Great balls of...lightning? In a lab? Ball lightning created in laboratory, proves existence:

[originalpckelly]

"Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil has cooked up a simple recipe for making similar eerie orbs of light in the lab, even getting them to bounce around for several seconds. Watch a movie of the bouncing balls here.

Thousands of people have reported seeing ball lightning, a luminous sphere that sometimes appears during thunderstorms. It is typically the size of a grapefruit and lasts for a few seconds or minutes, sometimes hovering, even bouncing along the ground.

One eyewitness saw a glowing ball burn through the screen door of a house in Oregon, navigate down to the basement and wreck an old mangle, while in another report, a similar orb bounced on a Russian teacher's head more than 20 times before vanishing.

One theory suggests that ball lightning is a highly ionised blob of plasma held together by its own magnetic fields, while an exotic explanation claims the cause is mini black holes created in the big bang.

A more down-to-earth theory, proposed by John Abrahamson and James Dinniss at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, is that ball lightning forms when lightning strikes soil, turning any silica in the soil into pure silicon vapour. As the vapour cools, the silicon condenses into a floating aerosol bound into a ball by charges that gather on its surface, and it glows with the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19325863.500&feedId=online-news_rss20

[MADem]

1. Goodness gracious!!! NT

[originalpckelly]

3. You have to wonder how many UFO sightings are ball lightning...

now that we know what it looks like. Looks like a damn UFO to me.

[Redstone]

2. I know it's real. I saw it when I was a kid. It rolled along the roof of

our neighbor's barn and set it afire.

Redstone

[originalpckelly]

5. Well, people just thought you were a nut...

until now when we say "HOW FREAKIN COOL!" :bounce:

Of course, the barn burned down, so that sucks, but at least you got to see something pretty rare.

[Redstone]

23. It was pretty fucking wild, all right. Fortunately, my father was out on the side porch

with me, so he saw it, too.

Redstone

[theHandpuppet]

4. Very cool!

And I'm sure the Pentagon is already fantasizing on how to develop it as a weapon.

[originalpckelly]

6. Sounds like a Romulan Plasma torpedo, doesn't it?

And by the way, if we don't do it, someone else will.

[IDemo]

7. This company wants to harvest lightning->

As a proven leader in the energy field, AEHI seeks become the first company to harness the natural energy delivered in a bolt of lightning, by collecting power from the ground area surrounding the lightning strike and converting it into usable electricity to be sold through existing power grids.

The average lightning bolt contains approximately one million kilowatts (1,000,000 kW) of electrical energy, and lightning strike towers work by ‘harvesting’ this atmospheric electrical energy and converting a substantial portion of it into usable electricity. Harnessing the natural energy produced from a bolt of lightning as a clean energy solution will not only eliminate numerous environmental hazards associated with the energy industry, it will also significantly reduce the costliness of power production. When amortized over four to seven (4-7) years, a lightning farm will be able to produce and sell electricity for as low as $0.005 per kilowatt hour, thus significantly undercutting the current production costs of its competing energy sources.

Our project research team has successfully developed a model prototype to demonstrate the ‘capturing’ capabilities of the lightning farm technology, and initial project focus will be on the development of a mobile full-scale lightning farm to be tested during peak lightning season (July through August) of 2007.

Edit to add: if you think it's hard convincing people to accept wind towers, try telling them you want to build a lightning farm nearby...

[acmavm]

8. Someone tell me, what's a 'mangle'?

[JohnyCanuck]

9. A low tech clothes dryer.

A mangle is a mechanical laundry aid consisting of two rollers in a sturdy frame, connected by cogs and, in its home version, powered by a hand crank or electrically. While the appliance was originally used to wring water from wet laundry, today mangles are used to press or flatten sheets, tablecloths, kitchen towels, or clothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. A "mangle" is the Brit word for a clothes wringer.

You may be too young to remember them. They used to be attached to washing machines. Two rubber rollers that the clothes were put through to wring the water from them.

[acmavm]

12. Oh lordy, I remember them! Two times when I was a kid the wringer,

or the mangle as you call it, the top part popped up and hit my Mom between the eyes when she was trying to wring out my brother's jeans. Split her head open, always required an emergency trip to the hospital to get stitches.

[EST]

17. I got my fingers messed up in them a couple times.

My mother in law still insists on using an old wringer washer and a couple of years ago she got her hand pretty badly mangled - hence the name? - requiring several stitches. (She still refuses to go to an automatic washer-using a washboard and her wringer on the washer)

[acmavm]

18. WHY in the world does she insist on doing it that way? Honestly it is

more environmentally friendly I'm sure, but this degree of self-imposed obsolescence is (forgive me) nuts.

[EST]

20. She is 86 years old and, with the onset of a degree of senility,

IS nuts. When the mangled her hand, she was only semi nuts.

Actually, she is a pretty good old codger and, I think, like scrubbing floors on hands and knees, it's something of a desire to feel humble or to do some sort of penance.

I figure when you're that old and still maintaining at least some sort of intelligence, you can do pretty much anything you like and I will applaud (and keep that old washer in as good an operating condition as I am able.)

She still wears clothes that she's had for forty years and swears by hand washing and clothesline/sunshine drying.

[acmavm]

22. Oh yeah, she's more than entitled to do whatever she wants. And if at

that age she can still do it, more power to her.

As for sundrying clothes, mmmmmmm nice! I love the smell of clothes that have dried out in the hot sun.

[EST]

24. Yeah, we live out in the country and often dodge

the cat poop and hang them up. That clothes line has attracted a bit of lightning, as well, but it just fuzzed up a little with discharge and then the lightning hit the ground wire on the power pole.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. I saw one once

It came through my bathroom window.

Scared the fucking shit out of me.

[SmokingJacket]

15. Yeah, I don't think it's all that rare.

I've never seen it, but know people who have. Which is more than I can say about, oh, Bigfoot or something.

[papau]

13. So they "exist" & "can be created" but it's an incomplete explanation until they get a version

that wanders through windows and into houses, as reported over and over again.

Meanwhile, are any crop circles real?

[flyingfysh]

14. crop circles are real

That doesn't mean aliens had anything to do with them.

There have been interviews on tv by the people who created them with boards and rope.

[EST]

16. When I was a kid, I used to just love thunderstorms and all the

lightning!
I've seen all kinds of lightning strikes and once it hit my hoe handle when I was hoeing corn on top of our mountain. I woke up lying on my back in the barn with one tennis shoe on and its sole smoking and with no clear idea of how I got there.

Although I have never seen ball lightning or chain lightning, I have certainly heard a lot about it.

I'm delighted to see serious research being invested in this curious phenomenon.

[postulater]

19. If you want a great thunderstorm recording

this site has a 75 minute severe thunderstorm that you can download free as an mp3. I use it for relaxation background.

<http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=16480>

[Beelzebud]

21. I smell bullshit. I've seen arc welders do exactly whats in that video...

[soothsayer]

25. You can make those cool plasma balls in the microwave by

microwaving a lit match or candle, they say

[Ian David]

26. But we've got the biggest balls of them all! n/t