![]() Some balls have been observed to travel along power lines or fences. Sometimes it touches or bounces along or near the ground, or travels inside buildings, along walls, or over floors before being extinguished. It may then hover motionless in mid-air or move randomly, but most often horizontally, at the relatively slow velocities of walking speed. Sometimes a luminous globe is said to rapidly descend down the path of a linear lightning strike and stop near the ground at the impact site. It went right to the forehead of the professor, who in that instant fell back without uttering a sound." (1) An eyewitness reported that when Richman was "a foot away from the iron rod, looked at the electrical indicator again just then a palish blue ball of fire, as big as a fist, came out of the rod without any contact whatsoever. One of the most famous deaths due to ball lightning occurred in 1752 or 1753, when the Swedish scientist Professor Georg Wilhelm Richman was attempting to repeat Benjamin Franklin's observations with a lightning rod. A few people claim to have touched a ball and been seriously shocked others experienced burns similar to those from ultraviolet radiation of the sun still others had no ill effects. It may disappear without a sound or it may die with a bang. Some of those who have seen a ball up close report that it produced no sound others claim to have heard crackling, buzzing, or hissing sounds. The life of a typical ball usually lasts only a few seconds, but there are reports that claim it can last several minutes. Luminous balls have also been sighted during hurricanes, tornadoes, or cyclones when high electrical fields were present. It most commonly occurs during or immediately after a thunderstorm, although it has been reported to occur without any detected electrical storm. This form of energy has been described most commonly as a luminous sphere of various diameters, commonly only a few centimeters (averaging approximately 20 centimeters or 8 inches), but occasionally up to a few meters. Open-minded skeptics might wish to delay judgment until more is known about it.Įven though it is a rare phenomenon compared to common lightning (linear, forked, or streak), sightings of ball lightning have been independently reported for over a century by thousands of people. Uncritical observers of a wide variety of glowing atmospheric entities may be prone to call them ball lightning. ![]() Today, the phenomenon is a reality accepted by most scientists, but how it is formed and maintained has yet to be fully explained. THE EXISTENCE OF BALL LIGHTNING HAS been questioned for hundreds of years. ![]()
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