got to it first. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 19:55, 3 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Looks interesting. Also a variant of this may be a form of hybrid matter eg a cloud of protons with attached Rydberg state positrons in a skyrmion state. We already know that antimatter is produced in thunderstorms so the potential difference is in the billions of volts. In fact the plasma conduit itself may conduct a stream of positrons down to near Earth and thus explain a lot of the observations yet also account for how the BL can go around solid objects such as window frames. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.3.100.48 (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

psychological event only?
The article suggests that there is a theory that it is only a psychological event, perhaps brought on by the shock of a near lightning strike or by suggestion. Should this view be more clearly stated in the article? PopSci (talk) 22:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The citations will take you in the direction that is needed. What do the experts on topics like this say about Ball lightning? Dunning on Skeptoid is a go-to and I see he isn't quoted in the article. He also lists other citations that can be followed for inclusion. Have a ball ... get it? Sorry Sgerbic (talk) 22:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4192 Sgerbic (talk) 22:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't feel the charge right now. PopSci (talk) 15:16, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Convergence?
Hi, I did actually publish some ideas concerning antimatter suggesting that under certain conditions positronium or a related compound (eg e- x p+) may be a solution to the anomalies documented in thunderstorms which incidentally explains BL.

In this case what actually happens is positrons are formed due to huge electric fields as per basic pair production but due to the extreme conditions highly complex molecules form with properties not normally found in nature thus also explaining the 511 keV spikes observed. It also occurs to me that this can be tested in the laboratory quite simply.

As such the "Navigator" mode is actually a BL that "escapes" from a normally contained process. In fact they may well be invisible most of the time but during decay become visible through a combination of nitrogen and argon air discharge and weak visible ionization. If so then networks like uRADMonitor may be able to correlate such events with observational data.

A few years back I did actually monitor a sudden radiation spike that corresponded with an extreme electrical storm over here. Maybe related? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.3.100.28 (talk) 04:08, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Not science
I think presenting this phenomenon as a scientific fact should be an embarrassment to the authors. "Ball lightning is an unexplained and potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon" unjustifiably accepts the existence of such a thing; only "unexplained " is accurate. No other scientific phenomenon is accepted on the basis of ONE single measurement (section 3) and one which describes the supposed phenomenon which twice contradicts the "characteristics" (section 2). Could you imagine if a zoologist described a species with the amount of uncertainty in the statements of section 2? And that was only photographed a single time (and still inconsistent with those characteristics)? The article is correct when it says that "The term refers to reports.... " and it shouldn't go any further except perhaps to recount those many reports without reaching any conclusions, let alone concluding that they refer to the same thing. This is NOT science. This is not an area of scientific knowledge. All we know is that there is a social phenomenon whereby such reports, similar or dissimilar, are grouped into a term which has no further proven existence. Interferometrist (talk) 21:10, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree with your premise. The article doesn't present the concept as definitive. irrefutable scientific fact. In fact, the lead and other places in the article comment on the skepticism in the scientific community. The article discusses anecdotal reports, which is fine if not presented as fact. This is an encyclopedia not a professional journal in physics, although some professional journals sometimes discuss anecdotal reports. The article discusses what little lab experimentation has been done, but does not make any specific conclusions. In general the article describes what has sometimes been described as "ball lightning" but makes very few conclusions. We don't exclude information in an encyclopedia simply because there is skepticism and few answers in the scientific community. Another example off the top of my head is Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The various conspiracy and fringe theories are described, but they are not presented as scientific facts. Here, ball lightning is described and various speculations are summarized, but there is little if any conclusion of fact. Sundayclose (talk) 00:38, 29 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Alright, thank you for the response. I totally agree with you in regards to how this should be presented, and I'll have another look at the page to see how much that is the case. The sentence I quoted, however, (and from the lede!) clearly violates that by calling it a "phenomenon" rather than a "perception" or "belief", and also by calling it "potentially dangerous." You wouldn't even discuss whether something is dangerous unless you already accepted that it exists. Do you not agree, and would you like to edit that (and other portions violating your/our standards for what should be in such an article)? Interferometrist (talk) 20:31, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree it should be stated as a “presumed phenomenon”, and I have made those changes to the lead. Similar copyedits for NPOV that are based on sources cited can be made to the article body as needed. -LuckyLouie (talk) 20:41, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Can anyone show some solid sources that describe the phenomenon as "presumed phenomenon", "perception", or "belief"? We need to adhere to what is written in the most reliable sources, and reflect how they describe it. I'm not aware the existence of ball lightning is controversial, so this entire discussion is a bit strange.- MrX 🖋 14:00, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * You just made my point for me: none of those are scientific journals. If a fact is presented in a scientific journal then it would also explain (perhaps indirectly) how to repeat the experiment that led to that conclusion. If I wanted to waste your time I would tell you to go looking for such a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. No, there is yet no scientific proof of this, and things that people talk about as being real but fail to meet the, admittedly high, standards set by the scientific method are called "beliefs," "contentions," or "claims." Even calling it a "presumed atmospheric electrical phenomenon" is wrong (I'm changing it). I certainly don't presume it - maybe some do, and in fact as an electrical engineer I can conjecture with high confidence that if anything it certainly is NOT an electrical phenomenon, and I can say that anything that can pass through a closed window into your house is NOT an atmospheric phenomenon. I don't care so much about this article but rather about the reputation of Wikipedia. Interferometrist (talk) 15:04, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * (If you are responding to me you should have typed two colons, not four.)
 * I'm not following you. I didn't claim that there was scientific proof for single cause of all occurrences of ball lighting (although a casual reading of the article and few sources make it clear that there are various scientific theories). What I asserted is that there is little doubt in reliable source that the phenomenon exists. Yes, the atmosphere can in fact penetrate my open window. I can also observe and measure its properties (temperature, pressure, humidity, composition, etc), but that's neither here nor there. - MrX 🖋 15:30, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Here are some other sources worth considering: - MrX 🖋 15:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I certainly support using the highest quality sources available, and most of the Google Scholar links could be cited as reliable sources. I note the majority of these sources do not refer to ball lightning as "unexplained" since most sources put forth explanations (and the article contains a number of these). So while pop culture sources may promote a mysterious (Unsolved! Unexplained!) angle, the encyclopedia would be better served finding a less sensational adjective to describe scientific opinion on the subject. - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:54, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * (Yes sorry about the indentation). Alright, I'm not going to waste any more time on this. Maybe some of you are younger than me and in 50 years you can look back at and see that as science has marched forward in every other field and provided missing explanations for natural phenomena, this is the one subject for which physics still has no physical explanation. And for one very good reason: there never was anything to explain except for people's odd perceptions (which makes it rather unimportant, since if you want to delve into mass psychology why would you study ball lightening which thousands of people have seen rather than some billions of people who with the same amount of evidence believe in ghosts, religion, superstition, ESP etc.). Interferometrist (talk) 23:07, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * If you are a bit well versed with the scientific process, you will find a great many examples of hypothesis without any experimental foundation. Theorems derived purely deductively which are far far beyond human test capability (For example Hawking Radiation, False Vacuum State of the Higgs Field, D-Brane Cosmology, Eternal Inflation,... ). In this case you can go in both directions: You can conclude the possible existence of a phenomena deductively from several theoretical arguments (For example and unmentioned in the article as vacuum solution to Maxwell's equations) and see that it matches a phenomena that we know of - which is ball lightning in this case. Or you can go the inductive route, starting from the observation, ball lightning, and see how it could be explained based on theories of electrodynamics. Claiming that this is the "One subject" for which physics still has no physical explanation is a false statement given the enormous number of poorly understood physical processes. 77.182.46.100 (talk) 19:19, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Question over "atmospheric electrical" in opening sentence
The presence of a cn tag in the opening sentence of a Wiki article looks unprofessional and needs to be cleared up asap. Any concerns over the wording should probably be discussed here. Personally I think it's fine to describe it as an "atmospheric electrical" phenomenon which seems like a reasonable classification given that ball lightning is otherwise unexplained/unproven. Most importantly, ball lightning is included in the Atmospheric electricity template at the bottom of the article; it has therefore been classified as an atmospheric electrical phenomenon for the purposes of the suite so I would suggest that using "atmospheric electrical" phenomenon in opening sentence is fully justified. Rodney Baggins (talk) 09:40, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes you are very right that the CN looks unprofessional being in the lede, and that was my intention: for it to be cleared up by supplying a citation to a RS or by removing the claim as you have done. However you still seem to agree with the previous classification as an "atmospheric electrical phenomenon" which I tagged as unsupported. Actually  I suspect that in 10 years or 50 years or however long it takes for science to come to a consensus, the Wikipedia page will more likely classify ball lightening as a psychological/visual phenomenon. But I'm certainly not advocating that change now because it really isn't known. I'm just asking that if it IS classified in one way or another, there be convincing evidence that it even belongs it that category. I'd be alright if it would say, for instance, "Ball lightning is an alleged atmospheric electrical phenomenon which remains unexplained" or "Ball lightning describes unexplained sightings which some proponents have describe as an atmospheric electrical phenomenon in light of its frequent association with thunderstorms." But to go further there would need to be harder evidence that could be cited, and in this case any such citation may well be challenged due to lack of acceptance within the scientific community.


 * And if it is a member of Template:Atmospheric electricity then that either means the template can apply to claims of atmospheric electrical phenomenon, or if not then that template is inappropriate. But that's hardly a concern. Rather, my concern is treating "Ball lightening" as an actual phenomenon whereas Wikipedia (properly) describes similar speculation in relation to UFO reports (of which there are many more) as Ufology. Of course ball lightening as described is much more plausible than alien abductions, but as an electrical engineer, I find a sustained electric current within a ball of gas also quite implausible. And if "atmospheric phenomenon" applies, then the reports of ball lightening entering a house and continuing would need to be marked as a distinct (and even more unlikely!) phenomenon. Interferometrist (talk) 17:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Video evidence (lack of)
As much of the world's population now has a camera phone, with video capability, constantly in their hands, it is surprising that there are few if any plausible video captures of ball lightning. I came to this article because YouTube recommended a video on the subject to me. It was glaringly obvious that the phenomenon in the video was not ball lightning (it was most likely a firefly quite close to the camera), so I looked at about 10 others on the subject. Some of them (especially from Russia) were blatant fakes, while others mostly had obvious prosaic explanations (camera glare and other artifacts; car lights shining through the trees; electrical equipment faults, etc). The general tone of the present article is that ball lightning is now widely accepted as a genuine, if not fully understood, phenomenon, but I wonder if there still a more sceptical school of thought in the scientific community?2A00:23C8:7906:1301:9D0C:99BF:B437:2051 (talk) 21:30, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion that the "general tone of the present article is that ball lightning is now widely accepted as a genuine". The article presents several anecdotal reports but no conclusions that ball lightning is genuine. The last sentence in the lead states, "Owing to the lack of reproducible data, the existence of ball lightning as a physical phenomenon remains unproven." Do you mean skepticism that ball lighting actually exists? Since all of the evidence is anecdotal, and most of that goes back decades or centuries, I think it's safe to say that any reputable scientist has considerable skepticism. Your question should be the other way around: Is there a non-skeptical school of thought that ball lightning is a real phenomenon? And I have seen no evidence that there is. Since it is impossible to scientifically prove a negative, I think most scientists are not convinced that it is real, although they can't conclusively say that it is not. Sundayclose (talk) 23:29, 6 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Well you're right, that if you read the text closely it doesn't ever say that ball lightning is definitely known to exist. But user 2A00:23C8:7906:1301:9D0C:99BF:B437:2051 is correct: the general tone of the lede is as if it was actually known to exist as a physical phenomenon, speaking of "The presumption of its existence" rather than some people's belief of its existence. Any wikipedia page on a religion would talk only of its followers' beliefs, rather than talking about scientists' -- albeit unsuccessful -- attempts to understand it, as if there were definitely something (physical) to be understood. Last time I tried to modify the language in the lede to this effect, my edits were reverted.
 * In particular, the lede contains:
 * "Ball lightning is an unexplained phenomenon" rather than an alleged phenomenon.
 * "scientific data on ball lightning remains scarce'" rather than nonexistent, and it even says that ball lightning has "received much attention from scientists" which I am now marking as {dubious} (it has received no more attention from scientists than UFO's or religious miracles, for the same reasons).
 * And again speaking of "The presumption of its existence" implies that it is widely presumed to exist (by scientists) which I don't believe is the case if you were to ask scientists who work in related fields.


 * There may have been various physical (and psychological) reasons leading to the reports cited, but as a distinct physical phenomenon (as implied in the article) not only does "the phenomenon" remain unexplained but it hasn't even been shown that there is something to explain (other than unique individual events/reports). And the one scientific measurement cited (section 3) refers to an event (a 5m ball) that is inconsistent with the "characteristics" cited (section 2) which puts the diameter of ball lightning as between 1 and 100cm (already a huge range -- 1000000:1 in volume! -- in describing a single entity). Interferometrist (talk) 16:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The typical diameter. That doesn't exclude larger or smaller ball lightnings. Also, different ball lightnings are not a single entity, but a single class of entities, and huge size disparities are seen in astronomical objects like stars and living beings like animals, so if ball lightnings can have starkly varying diameters, that's not unheard of in nature. --Florian Blaschke (talk)


 * Oh really? Maybe I should have studied biology. But I can tell you that the mass range of stars doesn't exceed 1000:1 -- for ALL stars (but giants are much less dense). Now, please find me the name of a biological species (millions to choose from!) which has a "typical" volume in between x and 1000000*x, but occasionally (in fact the only time this species was actually photographed!) its volume was 100000000*x. That will open my mind a little bit.Interferometrist (talk)
 * Please read closely. Given that a ball lightning is a class of entities and therefore absolutely need not be analogous to a biological species, your argument is a complete non-starter. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:55, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, just like flying saucers and alien abductions are a "class of entities." They could all be from different planets, so it would be unfair to compare them. Right Interferometrist (talk) 18:10, 7 January 2022 (UTC)