Latest Ball lightning Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online CSIRO scientist John Lowke thinks he has the mysterious balls of lightning thing figured out, despite himself never witnessing one. Lowke has written a new scientific paper, and has also given the first mathematical solution explaining the birth of ball lightning and how it is capable of passing through glass. Documented sightings of ball lightning have been made across the world for centuries, but no explanation of how it occurs...

Australian astrophysicist Stephen Hughes said that some UFO sightings could be explained by ball lightning and other atmospheric phenomena, according to a recent BBC News report. The scientists made a detailed study of an unusual event that took place in 2006 when large meteors were observed over Brisbane.  During the same time, another unidentified green object was seen to roll over nearby mountains. Hughes has theorized that the object was actually ball lightning. He believes that...

Ball lightning is a circular light phenomena occurring during thunderstorms and there are a large class of reports by eyewitnesses having experienced such events. Scientists have been puzzled by the nature of these apparent fire balls for a long time. Now physicists at the University of Innsbruck have calculated that the magnetic field of long lightning strokes may produce the image of luminous shapes, also known as phosphenes, in the brain. This finding may offer an explanation for many ball...

Scientists have triggered the electrical precursors to lightning with lasers aimed at thunderstorms for the first time, a new study reports. In a modern-day version of Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment, the scientists placed a mobile laser at the top of New Mexico's 10,500-foot South Baldy Peak and shot laser pulses at two passing thunderstorms, generating electrical activity in the clouds. Franklin proposed an experiment to use a key attached to a kite to trigger...