Ball Lightning

Ball lightning is the collective name given to a luminous ball that has been reported anecdotally often in association with natural lightning.
“Continue reading” for more details and photos.

Let me say at the outset that I don’t believe that there is such a thing but that there may be a range of natural phenomena that might be interpreted as such.

It has been described indoors or outdoors or in planes. This a phenomena that has many and varied descriptions but it has never been adequately reproduced in the lab. There are a variety of theories to account for the phenomena. My favoured one would include persistence of vision of a bright spot after a lightning flash combined with the disorientation that is much greater than a flash/bang grenade.

My inspiration came from watching detailed videos of a smoke ring in action demonstrating stable movement, small size and the ability to contain particles within the structure. I figured that this would be a good candidate for a ball lightning carrier. It can be easily generated by a pressure wave in a round structure so could develop in many man made areas.

I was aware that iron particles have a long and stable life once ignited. Witness the long constant intensity glow from molten globules in exploding wire or steel wool experiments. Potentially, combine the two and you might have a reasonable facsimile of ball lightning that is bright and moves fairly slowly.
To investigate this I needed a smoke ring generator a.k.a. vortex generator able to run from a high voltage discharge to simulate lightning.

The left photo shows the steel ignition chamber open. The right photo shows the top section with the aperture of perhaps half the diameter which forms the vortex. I have a discharge chamber with a hole in the top. Current from my cap bank at 4.5 kV for 2 kJ comes in from a heavily supported lead. I have in the shot below used some aluminium foil and some steel wool which will initiate the discharge.

The photo at the top of the page shows the the most interesting result. It shows the big tongue of iron sparks shooting out from the firing chamber. There is a vortex moving slower but still 25 ft/sec (3 frames in 3 feet) and is just over 1 foot in diameter. The vortex is the grey ball of smoke shown by the arrow and moving upwards. It is smoke only and is not luminous. It does not appear to contain any of the iron particles.
Related pages

Lightning simulation