Eli5 are ball lightnings real and if so, how do they work?
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A Kugelblitz (German: ball of lightning) is something that we predict could exist based on our understanding of physics. We have not currently observed any.
The mechanism of a Kugelblitz is exactly the same as a black hole, where matter becomes so dense that gravity becomes so strong that nothing can escape, even light. But with a Kugelblitz it is Energy, radiation or heat, instead of matter.
Well, this is a difficult question to answer- because we quite literally do not know!
We have many credible accounts of it, but little evidence. The accounts have reasonably good consistency for a one-time event that surprised people and then disappeared in a few moments. It is also very rare!
We have not been able to reproduce it in the lab. We can make electrical discharges of course but none like this. We don’t have any credible theories that explain this. It’s related to lightning, but no known physics can explain how energy can form a ball with no connection to a power source and stick around for even a few seconds.
It acts like a high frequency electrical plasma discharge, but there’s no power source. It is most often associated with thunderstorms and many accounts say it entered through a window or chimney, but some accounts say it materialized inside closed buildings and travel through walls. The thunderstorm may be a source of energy but there’s nothing connecting it to the clouds like regular lightning. Thunderstorms also don’t produce high frequency RF current that could glow like this. If it did, we’d have noticed the huge amount of RF interference from a power source like this.
Many accounts say it ends with a bang and can destroy electrical equipment, or even kill people.
It’s very fascinating because you can imagine throwing energy as balls could be really useful. Could you transmit power at a distance? Anything “new” like this could have countless industrial uses. Is it actually an energy source, like cold fusion? It’s difficult to rule anything out when we don’t know
My mom actually saw this once, she had no idea what it was. Downstairs bathroom, closed windows, materialized during a thunderstorm and rolled into a sheetrock wall. Later discovered some electronics on the other side of that wall were fried.
This is still a mystery of science. The best explanation (from anecdotal evidence) is some type of self-sustaining ball of plasma, but we’ve never been able to reproduce it. Apparently it has some electrical charge, glows, and can pass through some solids. It is incredibly rare but many of the people sighting it report the same phenomena.
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