In the extensive literature on ball lightning—this most intriguing manifestation of atmospheric electricity—strangely enough, the main volume is occupied not by descriptions of observations of its real behavior and the results of its interaction with surrounding objects, but by theoretical speculations.
These are attempts to construct ever new models of it, undertaken mainly by people who have never seen this natural phenomenon and have formed their impressions from fragmentary, in no way systematized, not always impartial, and often contradictory eyewitness accounts. Taking this into account, in 1979 the Faculty of Physics of Yaroslavl State University organized a special student scientific club, which became the first public center in the country for collecting and processing information about ball lightning. The ultimate goal we pursue is to provide science with a sufficiently reliable list of the main properties and characteristics of this still mysterious phenomenon, corresponding to its current level of development.
Today it can be said that the creation of the center has fully justified itself. In two and a half years, more than 2,500 eyewitness accounts of ball lightning have been collected and processed. For comparison, it should be noted that over the entire period of study of this phenomenon, only about a thousand descriptions have been published in print. Here are some of the collected facts.
June 10, 1977. Mednogorsk. I. V. Knyazkin.
“We were approaching Mednogorsk. My son (28 years old) was driving the motorcycle, my friend was behind him, and I was sitting in the sidecar. When we drove onto the syrt (low hills), a thunderstorm began. I suggested to my son that we wait it out, but he replied that we would go down into the valley and stop there. At that moment I saw, at a distance of about 10 m, a dazzlingly bright glowing ball the size of a button. The ball approached us and settled on the motorcycle’s handlebar. There was a click, as if a switch had been flipped, and the engine shut off. By inertia we rolled down into the valley. I looked at my son: he was lying collapsed over the handlebars; my friend on the back seat had slumped backward. Both were dead.”
Such tragedies occur rarely, but their particular horror lies in the fact that they cruelly remind people of their former helplessness before hostile forces of nature. To this day, humans remain defenseless before ball lightning—not because of any special power it possesses, but primarily because of its elusiveness and lack of study.
In the problem of ball lightning, scientists come face to face with the ill-fated task of determining the structure of a “black box.” The task itself is classical, and methods for solving it have long been worked out. The study of a “black box” consists of two stages: investigating the laws of its functioning and, on their basis, constructing a model of its structure. In our particular case, scientists are still at the first stage of research; in other words, at present the science of ball lightning is in the stage of collecting facts about its properties, and the numerous premature, in our opinion, attempts to model this phenomenon end in failure (about 200 models of the origin and structure of ball lightning have already been proposed, but none of them can explain the full diversity and variability of its properties).
“We were flying in a small Po-2 aircraft at an altitude of 500–600 m along the Black Sea coast from Odessa to Belgrade. About halfway through, we entered thunderclouds illuminated by continuous flashes of lightning. To the right, at an angle of about 30° to the aircraft’s course, multicolored balls of various sizes—about the size of a soccer ball, larger and smaller—began to appear in the clouds. The balls were dazzlingly bright. They appeared and burst now in one place, now in another, sometimes very close, sometimes at a distance.”
G. G. Cherepanov.
“On August 6, 1976, our An-12 aircraft was flying on the route Aktobe—Chita. We were flying at an altitude of 6,000 m at a speed of 700 km/h. In the Novosibirsk region we entered a thundercloud. Trying to get away from the storm, we climbed to 8,000 m, but the clouds were very powerful. The aircraft was being tossed from side to side. Outside, in addition to the noise of the engines, peals of thunder could be heard. I looked out the porthole and was horrified: fiery balls of bright yellow color with a diameter of 30–40 cm were standing and flying past it. The balls burst with a terrible crash, so much so that the aircraft shook, and it seemed it was about to fall apart. When the balls burst, the entire nose of the aircraft was illuminated, and sparks flew to the sides. All this lasted about twenty minutes, and then the storm was left behind.”
V. A. Tregubenkov.
Pilot A. P. Miroshnikov from Balashov reports that in June 1974, during a night flight at an altitude of 6,000 m in a cloud of ice crystals, he saw at a distance of about 25 m from the aircraft a blue ball with a diameter of 20–80 cm and a halo up to 2.6 m. He observed the ball for about five seconds, after which the ball fell behind. Apparently, a significant part of reports about so-called UFOs are associated with observations in the sky of large ball lightning and their halos.
Pilot-radio operator E. A. Dmitrichenko from Dnepropetrovsk writes that a bright blue ball with a diameter of about 20 cm struck the aircraft’s windshield during a flight at an altitude of 760 m. There was a deafening explosion. The cockpit smelled of ozone.
M. I. Simonova from Blagoveshchensk, who was flying in a passenger aircraft from Khabarovsk to Sakhalin, saw how during the flight a red ball with a diameter of about 40 cm landed on the wing of their aircraft. The ball rolled along the wing toward the fuselage, and all the passengers observing it wondered why the ball was not blown away by the airflow. After about five seconds the ball went out, causing no harm.
Far from always do such encounters end favorably, as here, or even as in the case described in the previous issue of “TM” by V. I. Akkuratov. Thus, on November 8, 1981, Pravda reported in detail how ball lightning seriously damaged a combat aircraft, and pilot Boris Korotkov had to show great courage and skill to make a successful landing in it.
The main difficulty in collecting facts about the properties of ball lightning lies in the fact that it has still not been possible to obtain it under laboratory conditions, and the only source of new information for now remains the questioning of eyewitnesses to this phenomenon in natural conditions.
Our center has received much interesting data on the occurrence of ball lightning both in thunderclouds and in the discharge channel of ordinary, linear lightning.
Thus, reader Borovikova from the Krasnoyarsk Territory noticed in April 1978 that ball lightning seemed to detach itself from the end of linear lightning during an intercloud discharge. N. T. Varlamova from the Chita Region in July 1977 saw how ball lightning jumped out from the branching point of a linear lightning channel. These observations are confirmed by G. P. Torosyan from Kirovabad—ball lightning “bounced off” the discharge channel of linear lightning.
In about half of all cases when our readers saw ball lightning at the moment of its formation, it arose on electrical conductors: wires, sockets, antennas, railway rails, and the like. Here is, for example, a characteristic description.
“There was a strong thunderstorm with rain. Lightning flashed one after another. Almost simultaneously with the flash of a strong discharge, an orange glowing ball began to be ‘blown out’ (like a soap bubble from a straw) from an electrical outlet. Its shape was constantly changing. (A similar phenomenon was described in ‘TM’ No. 11 for 1978.—Editor’s note.) When the ball reached the size of a soccer ball, it detached from the outlet and floated through the room toward the window. Approaching it, the ball, without slowing its motion or changing shape, passed through the glass as if it were not there at all. (I later found no hole in the glass.) Outside, after flying a few meters away from the window, the ball exploded with a crash.”
I. G. Orekhova, Moscow.
In this description, in addition to the fact of the formation of ball lightning on a conductor, attention is drawn to its passage through glass. We managed to collect about fifty descriptions of this kind. Moreover, in some cases a hole with a diameter from millimeters to several tens of centimeters remains in the glass, while in others the glass seems not to be damaged at all.
M. Z. Melshina from the Astrakhan Region reports a case when a bright blue ball lightning the size of an apple passed right through a windowpane before the eyes of a dozen people without damaging it and struck one of the eyewitnesses with an electrical discharge. The victim regained consciousness only several hours later. And E. I. Skripnik from Kyiv saw how a ball lightning the size of a tennis ball passed through two windowpanes, melting holes with a diameter of about 8 cm. But no shards or drops of molten glass remained under the holes.
A similar case was reported by F. M. Polyakova from Kharkiv, as well as by L. A. Nikitenko from Kokshetau, but in her description there was another interesting detail: when ball lightning was flying through the room, the loudspeaker crackled loudly, which may indicate the emission of electromagnetic waves by it. This same ability of ball lightning is evidenced by the description of an encounter with it by V. D. Musinsky from Yaroslavl, who during his military service witnessed how, during the visit of the “stranger” to a radio station, the lightning arrester of a non-operating antenna glowed with a bright red light. According to Musinsky’s testimony, one can roughly estimate the power of the “emitter” of ball lightning—at several tens of kilowatts.
All the properties of ball lightning mentioned in the reports are not yet attributed to it with certainty. In order to be able to state with confidence that ball lightning possesses or does not possess them, there is still a lack of data. It cannot be done on the basis of several dozen descriptions out of thousands. New facts are needed.
In conclusion, it must be recalled that ball lightning is a dangerous natural phenomenon. It possesses a large electric charge (in the overwhelming majority of fatal accidents, death is associated precisely with electric shock) and great energy. According to various independent estimates, during explosions of ball lightning, energy comparable to that of the explosion of dozens of kilograms of nitroglycerin was released. Therefore, when encountering this phenomenon, one must remain calm. Definite safety rules for such cases have not yet been developed, and for now one can only repeat the recommendation of a well-known specialist and enthusiast in the study of ball lightning, I. M. Imyanitov: behave in its presence as in the presence of a large and angry dog—that is, try to move away from it as quickly as possible, but without running and without making sudden movements, since ball lightning can be carried along by the airflow created by a fleeing person or by changes in the electric field.