interesting article about mysterious plasma phenomena

[coppercone2]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/02/harvard-reveals-what-ww2-foo-fighter-ufos-were/

I guess it might explain some UFOs

https://news.yahoo.com/university-experts-reveal-world-war-154506192.html

[brucehoult]

I recall Waikato University setting up a special lab to study ball lightning and plasmas in the late 80s or early 90s. I don't know what became of that.

[coppercone2]

I bet its just statistically improbable that trying to create it is extremely rare until we develop more theory about the plasma. But its been a while. Because I have not even read a good explanation about how its confined or whatever... so trying to create it in study seems to be not very prone to getting funds.

Because I don't even know of any leads on this stuff. Its just that sometimes it seems to happen during events that are otherwise ordinary. Its exactly the opposite of what people want funded research to do lol

like there is no conclusive evidence about anything in particular being more or less prone to ball lightning, so how do you justify the experiment? Because sparks happen in industry like ALL the time so you would have to propose something 'interesting' to an administrator other then high energy sparks, which are basically a daily occurrence in tons of high power fields, none of them seem to report any ball lightnings. I assume the research budget got slashed

I saw one personally but what can I do other then cause faults in a domestic environment till I burn my house down? I got no leads really


it seems to me like "well we plan on 'overloading a wire or electronic structure". "well this happens at a switch yard all the time. How come the power company does not know about this?". Uhmmmmmmmm just give me some fuckin money. No.

so my hunch is that ball lightning research is treated by the powers that be like asking your friend for a loan to buy lottery tickets. That won't go down well.

Now if there was some machine that had unique elements that this happened around it might be worthy of research. But usually this ALWAYS happens in the most boring ass environments filled with ubiquitous crap under normal conditions. Because we don't seem to have a good


I imagine its kind of like throwing a handful of coins in the air and having 70% of them land on edge. Its possible but how likely is that? You could probobly do it all your life and it would never happen. Well that one might not be so hard because it says its 1/6000 per coin, but still..


If someone had some kinda good model ..........


I think this will be more understood when there is more power monitoring and intelligent power systems and maybe more widespread atmospheric sensor networks. Then you have a sensor log to at least tell you some common condition that leads to the formation of it. Like a signature. But that is way off IMO.

[jonpaul]

ball lightning is old and very well known phonemena.

Greg LEYH at LOD.ORG (Lightning on Demand) has made ball lightning with huge Tesa Coils and Marx Generators

j

[jpanhalt]

In the 1950's while in HS, we visited the CalTech high voltage lab.  It would occasionally put on public demonstrations.  CalTech also had weekly science shows for the public on all sort of subjects.  One of the most impressive  demonstrations I remember was on triple point.  https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/spark

So, I searched on "ball lightning" there and came up with this report: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/award-excellence-detchar-winner-2022
Now, the effect of distant lightning on gravitational waves is interesting -- done by Matthew Ball

[jonpaul]

Search "Microwave Oven" Ball lightning plasma


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0008622310006445
https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article/89/4/372/1057863/Plasma-generation-by-household-microwave-oven-for

for VERY risky but intereting expewrimentsto create plasma in a microwavce oven

DO NOT use the one in your Wife's kitchen, MAY destroy the oven !!

Use an old junker, do it outdoors, keep fire ext and welders goggle/helment handy

Enjoy,

J