Where does ball lightning form? Plasmoids - glowing balls in the photo

Where does ball lightning come from and how to predict its appearance? How long does she live and what secret dangers can she pose to humans? Is it true that she has a mind of her own? To understand this complex natural phenomenon, little knowledge of physics is needed. Perhaps there is something more hidden here?

What is ball lightning?

It is generally accepted that ball lightning- this is an extremely rare natural phenomenon, which is an electric body in the shape of a ball, capable of moving through the air along a completely unpredictable trajectory and covering enormous distances.

The size of this ball can vary from a few centimeters in diameter to the size of a soccer ball. She doesn’t “live” long, two minutes at most, but even during this time she manages to do many incomprehensible and inexplicable things that defy logical analysis.

Most often, ball lightning is born during a thunderstorm, when the air is filled with electrical particles. By connecting with each other, positively and negatively charged elements create a luminous electric ball. It can be not only white, but also red, yellow, and in rare cases, even black.

Eyewitnesses say that lightning can occur in absolutely clear weather, and the time and place of its appearance cannot be predicted. She can easily fly into an apartment through an open window, fireplace, socket, fan, and even landline telephone.

Lightning strike

An encounter with such an electric ball does not bode well. And if a lightning strike from the sky can be prevented with the help of a lightning rod, then there is no escape from ball lightning. It can pass through solid bodies - walls, stones, and when flying it makes strange sounds - buzzing, hissing. Her actions cannot be predicted, she cannot be escaped, and sometimes she behaves so strangely that some scientists consider her to be an intelligent being.

Observing this phenomenon from the outside is quite safe, but there have been cases when lightning pursued specific people throughout their lives. The most famous case is the story of the British Major Summerford, who was struck by lightning three times in his entire life. This caused serious damage to his health. But even after death, evil fate did not leave him alone - a lightning strike in the cemetery completely destroyed the gravestone of the unfortunate major.

This brings up the thought - isn’t lightning a punishment from above for some bad deeds? History knows of cases when lightning struck notorious sinners who could not be punished by ordinary, earthly justice. Not without reason in Rus' the phrase: "To strike you with thunder!" - sounded like the most terrible curse.

In many ancient cultures, lightning and thunder were considered heavenly signs and expressions of divine wrath, sent to intimidate or punish offenders. Ball lightning called nothing more than “the coming of the devil” or “hellfire.” But do they always cause harm?

There are many cases in history when an encounter with ball lightning brought good luck and even healing from illness. A person who survives a lightning strike is considered righteous, “marked by God,” and promised heaven after death. Often people who experienced such an event discovered new abilities and talents that were not there before.

Consequences of a lightning strike

A lightning strike is dangerous primarily for aircraft, as it can disrupt radio communications, the operation of equipment and lead to an accident. Lightning striking a tree or building leads to fires and severe destruction. If a person gets in her way, the consequences are most often tragic - severe burns or death.

A person who survives a lightning strike is considered lucky. But this is a very dubious happiness - the consequences of a burn from ball lightning for the body will be sad. It happened that after such “luck” people lost their memory, speech, hearing and vision. The nervous system is particularly affected by electric current.

Ball lightning behaves completely differently. Even a lightning rod will not save you from its appearance. It acts selectively: out of several people standing nearby, it can cause severe harm and even kill one, but not another. It can melt coins in a wallet without damaging paper money.

Passing through the human body, ball lightning may not leave marks on the skin, but burn all the insides. Contact with it leaves intricate patterns on the human body - from digital symbols to landscapes of the area where the fatal “meeting” took place.

It is this strange behavior of a glowing electric ball that causes suspicion and speculation among some scientists - what if it is intelligent life? It acts too unpredictably, and often after its appearance, the famous crop circles appeared in open areas. But there is no direct evidence for such hypotheses yet.

How to behave when encountering ball lightning

If you follow safety precautions, then most likely you will not face such a meeting. However, there are general recommendations that we advise you to listen to, even if you consider yourself a lucky person.

1. During a thunderstorm, close windows, doors, furnace openings and other outlets that could receive electrical discharge. The ideal option would be to turn off the electricity.
2. If you see ball lightning flying, do not wave your hands at it or try to film it - there is a high probability that the lightning will be attracted to the metal object in your hands.
3. If lightning appears near you, never try to run away from it! Since ball lightning is lighter than air, the movement from it will create an air vortex that will cause the lightning to follow you. The best thing to do is to sit still and wait to see what happens.
4. Do not try to throw something into the fireball! From this, it can explode, and the consequences are difficult to even predict.
5. During thunderstorms, do not hide under trees or stay inside a vehicle.
6. It is estimated that 86% of people struck by lightning are men. Therefore, if you have excess testosterone in your body, be doubly careful during a thunderstorm.
7. If you are wearing wet clothes, your chances of being struck by lightning increase. Electrical discharges are always attracted to water and moisture.

The person affected by lightning strike, it is necessary to transfer to a warm room, wrap it in a blanket,, if necessary, perform artificial respiration and take it to the hospital as soon as possible.

The facts collected here are given more for a general idea of ​​the nature of ball lightning than for practical application, and are unlikely to ever be useful to you in real life. After all, the chance of seeing such a phenomenon is extremely small. According to statistics, the probability of a person encountering ball lightning is 1 in 600,000.

You can watch about the phenomenon of ball lightning, its research, and eyewitness accounts in this video:

“So, today the topic of our lecture is electrical phenomena in nature.” With these words the next pair of physics began. She didn’t foretell anything interesting, but I was very mistaken. I haven’t heard so many new things for a long time. Then the topic of ball lightning struck me.

It was mentioned in passing, so I decided to deal with it myself. After reading more than one book and many articles on the Internet, this is what I found out. It turns out that until now no one can say exactly where it comes from and what it is. Ball lightning is one of the most mysterious natural phenomena. And this is in our time! Stories about observing ball lightning have been known for two thousand years.

The first mention of it dates back to the 6th century: Bishop Gregory of Tours wrote then about the appearance of a fireball during the consecration ceremony of the chapel. But the first who tried to investigate reports of ball lightning was the Frenchman F. Arago. And this happened only 150 years ago. In his book, he described 30 cases of observing ball lightning. This is not much, and it is quite natural that many physicists of the century before last, including Kelvin and Faraday, believed that this was either an optical illusion or a phenomenon of a non-electrical nature. But since then, the quantity and quality of messages has increased significantly. To date, about 10,000 sightings of ball lightning have been documented.

Ball lightning is a unique and peculiar phenomenon. But scientists still cannot please us with great achievements in the field of research of these objects. How is ball lightning formed? There are a huge number of theories about the origin and “life” of ball lightning. It has not yet been possible to synthesize ball lightning. By summarizing a large amount of evidence, it is possible to create an average “portrait” of ball lightning. Most often it takes the form of a ball, and sometimes a pear, a mushroom or a drop, or something as exotic as a donut or a lens. Its size varies: from a few centimeters to a whole meter. The “lifetime” also extends over a very wide range - from several seconds to tens of minutes. At the end of this phenomenon's existence, an explosion usually occurs. Occasionally, ball lightning may break up into separate parts or simply fade away slowly. It moves at a speed of 0.5-1 meter per second. The variety of colors is simply amazing: from transparent to black, but shades of yellow, orange, blue and red are still in the lead. The color can be uneven, and sometimes ball lightning changes it like a chameleon.

The most difficult thing is to determine the temperature and mass of ball lightning. According to scientists, the temperature can range from 100 to 1000? But at the same time, people who encountered ball lightning at arm's length rarely noticed any heat emanating from them, although, logically, they should have received burns. The same mystery is with mass: no matter what size the lightning is, it weighs no more than 5-7 grams. As for the direction of movement, most often ball lightning moves horizontally, approximately a meter above the ground, and can make chaotic movements along the way. Sometimes she may stop when passing by a house and carefully enter the house. Ball lightning can enter a room not only through an open window or door. Sometimes, it becomes deformed and seeps into narrow cracks or even passes through glass without leaving any traces in it. Interestingly, it can cause radio interference. There are often cases when observed ball lightning carefully flies around objects on its way until it reaches a very specific and only known object.

To summarize all of the above, I would like to say that using the example of ball lightning, a person can once again be convinced of how many secrets and mysteries nature hides within itself, and a person would be a complete fool if he said that he had studied everything completely. Well, at least not at this stage of scientific development. This is not all that I learned about this natural phenomenon, but perhaps everything else can wait until next time!

Atmospheric electricity sometimes manifests itself in a very unique way, and the most impressive of its manifestations should be called electrical discharges - lightning. Every second, 100 lightning flashes in the skies above the Earth! The most typical of them are linear lightning, which looks like a broken line and is called a spark discharge.

Even in ancient times, the so-called St. Elmo's lights, appearing before a thunderstorm on the tops of tower spiers and weather vanes, attracted attention. These lights are similar to linear lightning and are considered a type of electrical discharge in the air, called a glow discharge.

Most often, ball lightning is yellow and white, but other colors are also known. Eyewitnesses describe ball lightning as red, black and blue.

Scientists already know quite a lot about the nature of lightning, although in general both spark and glow discharges remain highly mysterious phenomena. There is no reliable information about how conditions for discharge arise in thunderclouds and what they are.

Ball lightning, which is a completely unique type of electrical discharge, sometimes becomes a mysterious companion of thunderstorms. A hundred years ago, ball lightning was considered the fruit of an excited imagination, believing that the existence of such a phenomenon contradicted the laws of nature.

In appearance, the unusual lightning resembles a large (the size of a soccer ball) bright headlight of a spherical or ovoid shape. During a thunderstorm, this “headlight” hangs motionless or moves in the air.

The behavior of ball lightning is extremely surprising. It is often born when a regular spark discharge strikes power lines or the ground, and sometimes it is born spontaneously in the channel of linear lightning.

Most often, this ball rolls slowly and silently through the air or on the surface of the soil, writing out a confused, chaotic trajectory. The movement can be directed up, down, or in any other direction, including against the wind. The average speed of ball lightning is 1-10 m/s.

When lightning slows down or stops, it causes destruction where it touches surrounding objects. Ball lightning can pass through a metal sheet without burning it, or penetrate glass, melting a small hole in it.

The amazing ball has an inexplicable attraction to human buildings, into which it can penetrate even through small cracks. It was possible to observe more than once how large balls with a diameter of 40 cm leaked (literally!) into small holes reaching only a few millimeters in diameter, and then restored their shape. It happens that a ball sparks from a collision with other objects and even breaks up into several small balls.

We cannot explain the mystery of ball lightning because we do not understand where ordinary lightning comes from. According to the precipitation model, electric discharge occurs due to the separation of charges in the clouds; the upper parts of the clouds become positively charged due to the movement of droplets.

The color of lightning, according to eyewitnesses, can change, but in 60% of cases it is constant and lies in the area of ​​“hot” colors - red, yellow, orange.

Lightning disappears by collapsing or exploding. Usually this clap is not loud, accompanied by a faint crackling sound. Physicists see the cause of the explosion as the cooling of the ball to a certain critical temperature.

In 30% of cases, lightning slowly fades, losing the energy that feeds it. In 15% of cases, the opposite picture is observed. Zones of instability arise inside the substance of the ball, as a result of which the ball breaks up into parts, which go out in the same way as ordinary sparks from a fire. The lifetime of medium-sized balls (30-40 cm) is about 1 minute. Small balls with a diameter of less than 10 cm live 10 seconds or a little longer. Equally short-lived are the occasionally observed giants, reaching 100 cm in diameter.

However, dimensions do not always determine the lifespan of lightning. As calculations by physicists have shown, the density of lightning matter is much more important. The most stable and long-lived balls have a density that is approximately the same as the density of air, that is, 2 mg/cm3.

The reasons for the occurrence of mysterious lightning are unknown, our knowledge about the nature of this phenomenon is still negligible. Only relatively recently, in laboratory conditions, it was possible to obtain electrical discharges that vaguely resemble ball lightning in their properties. Today there are two hypotheses explaining its origin. Both of them address the question of the source of lightning energy.

The convection model explains why several charged layers form in clouds. These layers arise during the continuous mixing of air masses with opposite charges.

The glow of ionized gases in the spherical body of lightning must be supported by a large amount of energy (approximately 100 kJ). It is not clear where the small object receives it from. According to one version, lightning has its own energy reserves inside.

Immediately after its birth, lightning becomes an independent object. The energy reserve of the ball is determined by the amount of energy that was expended by linear lightning to form a bunch of ions that make up the ball.

It was possible to observe more than once how large balls with a diameter of 40 cm leaked (literally!) into small holes reaching only a few millimeters in diameter, and then restored their shape.

Another hypothesis considers ball lightning as an object that depends on the energy transmitted by radio waves generated by powerful discharges of atmospheric electricity. This hypothesis was supported and developed by Academician P.L. Kapitsa. Based on Kapitsa’s theoretical constructs, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences I.P. Stakhanov suggested that the mysterious formation arises from water. When a raindrop hits a lightning channel, its particles undergo complex changes and interact with atmospheric ions, clinging to them.

As a result, a bunch of ions appears, the existence of which can only be maintained by powerful radio waves generated by electric discharges. A change in environmental conditions (primarily temperature) entails “burning out” of the ball’s substance. The ions are freed from adhering water particles and lose their charge, becoming electrically neutral. As a result, the substance of ball lightning falls apart into pieces that people mistake for sparks.

This hypothesis is confirmed by the presence of a shell in lightning. The existence of a shell indicates that the substance inside the ball is in a special phase, that is, a specific state of aggregation.

According to experts, in many cases of UFO sightings, the phenomenon of ball lightning took place. Indeed, in its appearance and “behavior” it strongly resembles a small UFO: it glows, moves quickly, and can fly against the wind.

A hot bunch of gas ions represents the plasma state of the substance. Consequently, ball lightning would be more accurately considered as a plasma discharge in an electromagnetic field.

In 1991, Japanese physicists I. Otsuki and H. Ofuruto, using a powerful vacuum generator of electromagnetic waves - a magnetron, were able to cause the appearance of such plasma discharges in the laboratory.

A characteristic feature of ball lightning is the presence of a clearly distinguishable surface that separates the substance of the object from the substance of its environment. The exact chemical composition of lightning is unknown to scientists, but most likely it is ions of unstable compounds of nitrogen and oxygen. At the moment of explosion, the ions disintegrate into their constituent elements.

Some of the artificially produced discharges resembled real ball lightning in appearance. These blobs of plasma changed colors from white to red, blue and orange, and also moved slowly in the air while receiving energy from the magnetron. The success of the experiments suggests that research into the phenomenon is moving in the right direction. Apparently, the main mysteries of ball lightning will be resolved in the very near future.

There are more than 400 hypotheses explaining its occurrence

They always appear suddenly. Most scientists involved in their study have never seen the subject of their research with their own eyes. Experts have been arguing for centuries, but have never reproduced this phenomenon in the laboratory. However, no one puts him on a par with a UFO, Chupacabra or poltergeist. We are talking about ball lightning.

DOSSIER ON THE HELL BALL

As a rule, the appearance of ball lightning is associated with strong thunderstorms. The overwhelming number of eyewitnesses describe the object as a ball with a volume of about 1 cubic meter. dm. However, if you analyze the testimonies of airplane pilots, they often mention giant balls. Sometimes eyewitnesses describe a ribbon-like “tail” or even several “tentacles”. The surface of the object most often glows evenly, sometimes pulsates, but there are rare observations of dark ball lightning. Occasionally, bright rays are mentioned escaping from the inside of the ball. The color of the surface glow can be very different. It can also change over time.

An encounter with this mysterious phenomenon is very dangerous: many cases of burns and deaths from contact with ball lightning have been recorded.

VERSIONS: GAS DISCHARGE AND PLASMA CLUTCH

Attempts to unravel the phenomenon have been made for a long time.

Back in the 18th century. The outstanding French scientist Dominique François Arago published the first, very detailed work on ball lightning. In it, Arago summarized about 30 observations and thus laid the foundation for the scientific study of the phenomenon.

Of the hundreds of hypotheses, until recently, two looked most likely.

GAS DISCHARGE. In 1955, Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa presented a report “On the nature of ball lightning.” In that work, he tries to explain both the very birth of ball lightning and many of its unusual features by the emergence of short-wave electromagnetic oscillations between thunderclouds and the earth's surface. The scientist believed that ball lightning is a gas discharge moving along the power lines of a standing electromagnetic
waves between clouds and ground. It doesn’t sound too clear, but we are dealing with a very complex physical phenomenon. However, even such a genius as Kapitsa could not explain the nature of the short-wave oscillations that provoke the appearance of the “hell ball”. The scientist’s assumption formed the basis of a whole trend that continues to develop to this day.

PLASMA CLUTCH. According to the outstanding scientist Igor Stakhanov (he was called “the physicist who knows everything about ball lightning”), we are dealing with a bunch of ions. Stakhanov's theory agreed well with eyewitness accounts and explained both the shape of lightning and its ability to penetrate holes, re-taking its original form. However, experiments to create a man-made bunch of ions were unsuccessful.

ANTIMATTER. The above hypotheses are quite working, and research continues on their basis. However, it is worth giving examples of more daring flights of thought. Thus, American astronaut Jeffrey Shears Ashby suggested that ball lightning is born during the annihilation (mutual destruction with the release of a huge amount of energy) of antimatter particles that enter the atmosphere from space.

CREATE LIGHTNING

Creating ball lightning in laboratory conditions is a long-standing and not yet fully realized dream of many scientists.

TESLA'S EXPERIMENTS. The first attempts in this direction were made by the brilliant Nikola Tesla at the beginning of the 20th century. Unfortunately, there are no reliable descriptions of either the experiments themselves or the results obtained. In his work notes there is information that, under certain conditions, he managed to “ignite” a gas discharge that looked like a luminous spherical ball. Tesla allegedly could hold these mysterious balls in his hands and even throw them around. However, Tesla’s activities have always been shrouded in mystery and riddles. So it’s impossible to understand where truth and fiction are in the story about hand-held ball lightning.

WHITE CLUTTS. At the US Air Force Academy (Colorado) in 2013, it was possible to create bright balls by exposing a special solution to powerful electrical discharges. Strange objects were able to exist for almost half a second. Scientists cautiously chose to call them plasmoids rather than fireballs. But they expect that the experiment will bring them closer to the solution.

Plasmoid. The bright white ball existed for only half a second.

AN UNEXPECTED EXPLANATION

At the end of the XX century. A new diagnostic and treatment method has emerged - transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The idea is that by exposing an area of ​​the brain to a focused, strong magnetic field, nerve cells (neurons) can be made to respond as if they had received a signal through the nervous system.

So you can cause hallucinations in the form of fiery disks. By shifting the point of influence on the brain, you can make the disk move (as perceived by the test subject). Austrian scientists Joseph Peer and Alexander Kendl suggested that during thunderstorms, powerful magnetic fields may momentarily arise that provoke such visions. Yes, this is a unique set of circumstances, but ball lightning is rarely seen. Scientists point out that there is a greater chance if a person is in a building or an airplane (statistics confirm this). The hypothesis can only explain part of the observations: encounters with lightning that resulted in burns and deaths remain unsolved.

FIVE BRIGHT CASES

Messages about meetings with fireballs come constantly. In Ukraine, one of the latest took place last summer: such a “hellish ball” flew into the premises of the Dibrovsky village council in the Kirovograd region. He did not touch people, but all the office equipment burned down. In science and popular science literature, a certain set of the most famous collisions between man and ball lightning has been formed.

1638. During an autumn thunderstorm in the village of Widecombe Moor in England, a ball with a diameter of more than 2 m flew into the church. According to eyewitnesses, lightning broke benches, broke windows and filled the church with smoke that smelled of sulfur. In the process, four people died. The “culprits” were soon found - they were declared to be two peasants who allowed themselves to play cards during the sermon.

1753. Georg Richmann, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, conducts research into atmospheric electricity. Suddenly, a bluish-orange ball appears and hits the scientist in the face with a crack. The scientist is killed, his assistant is stunned. A small purple spot was found on Richman’s forehead, his camisole was burned, his shoes were torn. The story is familiar to everyone who studied in Soviet times: not a single physics textbook of that time could do without a description of Richman’s death.

1944. In Uppsala (Sweden), ball lightning passed through a window glass (a hole with a diameter of about 5 cm was left at the site of penetration). The phenomenon was observed not only by people who were on the spot: the lightning tracking system of the local university also worked.

1978. A group of Soviet climbers stopped for the night in the mountains. A bright yellow ball the size of a tennis ball suddenly appeared in the tightly buttoned tent. He, crackling, chaotically moved in space. One climber died from touching the ball. The rest received multiple burns. The case became known after publication in the journal "Technology - Youth". Now not a single forum for fans of UFOs, the Dyatlov Pass, etc. can do without mentioning that story.

2012. Incredible luck: in Tibet, ball lightning falls into the field of view of spectrometers, with the help of which Chinese scientists studied ordinary lightning. The devices managed to fix the glow with a length of 1.64 seconds. and obtain detailed spectra. Unlike the spectrum of ordinary lightning (there are nitrogen lines there), the spectrum of ball lightning contains many lines of iron, silicon and calcium - the main chemical elements of the soil. Some of the theories of the origin of ball lightning have received significant arguments in their favor.

Mystery. This is how an encounter with ball lightning was depicted in the 19th century.

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The fourth state of matter is plasma.
Part 3. Plasma glow

In the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere, the extraneous causes already mentioned can cause phenomena very similar to those obtained on the experimenter's table. One of these reasons is fast ions ejected by the Sun during flares on its surface. The speeds of these ions are enormous. Scattering in all directions, they reach the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere in about a day. Bursting into the atmosphere, solar particles ionize and excite gas (air) atoms; As a result, a bright glow appears, which sometimes lasts for hours during particularly intense “bombardment”. This glow is nothing more than Auroras.

Falling stars

Plasma glow also explains another frequently observed and completely incorrectly called phenomenon - “falling stars”. Of course, the stars have absolutely nothing to do with it. This is a hot gas, but in absolutely insignificant quantities; it glows when meteors - small pebbles and dust particles from interplanetary space - fly into the earth's atmosphere. Quickly decelerating in relatively dense layers of the atmosphere, they almost instantly heat up to temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees and burn out. In this case, meteors transfer their heat to atoms of air gases, which begin to emit bright light. A moment passes, the hot atoms quickly “cool down”, distributing the resulting heat between “cold” neighboring atoms, and the glow goes out.

To ensure that the plasma does not go out and remains hot for a sufficiently long time, energy must be continuously supplied to it. It does not matter what kind of energy it is - whether it is of a thermal, mechanical or electrical nature: in plasma it will still turn into the energy of movement of free ions and electrons and the energy of luminescence of atoms.

Ball lightning

But let's dwell a little more on lightning. Lightning is a real avalanche discharge. The energy supplied by this huge spark to the gas is so great that the air in the lightning channel heats up to a temperature of many tens of thousands of degrees and begins to emit a blinding light. An insignificant time passes after the end of the discharge - and the gas again becomes cold and ceases to glow.

But there is one very peculiar form of lightning, the processes in which occur in an extremely unique way and which cannot be explained so simply. This - ball lightning. Strictly speaking, it is difficult to call it lightning: unlike an electric spark, which has a characteristic zigzag shape and lives for insignificant fractions of a second, ball lightning has a rounded shape (hence its name) and exists for a longer time, sometimes up to several minutes. It was called lightning, apparently because it usually occurs during thunderstorms.

Observations have shown that ball lightning appears, in particular, at the ends of pointed metal objects, on which, during a thunderstorm, a high voltage is created, sufficient to initiate an avalanche discharge in the air. Then the ball is pulled away by air currents from the object on which it appeared and begins to fly through the air. Ball lightning glows brightly, although much weaker than ordinary lightning, and its glow has the same color as ordinary lightning. But, despite its rather “peaceful” appearance, ball lightning is dangerous: after existing in the air for several minutes, it sometimes ends its life with an explosion that can kill a person or destroy or set fire to a building.

It can be assumed that ball lightning is a plasma ball filled with hot air. If this is so, then it is clear why lightning takes the form of a ball: gas, heated to a huge temperature, in contact with the surrounding cold air, tends to take the same shape as drops of hot oil falling from a frying pan onto a cold stove.

But where does the plasma ball get the energy that supports its existence? After all, if it weren’t for this energy, it would very quickly cool down and “dissolve” in the air. A variety of assumptions have been made on this score. One of them, expressed by academician. P. L. Kapitsa is as follows:

During a thunderstorm, if lightning strikes nearby, a loud crackling sound can be heard when the radio is turned on. In other words, the receiver picks up some radio waves that are quite strong, and precisely at the moment of a lightning strike. This is not surprising: lightning, like any sparks, are sources of radio waves that are emitted in the lightning channel by plasma oscillating at a high frequency. The energy of powerful “lightning” radio waves apparently powers the plasma in ball lightning. All you have to do is stop feeding for some reason or for some other reason - and the ball lightning ends its life. But it does not always cool down peacefully: sometimes, for reasons that are not yet clear, the thin protective “film” that separates the hot gases in lightning from the surrounding air bursts, and the energy stored in the plasma is released into the air at enormous speed - an explosion of great force occurs .

This explanation of the power mechanism of ball lightning, although not yet fully confirmed, suggested the idea of ​​heating the plasma not with a short-term spark, but with high-frequency electromagnetic oscillations. Calculations have shown that in this way the plasma can be heated to a very high temperature. We'll have a chance to talk about this later.