Explanation of Ball Lightning by Plasma Oscillations

Ball Lightning (BL) is a “plasma bubble” that has very remarkable properties. Its membrane contains a higher density of charged particles than the ambient medium. They are held together by mutually attracting surface charges, generated by collective oscillations of all unbound electrons inside the membrane. Energy losses by collisions and emission of radiation, as well as losses of charged particles by recombination, are compensated by extracting other ones from atmospheric air. Since that occurs in a special rhythmic way, this leads to “parametric amplification” of the oscillations of all unbound electrons in the plasma membrane. Moreover, BL is attracted by higher concentrations of charged particles in atmospheric air. Too much of them leads to explosion and too few to extinction of visible BL. Since the electric charge of BL is oscillating, it is also attracted by metals, water and glass. It can then heat, melt and vaporize these materials without stored energy. BL is even able to pass through window panes in 3 different ways, but that can also be explained.

Formation Mechanism and Characteristics Research of Ball Lightning Based on Vortex Model

The strange characteristics of ball lightning are considered as a question hard to explain. In order to solve the problem, in this paper a complete model of plasma vortex is presented for the ball lightning. By ideal MHD equations, through imposing disturbance to plasma column, the possibility of sausage and kink instability of the lightning channel is analyzed from the perspective the minimum potential energy. The conclusion is that the kink instability （m = 1） is most prone to occur. And when instability occurs, because of the difference of the magnetic field in the twisted area, the magnetic pressure makes the trend further and therefore forming the plasma vortex that may eventually turn into ball lightning if the energy of the vortex is large enough. The existence of the vortex makes ball lightning have a short period of time stability. By the proposed model, the ball lightning features that are hard to understand in the past are explained. In this paper, the reason for bead lightning is also explained from the perspective of the sausage instability.

Ball Lightning as Source of High-Energy Particles When It Enters a Dense Medium

Experiments have been carried out to study the anomalous passage of laboratory-produced ball lightning through solid-state sheets. The passing of the ball lightning within the standard model can be explained by cascading generation of particles at entering of high-energetic protons of the ball lightning into a dense matter. The process of energy conversion of its own poloidal magnetic field of the ball lightning into the kinetic energy of its charged particles occurs in this case. The energy of protons becomes sufficient for the generation of charged pions and their subsequent cascade decay. The decay of pions leads to the appearance of negative and positive muons, as well as muon antineutrino and muon neutrino. This fact is confirmed by the presence of a passed ball lightning and a high potential of variable polarity in the region above the solid-state sheet after the ball lightning passing through it. The dark ball lightning also found was in the experiments. The laboratory ball lightning opens up new perspectives in many areas of research and applications and may have a positive impact on attempts to solve the energy problem based on muon-catalyzed nuclear fusion.

Conditions for Producing and Maintaining Plasma Ball Lightning in the Atmosphere

Based on the results of plasma experiments and research work done by Dawson and Jones, Trubnikov, Endean, and other researchers, three requirements for producing and maintaining plasma ball lightning have been found: 1) rotation of plasma, 2) the density of charged particles nc > 3.15 × 10-10ω2,3) a stable confinement of plasma. In this model, the energy density of ball lightning ranged from 10-2 J / cm3 to 104 J/ cm3, the formation, shape, stability, energy, maintaining processes and other properties of ball lightning were explained reasonably.

Proposal for experimentally observing expectant ball lightning

Ball lightning is widely concerning because it is hard to detect,predict,and reproduce.The dependences of electromagnetic(EM)solitons,which are considered expectant ball lightning,forming at the wavelength of the incident light are investigated with two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.It shows that both the long wavelength microwave and the short wavelength laser are not suitable for producing the observed ball-lightning-like EM solitons.A strong field terahertz wave is proposed to inject and generate EM solitons.This paper can provide some references for researchers studying ball lightning.

Progress in the creation of long-lived atmospheric luminous formations in a pulsed electric discharge with an electrolytic electrode

This work presents an analysis of the research conducted in many countries in recent years on the so-called Gatchina discharge.The findings indicate that the Gatchina discharge exhibits the majority of the characteristics of natural ball lightning,making it the most effective method for reproducing and studying this phenomenon.To a large extent,our new results are based on experiments performed for the first time to visualize dust particles arising in an erosive emission,as well as the formation of vortex flows.These experiments make it possible to explain the ability of the Gatchina discharge to maintain its shape for a long time in the afterglow.