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Is Ball Lightning Real?

February 5, 2007 at 5:12 am imagery 5 comments

Ball lightning is as mysterious as Big Foot and as controversial as UFO’s. No scientist has ever been able to conclusively prove its existence while at the same time no scientist has been able to prove it doesn’t exist either. All we have are a lot of sketches and eyewitness accounts which hold no weight in the scientific community, or with me. Especially when the event only lasts a few seconds, the whiteness was not prepared for what they were about to see and the subject is usually startled at the perceived event. So where does that leave us? Is ball lightning real or is it just a myth?

That may be a difficult question to answer because we have absolutely no scientific evidence to prove it exists. We do have a lot of theories that claim it could exist, but none have been able to recreate the elusive phenomenon in a scientifically controlled environment. As I said before, there are lots of sketches and eyewitness testimony, but that doesn’t hold any weight in the scientific community. So what do people think ball lightning is? Is it really lightning? Is it some subterranean energy that is created by enormous stresses in rocks? Is it a super heated plasma? Is it an after image or a sort of optical illusion? Yes. It is all of these things and more.

Some mistake welding slag, Saint Elmo’s Fire, arcing electricity and rapid oxidation as ball lightning. It’s tough for me to say what ball lightning isn’t when I don’t know what it is. But, if these things are ball lighting then they have been witnessed for years and it wouldn’t be that phenomenal to observe such an event. That being said, those who claim to have seen ball lighting describe it as having some extraordinary capabilities. It hovers or floats slowly in mid air and either rapidly disappears or sometimes explodes with a loud bang. Some even claim it has passed through solid objects only to reappear on the other side. This hardly sounds like a case of mistaken identity. However, if ball lightning does exist it could very well redefine some of the fundamental properties of electricity and magnetism.

However, until I read a scientific paper on the production of ball lightning which has been verified by other independent scientists, I will continue to hold a sort of agnostic opinion on the subject. You could chose to believe it exists, but it would be a leap of faith as I think you will have a hard time (if not impossible) finding scientific evidence to support your belief.

Other Lightning Myths

Can Lightning Strike the Same Place Twice?

August 20, 2005 at 2:31 am imagery 12 comments

A popular myth is that lightning cannot strike the same place twice, but nothing could be further from the truth. Lightning does, can and will strike the same exact place more than once. It doesn’t have a memory, and if an object has been struck once, it is no less likely to be struck a second time. If you don’t believe me, just ask some of the employees at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The shuttle launch pad gets hit time and time again, sometimes more than once in the same storm. How about the Empire State Building in New York city which gets struck by lightning about 25 times each year. Even Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning 7 times!

The truth of it is, lightning is simply trying to balance a charge separation; positive and negative. Very tall objects such as skyscrapers, mountains and radio towers are more likely to be struck because they narrow the gap between the charge separation of the ground below and the oppositely charge cloud above. When the charge builds up enough to overcome the resistance of the air, the opposite charge will rush upwards along the structure more easily than through the air and as a result the gap between the two charges is lessened increasing the chance of a strike.

Ironically, objects that are taller than their surroundings aren’t always the lightning’s first choice. Lightning may miss a 80 foot tree and instead strike the rooftop of a house right next to it. If the tallest objects were always struck then every tree, telephone pole and house on the open prairie would have the unfortunate pleasure of being struck. Lightning rods would always work and predicting where a lightning bolt strikes would be a very simple science. Millions of dollars in damages could be prevented each year and harnessing the power of lightning would be a very simple task.

The fact is, objects closer to the ground play a much smaller role in determining what a lightning bolt is going to strike because lightning doesn’t know what it’s going to make contact with until the last 50 to 100 feet. That is to say, lightning doesn’t know at 50,000 feet that its going to strike your neighbors satellite dish. Lightning zig-zags down to the ground by forming “step-leaders”, re-evaluating at each step where it’s going next. Sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes down, sometimes up. Once the step-leader approaches a grounded object, a “streamer” composed of the opposite charge shoots upwards. One can shoot up from a telephone pole, a tree, a car or all three simultaneously. Whichever streamer connects with the descending step leader first will complete the circuit and trigger a mass rush of electricity creating a lightning bolt. But the taller object might not be the closest target and it might not throw up as tall a streamer. The tallest object may be just a 100 feet further away than a shorter one and the shorter one will get hit because its streamer made contact with the step leader first.

While watching a thunderstorm, you might have noticed lightning sometimes looks like it’s pulsating or flashing several times very quickly. Sometimes all the charge doesn’t dissipate in one flash over. The electric current will pulse down the channel hitting the same place several times in quick succession. In essence, lightning is hitting the same place many times in a row in a very short amount of time.

But just because an object is hit once, doesn’t not make it immune from being struck again. If a storm is in the area, an object has the same probability of being hit a second time.

Other Lightning Myths

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Is Ball Lightning Real?

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