Where do fireballs come from and are they dangerous?

What is ball lightning

This is an extremely rare natural phenomenon in the form of a flying luminous sphere, which is usually associated withBall lightning / Britannica with atmospheric electricity. The real nature of ball lightning is unknown. Most often they appearC. Nunez. Ball lightning: weird, mysterious, perplexing, and deadly / National Geographic in a thunderstorm, but sometimes they are seen in calm weather, both outdoors and indoors.

The diameter of the luminous balls can be from 4-5 centimeters to several meters, although usually these lightnings are not larger basketball ball. The color is different: red, orange and yellow, blue, green or white. Often, the appearance of such an object is accompanied by a hissing sound and a pungent smell of sulfur.

According to eyewitnesses, ball lightning is capable of moving regardless of the strength and direction of the wind, can burn through a window or even a wall and kill a person. True, most often they do not harm: they simply appear for a few seconds and disappear silently or with an explosion.

One of the first mentions of ball lightning refers toJ. B. Rowe. The Two Widecombe Tracts, 1638, giving a Contemporary Account of the great Storm, reprinted with an Introduction by 1638. Then eyewitnesses reported that a large fireball almost destroyed one of the English churches, breaking through the wall. Since then, a lot of evidence has accumulated. So, Mikhail Lomonosov spentM. V. Lomonosov. Letter to I. AND. Shuvalov on July 26, 1753 examination of the body of academician Georg Richman, who died from ball lightning.

However, despite the weighty amount of evidence, scientists have not yet been able to understand where ball lightning comes from and what they are.

How science explains the origin of ball lightning

We are well aware of how ordinary lightning occurs. It happensC. Nunez. Ball lightning: weird, mysterious, perplexing, and deadly / National Geographic due to the collision of different electric charges in the atmosphere. When they meet, a powerful discharge arises.

But with ball lightning there is no such certainty. Both distinguished scientists and marginals from science like pseudosynergetics: there are totalScience White Spots / Popular Mechanics more than 400 hypotheses. So, one of the extravagant explanations says that ball lightning is a product of other worlds. Let's analyze more realistic options.

Plasma

According to one version, ball lightning is bornJ. Abrahamson, J. Dinniss. Ball lightning caused by oxidation of nanoparticle networks from normal lightning strikes on soil / Nature at the moment of an ordinary lightning strike on the ground. As a result, some of the soil elements evaporate with high temperatures. Together with ionized oxygen, they form a mixture that begins to give off heat and turns into a plasma bubble.

According to another similar theory, after lightning strikes the ground,H.-C. Wu. Relativistic ‑ microwave theory of ball lightning / Scientific Reportsmicrowave radiation. It, in turn, heats up the air, which forms a plasma. Scientists even succeededV. Dikhtyar, E. Jerby. Fireball Ejection from a Molten Hot Spot to Air by Localized Microwaves / Physical Review Letters generate fire objects in this way experimentally.

And electric discharges can also leadY. H. Ohtsuki, H. Ofuruton. Plasma fireballs formed by microwave interference in air / Nature to the appearance of glowing balls if the atmosphere contains gases such as propane, ethane or methane.

Air ions on glass

Climatologists from the USA and Australia believe J. J. Lowke, D. Smith, K. E. Nelson et al. Birth of ball lightning / Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheresthat ball lightning can cause atmospheric ions to accumulate on the inner surface of the glass. They create an electric field sufficient for the discharge to occur.

Interaction of electromagnetic waves with the atmosphere

The famous Soviet physicist, Nobel laureate, Pyotr Kapitsa suggestedNS. L. Kapitsa. On the nature of ball lightning / Quantthat ball lightning is provoked by waves of electromagnetic radiation that arise between the clouds and the earth. The amplitude of these oscillations can form a clot of air charged with a current - "breakdown", or a gas discharge.

Hallucinations

According to researchJ. Peer, A. Kendl. Transcranial stimulability of phosphenes by long lightning electromagnetic pulses / Physics Letters A Austrian physicists, the electromagnetic fields appearing in a thunderstorm can affect the human body. For example, on the visual cortex of the head brain. Then a person can observe luminous and moving discs and lines. With this stimulation, the participants in the experiment saw white, gray, or unsaturated flashes of color. Researchers believe that up to half of all observations of ball lightning are electromagnetic hallucinations.

Tectonic effects

It is known that rare flashes of electricity, similar to ball lightning, can appearC. Nunez. Earthquake lights, explained / National Geographic during earthquakes.

Why the nature of ball lightning is still unexplained

Despite the abundance of hypotheses, it has not yet been possible to get closer to solving the mystery of ball lightningK. Than. Ball Lightning May Be All in Your Head / National Geographic. These phenomena are too rare and short-lived, so a unified theory has not appeared, and practically all hypotheses have problems.

For example, ball lightning does not always appear in places where propane, ethane or methane accumulate; experiments with microwave radiation are far from real life. And the glass theory does not explain how fireballs appear outdoors.

In case of hallucinations too, not everything is so smooth. After all, eyewitnesses reportK. Than. Ball Lightning May Be All in Your Head / National Geographic not only about white or gray ball lightning, but also about spheres of different colors. In addition, some observers saw lightning very closely and could describe their internal structure and associated smells and sounds. All this bears little resemblance to simple distant flashes and does not explain why several people could see the balls flying in the same direction.

In 2012, Chinese scientists for the first time succeeded in J. Cen, P. Yuan, S. Xue. Observation of the Optical and Spectral Characteristics of Ball Lightning / Physical Review Letters capture ball lightning traveling about 10 meters on a spectrometer. The device showed that the sphere contains silicon, iron and calcium - elements from local soil. Traces of the same substances have been foundA. V. Dyakov. Ball lightning containing a solid or liquid substance / Nature in fragments supposedly left by ball lightning.

This supports the theory of the plasma nature of the phenomenon, but there is still very little data for unambiguous conclusions. For example, it is not clear how, in this case, ball lightning can appear indoors.

How not to suffer from ball lightning

Today we have too little information to give any specific advice. By and large, one can rely only on the observations of eyewitnesses, and this is very unreliable data. For example, some people recommend avoiding metal objects, as they supposedly attract fireballs.

Only two things can be reliably advised: try to stay away from ball lightning and not panic. Most often, this phenomenon does not cause any damage, therefore, if you notice a glowing ball, it is better not to do anything. And it never hurts to stay home in a thunderstorm. After all regular lightning no less, and perhaps more dangerous.