According to the materials that many witnesses provided, we can proximately know the shape of ball lightening. This luminous sphere is larger than a golf ball but smaller than a football. It can be white, green, yellow and orange, and it can be as bright as a 100-watt bulb.
Ball lightening lasts for 5 to 10 seconds. It freely floats near the ground as the waves of air. Sometimes it goes against wind, passes through door and windows into the room or even stoves and chimneys. It hangs in the air now and then or just disappear quietly as well, while it can also explode with a huge sound and vanish when it hits any obstacles.
The speed of ball lightening is relatively slow. Sometimes it moves no more quickly than people who are running. In very rare cases, it makes a sound like a slight whistle, a sizzle or a hiss. But all hits of ball lightening have something in common; ball lightening nearly always happen during thunderstorms.
Ball lightening is mysterious, which is actually because of its rarity. People are very fascinated by its dimly discernible whereabouts, variable colors and huge destructive power in a sudden. As early as the time of ancient Greece, people had started to notice these fancy natural phenomena. Ball lightening is one of them that people still can not explain. Many witnesses think that the movement of lightening is like something with wisdom. It seems to know where it is going; if it enters a room, it usually goes through the door or window and then comes to the corridor. Of course that is just out of people’s imagination.
Ball lightning is highly destructive. It can not only break windows but also peel off the outermost layer of the wall, causing severe death of human and animals. However, there is not enough evidence for people to figure out what the real reason is.
What is slightly different from lightning is that ball lightning has not been proved to be able to make damage to trees. Ball lightning can hardly be destroyed. Someone once shot it with a rifle, while nothing happened after that.
Because of the low frequency of occurrence of ball lightning, it is difficult for scientists to make systematic observation. So far no one has taken any photos of high quality for scientific researches.
Theoretically, someone thinks that ball lightening is a lump of hot air or gasified elements such as C, Na or Cu. Although this theory explains some features of ball lightening, it doesn’t tell why ball lightening can take shape in airplane cabins.
Besides, there are also many various statements concerning ball lightening as plasma, ions, charged dust particles, water with outer electronic shell and so on. However, no theory can perfectly explains this scientific mystery. If you meet ball lightening when raining or just happen to take photos of it, be sure to take down everything, which will be fully precious research materials.
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