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Ball lightning is because of the same thing that makes Northern lights , it's not just when there is a storm or thunder etc... I have seen it twice in my life Also fun fact lightning Also shoots upwards not just down to the earth and that is more strange because where does it go ?
The nazi had studied it alot also that it can stop eletric devices working nazi documented this when there Morse code stored working in norway similar to a emp charge
I believe I've seen it myself, though not in nearly as spectacular a fashion. I was standing at my window, watching a terrific light show as lightning streaked from one end of the sky to another. Then, one bold made it about halfway through the sky, but its end curled! The bolt itself faded like any other, but the round curl kept going, and in its wake there were small orange glowing "embers" left in a trail. Eventually, the ball too faded out and it was over. To explain it this way makes it sound like it lasted a long time, but this probably took place in less than 3 seconds. There was hardly even time to be surprised by it before I realized what I might have seen. This was about 7 years ago.
A few days ago I stumbled across the video below which contains some footage of ball lightening starting at the 1:20 mark. th-cam.com/video/K-mV_8aeQsk/w-d-xo.htmlsi=GrdIXS8VKe5CGVnT&t=80
I’ve seen one kill a person less than hundred meters from me in 1995 in Brno, Czech Republic. It was at a disability hospital, a four-story building forming half court-yard with a tractor parked there and a person smoking a cigarette next to it. I watched a perfect orange sphere about the size of the football descending along lightning rod cable without touching it. It took about two seconds for it to descend the 3 stories, then about 2 m above ground it jumped horizontally towards the tractor. When it touched it disappeared, and the man on the other side of it fell down dead. There was no smell no sound and only thing they found on the person was small burn underneath his watch. I remember the authorities not believing me. I was 19 at the time.
@@thomaskrejci5237 I can believe the cops not believing you. They think everyone is lying. Unless it was someone you knew, or had a beef with , why make up that story ? Kinda specific... What happened kid ? Well... Uh... No... You made that up. Cops... ugh.
@@hopefullynotbutprobably6643it was 1995 dude. The first camera phones wouldn't be coming out for another 5 years, did you expect him to lug around a VHS camcorder at all times or what
I’ve never seen ball lightning, but I’ve been in thunder snow, which is absolutely terrifying. You could feel the static in the air. All the hairs on your body stood straight up and you could see flashes around you from the lightning, but it was snowing so hard you couldn’t see 5 feet in front of you. It was like being in a neon light there was a purplish blue glow everywhere.
Lighting strikes during a snowstorm are also absolutely blinding. Like a flashbang each time. The flash stuns the retina and freezes a black-&-white version of the current images in your vision for a couple of seconds each time. At least in my experience.
I had an experience with this when I was about 8. I was sitting at the table in the dining room. The table was next to a window. The weather was bad. A lot of rain. When there was a flash of lightning an orb of light about the size of a basketball came in the window. It wasn't just a steady light. It looked like crackling electricity but no sound. It flew over the table, then dropped down to skim over the floor and flew towards the refrigerator. As it approached the refrigerator, it flew up and over the refrigerator and through the wall to outside. My Aunt was in the kitchen and witnessed it too. I don't remember a smell afterwards. It didn't do any damage to the house. It was a spectacle I will never forget.
My great grandmother said this happened to her... it was in Houston, Tx back in the 50s- a bright ball of light came in through the window, went across the living room, and then up and out the chimney.
Similar to what my mom and grandmother had, it popped out of the oven after a lightning strike outside, went around the kitchen and eventually flew into a wall and disappeared.
This was south Texas. I wasn't afraid... just in awe and mesmerized by such a strange sight. Later I heard of St. Elmo's fire and thought that is what I had experienced but later learned of ball lightning and realized that is what I had seen that day. Of course this was way before cell phones but even today, they occur so suddenly and vanish as quickly I doubt anyone would be able to record it unless they were already recording an event and it happened simultaneously.
Honestly, with phenomena like ball lighting, it's no wonder tales of magic used to be so commonplace. After all, if nowadays we still have trouble comprehending it, what were our ancestors supposed to think? Just imagine... During an intense storm suddenly a ball of lighting comes barreling through your home/church, bouncing and swerving, before striking someone dead. What else would you think other than "yeah, he just got smote". It's up there on the same level as getting hit by a meteorite.
Exactly! Man, imagine if you knew NOTHING about the physical sciences whatsoever & saw this! Or a meteor! Or lightning for that matter! Our poor ancestors must’ve been terrified!
"Women deserve an equal say in politics and if I'm wrong, may God strike me down" An orb of ball lightning floats in through the window, maneuvers around everyone else and touches the man, killing him instantly. "Well, chaps, I suppose we'll start suppressing women's rights, treating them like property, and all that. Shall we?" "Yeah, s'pose we must do. No other option really" This explains so much of the bad stuff from history
Tribe: Everyone arguing over who stole Kronk's sweet melon. The Universe: Hey guys, you ever see an eclipse before? Tribe: Repent, the end is nigh! REPENT! The Universe: Calm down, humans, it was just a bass drop... You'll get it in a few million years.
@@RndmBad A few hundred millennia or so It’s debated when “modern” humans originated, but somewhere between 50k to 300k years ago. Around 50k years ago is where we see archeological remains like cave paintings, but fossilized remains matching ours date back further.
My brother witnessed it traveling down a barbed wire fence as a young kid so I've always accepted it's existence. I believe that one was orange and around the size of a basketball.
I got to see ball lightening during a thunderstorm sitting drinking coffee with my grandfather in the milk room on his dairy farm… coolest shit ever, greatest memory ever. Lightening struck the barn we were in, and rolled out into the yard in front of us until it got so small it disappeared… when it came off the lightening rod it was the size of a VW…. I truly feel blessed to have witnessed it. The blessing is the fact it happened when my grandfather was there… simple things in life.
That's so cool! I MAY have seen ball lightning when I was motorcycling near Yosemite during a lightning storm. It was daytime and a tree near the road got hit, but there was a little sphere of blue light that passed above the road. Not certain, but it was odd enough that I remember it more than 50 years later... A few years later I almost got hit - I was on the peak of a 13,000 foot mountain in Colorado when it clouded up and rained briefly. There was a marker made of sticks wired together to make a cross, and as my friends and I approached it, the wire was buzzing quietly, and as thunder was rumbling closer, it became obvious that it was time to leave - you could feel your hair trying to stand up too....yikes!
@@stevengill1736 you saw it. That’s it. I just moved to Colorado and moved out in a month. Such a beautiful place. Just couldn’t live there. I hope Colorado finds itself. Gods country for sure.
My father saw two instances of ball lightening, when he was flying in the Aleutians during WWII. In the first case, he noticed it on the wing of his P-40. He tilted the plane and the ball rolled down the wing, through the fuselage, and out onto the other wing. He did this several times, rolling it back and forth from wingtip to wingtip - but each time it got a bit smaller. Finally, when it was quite small, it dropped over the wingtip and was gone. In the second occurrence, he was test flying a transport (don't recall the type) and the ball lightening appeared inside the plane, ricocheting from side to side and melting the floor and seats wherever it touched anything. When it got to the rear of the plane, it went out through the tail and was gone. (He had to report this as 'a lightening strike' since ball lightening 'did not exist'.)
@@derekstein6193 I think you have a good point: It is quite likely that what we call "ball lightening" is really several different phenomena combined into one label. For example, the clod of dirt hypothesis would not explain any of the aquatic or aerial instances, but seems to be supported for terrestrial lightening over a silicon geology.
I saw 2 ball lightnings on Ahvenanmaa, Finland. It was as the worst lightning storm I've ever seen was calming down. We where sitting out on the porch drinking. The sea was really wild and it rained pretty much, so there were no boats out. There were still a lot of lightnings, 5-10 per minutes. All of a sudden I see a orange ball coming out of the bay next to ours, I was emitting a warm glow, not at all blinding, distance maybe 200-250m, hovering about 2 meters over the surface, it was absolutely quiet. We discussed what it could be, UFO or ball lightning. Then my mother saw another one, exactly alike, coming out of the new bay over. They continues on a collision course for about a minute, until the got out in the waterway. There they merged went down the waterway in an incredible speed. I would say about 200-300km/h, some disagreed and said 100-200km/h, and some said a lot faster. All I know is that it was one hell of a lot faster then any boat I've seen in my life. Especially in such rough waves. The thing I thought was most eerie, was the absolute silent.
I saw ball lightning once, around 1990. A summer thunderstorm had just ended - at least, the rain had ended - and I was standing on a 2nd-story porch overlooking the street. It was dark, perhaps 10 pm, and the air was very still. A ball of white light about the size of a basketball came drifting down the center of the street, about five feet above the pavement, accompanied by a hissing/fizzing sound. The ball passed in front of me, traveled another 20 feet or so, and then vanished with a slight pop. No steam, no smoke, and if there was any odor it didn't drift my way. I knew what it was immediately, but to this day I remain astonished by the sight. I have an extensive technical background, but nothing I know of physics and chemistry could come close to explaining it. The number of reports where the ball travels straight down a defined path (e.g. a street or a church aisle) seems to be significant, but I have no clue what that suggests.
The paths could possibly be explained that they follow "walled columns" of air that are bordered by types of walls, whether its street curbs or church pews.
It might be interesting to see if there was sewer or or other infrastructure under the road. I made a plasma ball in my microwave with a grape😅. I know with that experiment there are several factors required for it to work but these descriptions remind me of it. There's some fun examples of it on youtube.
@@modelenginerding6996 Overhead wires are another possible "guide". I'm surprised we don't get more video or photos these days, given the several billion cellphones out there.
@@jpdemer5 for sure, I thought you omitted as some places have underground. I've heard of airline passengers seeing what sounds like ionized air go down an isle during a lightning strike.
They weren't planning on seeing ball lightning, they themselves admit they were very lucky. There's a whole documentary on it. th-cam.com/video/j2cO0_3IDyA/w-d-xo.html
@@tomcass240it's actually a wonderful documentary. Such a fascinating phenomenon. I've witnessed it myself, and so wonderful and a person to see all the data and that we were not crazy
We used to see this rather frequently when I worked for a 50,000 watt AM radio station at the tower array location. Sometimes during or right before a storm it could be seen rolling between the towers. The chief engineer said sometimes when the main transmitter tube was close to needing replaced it would form in the tube cubicle and fall to the concrete and dicipate like marbles when the larger ball broke up.
I saw it once, when I was young. We were driving down the highway in Texas during a storm. Out the window, on the side of the car I was sitting on, I saw a blueish white orb skipping down the side of the highway, even with our car. My whole family saw it, as did the people behind us. I saw them pointing. It kept pace with us for about 15 seconds before turning off into a field and dissipating. It was terrifying!
26:46 this theory of hallucination also seems not not account for why multiple people would witness the ball of lightning in the same place behaving the same way; as it moves around, people would almost certainly experience seeing slightly different locations of the phenomena instead of a shared experience all seeing the ball of lightning occurring in the exact same place
@@MisterTalkingMachine The EM field from lightning is brief, but in the example of TMS (now in widespread therapeutic use, not experimental), the effect lingers after the brief magnetic field is collapsed.
I heard an extremely large explosion in my backyard one summer afternoon. I had earlier been on my roof blowing out gutters and noticed some dark clouds several miles away. I had used a 20 ft aluminum ladder to get on the roof and left it there while I cleaned up inside the house. After the explosion, all my electrical went off in the house. I called my neighbor across the street with my iPhone to see if his power was off. He said he was standing at his front door and had seen a large white light ball above my house. The explosion literally shook my house. I soon found out that it took all the electrical devices in four nearby houses out, garage door motors, microwaves, tv's, computers, etc. I had to replace every electric device in my house. My neighbor who saw the ball said it was not a streak of lightning. He was certain it was a light ball! Now, I know what it was. Thanks for the video.
When my mother was young, she worked in a garment factory and told a story of a ball of fire that came in through a window, circled around the room and then back out another window. She said it was bluish in color and about the size of a baseball. There were scorch marks around the walls, but no other damage.
I had ball lightning in my living room, near my records for about a second about 2 years ago. (too quick for me to grab my phone as it vanished as quickly as it appeared) at the end of a thunderstorm. It fried my TV and the macbook that was connected to it. I managed to fix the TV with a replacement motherboard. I needed a new macbook though and unfortunately I hadn't done a recent backup!
In my 40 years, I have seen two ball lightning. One came through our ipen fireplace and went through the apartment, and then through the porch glass door that was closed. This happened in the late 80s. The second time, we were waiting for the school buss, and one appeared from a powering and did a couple of maneuvering before exploding in a bright white flash and a loud bang. That was in the early 90s. The first one did not explode but just fizzled out.
I'm sure there will be a lot of posts like this. My grandmother sat in her living room watching television, in I guess about 1961 or 1962, when what she described as a "ball of fire" came in through a window on her left, traveled across the room in front of her, and hit one of those big, 50s style clocks on the wall to her right. The clock stopped working but otherwise seemed undamaged. The wallpaper around the clock wasn't burned but I distinctly remember the unusual, scorched pattern on the wallpaper around it. I don't know if there was a smell or any sound. If there was, she never mentioned it.
I've never seen it myself, but my Mom once told me of the time she saw ball lightning back in the 60's in central Florida. She heard a boom as the transformer on the electric pole across the street blew and looked out just in time to see this softball-sized blue orb fly from the sparking transformer to the chain-link fence around their yard. It quickly wiggled it's way down the top of the fence, all the way to the back yard (a bit less than a hundred feet), and then jumped to an orange tree next to the fence and split it in half before it was gone. Definitely sounds like something I don't want to mess with haha! ^_^
The following experience was not a hallucination. In 1983 or 4, while working as a QC inspector at Aero Sound Engineering in Crockett, TX, I saw an extremely bright light out the small door across from the offices. Being free to walk around, I went to the door; outside, it was much brighter than daylight, and drifting slowly downward was a round, smooth, intensely bright blue-white ball the size of a basketball. When it descended on and stuck to an overhead cable. The cable was through the equator of the sphere. That is when I noticed the electrical crackling noise as it moved slowly to the left {west} until it contacted the transformer at the following phone pole. At that point, it exploded loudly, sparks flying around it.
I was a broadcast engineer in the Orlando Florida radio market and one day around 2001 or so my colleague Andy and I were at the WXXL FM radio transmitter site for the weekly check up. There was a thunderstorm happening and I was standing in front of two high power Continental FM transmitters that were combined together to produce the 100,000 watts for the radio station power. I was holding a clipboard and filling out a form with the blanks for the meter readings when the 830 foot tall tower took a lightning strike. The transmitters dumped off the air and restarted and I heard a loud arcing that seemed to go on for way too long coming from some two way radio racks far behind our transmitters. I turned to look at Andy and right behind him and above was a glowing blue globe the size of an orange that seemed to have come out of the wall. I said "Andy, look at that". Andy says "That's ball lightning!". It moved slowly down the narrow space between our transmitters and a block wall at just overhead level. I was holding the clipboard so I started to fan the ball very aggressively with the clipboard making a bunch of air motion on it but that didn't change it's path at all. Andy wanted me to poke the ball with the clipboard but I said "no, it will catch on fire". I reached into my pocket and pulled out my leather wallet and started to poke it into the ball. A tiny bit at first and then all the way in and that didn't change the ball either and didn't have any effect on my wallet. The ball moved onward for a few seconds more and then just vanished.
Its been close to 15 years since myself and a few other nerdy friends made microwave plasma. The one thing i thought was most interesting was the sound of the magnetron during the few seconds the plasma ball existed. The characteristic buzz was significantly louder. The plasma ball also emitted a sizzling sound. We used a candle that we would place a small glass jar over. When the oxygen was consumed and the flame extinguied itself we would press start. There would typically be several flashes like the plasma was trying to form but couldn't, then suddenly it would form and self sustain, ricocheting off thr inside of the glass jar. It would then pass through the glass jar and skitter around the ceiling of the microwave for several more seconds before dissipating. Now that i think about it, that was the one thing that all the plasma balls had in common, it always tried to travel vertically as far as it could go. Not sure if this is due to heat or what.
A family member of mine as well as myself have seen ball lighting on separate occasions. It came in through a key hole in a cabin they were in during a storm and was no more than 1 inch in diameter. It hit the wood wall and disappeared. I'd heard the story repeatedly, only to see a variation of it myself over a lake while camping in the Idaho panhandle. It was during a heavy storm and looked about 3ft in diameter, bright purple/blue and moved over the lake supersingly slow, no faster than a bird flies, running steadly parallel to the water about 10ft above the surface. It dispersed quickly after travelling roughly 60 to 100 ft. Very happy to see you did a video on this. Thanks.
When I was aged about 6 (1981) I was at home with my Grandmother, my parents had gone out. A MASSIVE thunder storm came through, which even to this day was the most violent electrical storm I've ever seen (including Miami tropical storms, and big thunderstorms in the Southern Alps of New Zealand)....An orange glowing ball floated in through the front window (without breaking it), bounced around the front room, and out of the back door of the house. For some reason, my Grandmother ALWAYS insisted on keeping the back door open during thunderstorms, and maybe it was for THIS exact reason, however she never explained her reasons. There was no physical trace left behind by the ball, no burns, no damage, and thankfully it didn't touch either myself or my gran. There is NO doubt in my mind that Ball Lightning IS real, but I've no idea what the process of creating it is!
Simon, I'm always impressed by how you plow through some of the most complicated and technical information and keep that nonchalant delivery. also, your research staff is top notch. Very nice presentation. Additionally, I've also seen ball lightning, briefly. It was at a generator explosion on a military location. This was a large diesel powered 840 KW DPGDS. One of the diesel engines got into a "runaway" status and finally the whole thing exploded. There was fire, arcs and sparks everywhere. But on the side of the generator a small ball just sort of bounced off of the side, floated away for several seconds and then just faded out. At the time I thought it may just be some super heated metal like magnesium that had vaporized into a hot ball. But now, I'm pretty sure it was ball lightning.
I've heard old people in the southern US talk about blue balls of fire rolling down rural roads. They say its spirits of the dead. Maybe what they saw was ball lightning? Edit: Has anyone else heard of the Appalachian practice of "talking the fire out" of a burn/wound?
This sounds very similar to the "Hessdalen lights". A light phenomenon that has been going on for many years in a valley in Norway. It has been recorded and observed many times. It is probably not related to ball lightning (but we do not know what ball lightning is so..) - as it can happen during any type of weather. I lecture at a local uni where one of the profs have been studying this phenomena for years. Even had students camp out at the site for weeks at a time. - and setup remote automated observation posts at the location. They even managed to get some spectrograms (that show rare earth metals). They do not know what it is - but it is clear it is not "little green men" but some sort of natural phenomena. Google "Hessdalen lights".
The Gulf coast is a high lightning area, so sightings would be likelier. "Talking out the fire out" probably works to reduce pain by psychosomatic effects. Many rituals could do this. For instance, Rasputin really could reduce the severity of bleeding, but not by divine power.
Look up 'anomaly' from the Metro franchise. I don't believe it to be connected to souls of the dead, even though they also appear in the games, but it's a notable example, probably inspired by some folk tales devs ran into
We had one come out of our telephone when the line was struck by lightning it passed 2 feet from me out through the window without shattering the glass, bounced a couple of times and fizzeled out. Coolest thing ever
Experienced it in our house late 90s. Lightning storm was just starting, and both front and back door were open to let my siblings run inside, you could see one door straight through to the other. There was suddenly a loud bang and a big sphere of light like a tiny sun suddenly appeared over our kitchen floor. Simultaneously, several electronics malfunctioned or were destroyed (answering machine, tv, and our doorbell started ringing and would not stop. I was so amazed and terrified, as a teen laughed and cried at the same time. My entire family (8 of us) were there and witnessed it together. Still one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
The one story I heard about ball lightning (in a house in our neighborhood) also included a lot of electronics being destroyed. My father always told us to unplug the TV during thunderstorms because he had seen the result (he was the local TV repair man).
My Nan was hit by ball lightning when she was a child. It followed her with every turn and finally overtook her and went under her feet. She had to learn how to walk, talk, feed herself, and take care of herself all over again
My family lived in Fiji during the late 1950s. On one of their trips back to New Zealand they had ball lightning enter the cabin, roll along the entire plane and disappear through a bulkhead wall. About twice the size of a soccer ball. They said the remainder of the trip was very quiet & subdued...
my grandpa had a run-in with one as a child in the 1950s and it left such an impression on him he told the story until he died. apparently they were in math class while there was a thunderstorm outside and it just floated in the window. their teacher froze in awe and said "nobody move." the ball lightning floated up to the teacher very close to his chest then it just turned around and floated back out the window. as a child i never thought of this but that teacher was basically seconds from a gruesome death in front of a class full of 9 year olds and he kept his cool for their sake. what an incredible presence of mind
Our little cottage got struck by ball lightening when I was little. Came in through the window, hit the wall a couple times, leaving holes as big as large caliber rifles. There was a hum all the time, except when it hit the wall when it made a huge bang each time. Then it went back out of the window. All the electrics in the cottage were fried. Fascinating phenomenon
@@Bibblethruster Because thats not how ball lightning works. Also within the laws of physics impossible. I dont know you tell me? Why do you fabricate a story?
@@ixinor The dutch company you're referring too, "convectron natural fusion" is pretty much a scam. Dijkhuis has published some papers in the field of ball lightning research, but the company has achieved nothing but lose it's investor's money. It's not the only company to have done this either, there are many companies claiming to have achieved sustainable fusion through harnessing the as-yet unknown physics behind ball lightning. But the problem with these companies is that they haven't proven they've achieved anything other than constructing glorified particle accelerator's. It's not fair to call someone a liar when you have such a limited amount of knowledge on the subject yourself. You can't claim to know what ball lightning can or cannot do unless you have a proven theory to back up those claims. If you're actually interested in ball lightning, go do some research instead of wasting time calling random people on the internet liars.
Along with my grandmother I saw ball lightning as a child (late sixties). A very bright ball, about 6 inches across, seemed to fizz along back and forth our fence at the bottom of our garden, about 70 yd's away. It did this for about 5 seconds then exploded in such a bright flash I fell backwards on to the floor. Not from any pressure wave but from the surprise and intense shock (Physiological not electrical). My grandmother did not fall back but said it definitely entered the kitchen (where we were). I don't think it did, but the light was so bright and such a surprise it could play tricks with your senses.
10:21 Common phenomenon at Muncie Indiana's old Westinghouse large power transformer factory. One of the tests for a new transformer was to shoot it with lightning from a large capacitor. A large switchgear array called the shooting crane was used to charge up the capacitor. As it was clicking along and building up the charge, it was fairly common to see ball lightning climbing the stairs along side the switches. It was more common if storming outside. I only witnessed it once, but it was pretty neat.
When I was a teenager in the 1970s I knew five boys who were caught in a field just as a thunderstorm brewed up. This was in north Florida where such storms were quite common. Most kids were taught not to seek shelter under any tall object such as a tree or barn, but these boys decided to run into an old two story tobacco barn that was nearby. While inside with the doors open, they were struck by lightning which knocked them all down, but only four of them got back up. The fifth boy was dead. I later spoke with one of the survivors who was a friend of mine and he described the event as involving a massive blast of air and a large round fireball which streaked through the barn. I don't recall him mentioning any smell, but after watching this video I wonder if it might have been ball lightning.
I saw ball lightning in my house when I was a kid. It was so weird that I would second-guess my memory of it today if not for the fact that my mom saw it too. A white or maybe bluish white ball of lightning, about the size of a basketball, appeared from an electrical socket and slowly floated across the room for a few seconds before exploding with a crack like thunder. It left burn marks on a plastic table in the room, although the marks came off with a wet paper towel. I was just a couple feet away from it when it all happened. This was during or around the time of Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana, which I think was 2006.
Great video! I actually saw ball-lightning twice in my life. First time when I was a bus driver in North Staffordshire, England, around 1984. I was leaving Cheddleton Hospital driveway heading to Cheddleton village and we, me and all the passengers, saw several orbs of ball lightning over what was Britain's Paper Mill in the valley. The other time was 1999 when I was cycling south in Sweden from the Arctic Circle around midnight in July - it never got dark. I saw a ball moving over the trees horizontally a distance in front of me - I thought it was aliens!
5%... I consider myself lucky to have seen it. The remnants of hurricane Frederick were passing through Tuscaloosa, AL as I was on my way to final exams. The weather was horrendous and on 15th St. I saw this amazing phenomenon. I knew what it was because I'm a reader. It was a bright iridescent blue about the size of a basketball moving slowly along a power line. It was like a membranous mass of jelly as it moved. I'm glad I saw it, and glad I was about 50' away.
You sure it was during finals? Hurricane Frederick was in mid September. I was in Birmingham, and Fall quarter at South Alabama started a week or so later
I remember some bad tornados in t town. Used to live in Duncan house on Reed street. BP beer runs subs from subway... Saw nasty lightning strike hit the tracks behind Atlanta bread co big orange sparks and blue blob of energy that down track a few feet and was gone.
My wife and i saw ball lightning when we lived in Vermont. It was one of the craziest things ive ever seen. It floated up into the sky and exploded into a massive ball of electricity. My wife saw it go into the garage, float around, then exit. Thats where I started seeing it. Absolutely nuts.
I saw a lighting blob when I was 8 or 9 y.o. I was walking home from school on a pissy wet day when a smallish bolt of lightning hit a power pole near where I was walking, a blob formed on the top of the pole and then floated off and over the biscuit factory next to me. It was crackling and changing it's shape as it floated away. It lasted about 30 to 45 seconds and was about the size of an oil barrel, I wasn't the only one to see it but no one ever mentioned again.
Me and my twin brother and our mom witnessed it in central Illinois. After spending a couple of hours in the basement, waiting for the tornado warnings to end, we were all in me and my brothers room. Me and mom were reaching for an article of clothing on the floor when a bright white ball the size of a volleyball, flew into the floor between us, (as fast as lightning). My brother was on the other side of the room and saw it go from ceiling to floor in a flash. No damage was done, except for a small dark discoloration on the ceiling. It was years before one of us heard of ball lighting and we found out what it was.
I've seen it, at "Screaming Woods" in Pluckley, UK. Me and three friends were walking by the side of Screaming Woods on a dirt farm track. In the distance we saw a very bright white light, far brighter than motorbike headlights were in 1984.. It headed towards us along the track at a great speed for the 'road conditions' of the track, maybe 50-60 mph. When it got close my friends all ran into the woods, I stayed back a little longer, until it was maybe 30 yards from me, then I ran into the woods. My friends described what happened as I ran into the woods, and they described it as "fizzling out" about 10 yards after it passed where I had been standing. There was a very strong smell of ozone, something that I knew due to having a 12V DC trainset as a kid.. My personal guess, partially fortified by this video, is thet they're small particles of matter that hold a capacitive charge. Capacitors in Class C amplifiers (If memory serves me correctly from my electronics tutoring, in their name) but also by practical experience in the world of rock n roll sound work, capacitors hold a charge for about 1.5 minutes after the amplifier is turned down and switched off... You don't disconnect any speaker cables until you hear that 'Click" as the capacitors discharge.. Just positing a theory, by all means debunk with superior understanding. I'm all ears!
My late aunt had a very similar experience to that described in this video of ball lightning in an airliner. It also, coincidentally, occurred in an airliner around New York City. She grew up in San Antonio, TX, but had married a man from New York. In the early 1950s, she had been visiting family in San Antonio, and was returning to New York. I believe she was riding in a Douglas DC-4, an unpressurized airliner with four piston engines. She was seated just a row or two behind the cockpit door at the front of the cabin There were storms over the city as they were on a night approach to La Guardia Airport. Lightning was flashing very brightly around the aircraft, and strong turbulence was bouncing them in all directions. The passengers were terrified. Suddenly a rapid series of brilliantly bright flashes of lightning and loud crackling noises took place. She was sure that the lightning had struck the airplane. A moment later, a bright ball of lightning came whizzing up the aisle and exploded with a very loud bang against the closed cockpit door. She said the ringing in her ears never completely went away for the rest of her life.
Here in south America is called ¨Centella¨ and they are quite dangerous to be an ilusion, there are several videos filmed during electrical storms that show how they are and the damage they cause
My grandmother saw ball lightning when she was a teenager in West Virginia in the 1930s. She was home alone in the middle of the afternoon when a terrible electrical storm blew up. She was laying on a sofa waiting for the storm to pass when there was a tremendous crash and an orange ball of electricity came “rolling” through an open window (no screens in windows then). It was about the size of a basketball and appeared to “roll” across the room several feet off the floor. It passed thru the room and out a different open window on the opposite wall from where it entered. Upon exiting the window it hit a tree and exploded - splitting the tree trunk in half. As it passed her, she could feel all of the hair on her body stand up from the static charge.
I´ve seen a ball lightning once, in our kitchen. It came from our phone, was about fist size, yellow-white in color. It went through the kitchen and just disappeared. No bang or sound. No storm around, the weather was nice. I was just baffled.
I have seen what I believe to have been ball lightning when fencing on a farm. They were flashes off light much like hand grenades. They started at one end of the valley and got closer and then passed me and carried on passed me, then came back the other way. I would estimate around 20 plus individual blasts, around 10 to 20 feet above ground.
my mother talked of ball lighting . happened in our house. before i was born. but yea its real AF. But I also almost had a midair with the basketball UAPs in 05, taking off out of Taji
@@Rex-ii2yz Same. A friend of mine says he and his family saw ball lightning in their house back in the 80s. Fun fact; his father was a professor of physics at the local uni at the time.
My GF’s great-grandparents and grandmother and other siblings would sit in the middle of their cabin on the open prairie in chairs on glass isolators. She said she was told that it was to protect them from the lightning balls.
When my mother was a young teenager living in Vernal, Utah, she experienced ball lightning. It came bouncing down the street and she said it actually bounced through a house leaving a dark burn mark. Interesting fact: my mother was raised in a real log cabin.
From my research using Tesla coils, ball lightning is carbon based in the form of an aerogel or fullerene impregnated with ozone. Conditions in the lightning strike are similar to how fullerenes are created, except that fullerenes are created in an inert gas environment. Power is also a requirement, as the more power available, the larger the ball that can be created. With a small coil running from a 12KV 30mA NST, I was able to achieve balls up to 1/4 inch using a small chunk of burning car tire to produce the soot. The balls ran the full gamut of colors mentioned in this video. A coil running a 12KV 60mA NST achieved balls to 1/2 inch, and a coil with double that power went to 1 inch balls. In reports, in every case a source of carbon is present along with an electrical discharge. Like a jet aircraft. The outside and inside of a jet aircraft is covered in a fine layer of soot. If the static discharge system is inoperable St. Elmo's fire will be seen around the windows and a ball can form and pass through the window by capacitive action, as the soot on both sides creates the capacitor.
@@KalkigerKolben It won't happen because he made it up lol. Doubling power to double a SPHERE already gives it away as nonsense. Basic geometry makes that impossible.
My parents were watching TV around 10:45 PM when a ball lightning entered through the closed window floated straight across the living room and zipped into the center of the CRT television, killing the TV instantly. It singed the bug screen on the window and left a small dark spot in the center of the TV tube. I had gone to bed just about a half hour earlier and missed the fireworks! It was strange as we live on a farm, there was a 40 foot windmill nearby (converted into a large weather vane), a 90 foot grain elevator and 6 grain bins, and a Behlen galvanized steel shed nearby. That was over 35 years ago and has never happened since.
My grandfather once mentioned that he experienced a ball lightning. When he was little he said that it came down the chimney of their fireplace. It launched the metal fence(don't know the name of it. A metal fence like thing in front of open fireplaces.) out of the windows and half way across the field outside. The ball then went out a window and disappeared.
My mother and father have separately told me how they were visiting a relative and seeing a ball lightning zigzag along a water hose in the yard, cutting the hose into fifteen centimeter sections before flying in the air and striking the barn wall. Where the ball lightning struck, there was for a long time a small circular burn mark that the relatives later painted over.
@@memitim171 It'd been there for thirty years and barely visible even if you knew where to look. If it had been up to me, I'd have cut out the scorched piece of plank and preserved it somehow :D
My roommate's father from Quebec Canada saw ball lightning once in the late 1970s in a small village during the winter . The story was told to me long before internet in 1990s . They had put too much wood in the wood stove on a late winter night . The father opened the front door and upstairs window to cool down . A glowing orb not much larger than a basketball floated in the upstairs window and slowly came down the stairs still suspended and drifted effortlessly out the front door . The only strange phenomenon I experienced was a hole- punch - cloud .
My sister made ball lightning when she was about 8. Everyone else was in the living room watching tv and she had gone to her room to see how the electrical outlet worked. She shorted it out of course, but as the breaker flipped and the lights went out, a small 3 inch ball of light came out of her room and hovered through the living room and kinda fizzled out of existence after about 6-7 seconds. It wasn’t noisy, but it had a hum like a refrigerator.
I saw ball lightning once. There was a massive thunderstorm with loads of cloud-cloud flashes but due some oddity of air pressure / inversions it was totally silent and I have never seen anything like this since. While watching this a glowing something appeared from behind a tree and moved until it passed behind another tree and did not reappear. I have no idea how big it was or how far away as there was nothing to refer it to, all I can say that it was at least 50m away as this is how far the trees were. It might have been a km a way and moving fast or 60m and slow. A very memorable evening.
In 1970 my father had just got off the phone with a friend one of the subjects of the conversation was ball lighting. My father didn't believe it existed. 10 minutes later ball lighting came through the window and exploded by his leg. The explosion burned through his pants and gave him burns as well as leaving a burn mark on the floor. It also knocked out the electricity in a mile radius, burned out every device in the house with a transistor, and arced all the circuit breakers closed. Loudest bang I ever heard.
I think I may have experienced this as a teenager. I'm not 100% sure, I'm a bit of a hypochondriac about just anything like this admittedly, so I don't even trust my own memory, but I remember being in my house upstairs and it was storming like crazy and I just remember hearing buzzing and looking out the window and seeing like a ball of light maybe a couple hundred yards outside my window. It was weird I could tell it was supposed to be lighting but it was a ball. It suddenly exploded with the loudest thunder I've ever heard, just as I saw it, but didn't do any damage. A weird smell, maybe sulfuric might have been there too, I vaguely recollect that, but maybe I'm just trying to fill gaps. This is weird lol
I really enjoyed this, 10 years ago was woken up by loud a thunderstorm at night and while my wife and I were talking while lying in bed a volleyball sized bright light blue ball came thru the wall in the corner of the room floating into the room lasting about 5 seconds and disappeared. On the other side of the wall is where the electrical service attaches to the house no damage was done but thought somehow a lightning strike traveled the power lines and discharged thru the wall. Oddly enough the 100amp service to the house did not have the whole house breaker trip when this happened. My dad described similar ball lightning during a family dinner in the 50's when he was a kid, and a blue ball came thru the wall over the table where the family was eating and went out thru a mirror on the opposite wall which was cracked when it went thru.
My great aunt once told me a story of a storm that happened in the 1930s on Black Island Newfoundland, where a ball of lightning floated in through the window, went down the stairs to the basement, then passed into the wall and disappeared. The dirt clot hypothesis would make a lot of sense based on the geology and abundance of organic matter as it was being farmed at the time. The rocks there are granites, basalts, and iron rich shales that produce fine brown dusts of oxides.
I saw ball lightning once I think in 1991, though maybe it was something else. I was in the passenger seat when my dad was driving. We saw a bolt of lightning hit a hillside. The lightning then broke up into three or four balls of lightning that Zig zagged back and forth before they disappeared into the ground. Even though we were not that close to it, we could still hear a loud sizzling noise.
There's a family story handed down amongst my relatives that a great uncle and some of his cows were killed when ball lighting entered his barn during a storm. it was described as about the size of a basketball, and floated slowly along about a foot off the ground down the middle of the barn floor. I wonder if this had anything to do with the methane undoubtedly in the barn. My dad also had a strange story about tinkering with the back of an old cathode type TV: a 4" bolt of blue-green electricity appeared out of the back of the TV, headed towards his hand, but was moving slowly enough he could yank his hand aside and then watch it float there a few seconds before it exploded with a loud bang.
I've only seen ball lightning once. It was during a power outage, and I'd just laid down for bed. I was sitting there thinking about how unnerving it was to not hear anything, not even the background hum of electricity in the house. I normally slept with a fan on for noise, and with the dead silence, I was wide awake. Just a couple minutes after laying down a white, crackling (visually, but silent) orb of electricity appeared near the top of the door (which led outside) and traveled along the top edge of the room towards a closet directly opposite the door, then vanished. I witnessed a light of light phenomenon in that house, almost all during power outages, many of which I've never found a satisfying answer for. Now I'm wondering if they all couldn't have been attributed to ball lightning.
I witnessed ball lightning once. I was a kid & my grandmother was driving on a back road. It had been storming, but wasn’t really raining much at the time. It was about 2.5-3 feet in diameter. It came down from the sky at roughly a 60 degree angle. Quick enough to startle us, but slow enough for her to react and slam on the brakes. It hit the road in front of the car, seemed to skip once & then “bounced” up in the air striking the top of a palm tree that exploded into flames.
My gran always told told us about her and her friend when they were in their 20's, and my gran was picking up her friend in her car during a thunderstorm, her friend came out the house and as she was running to the car my gran saw this ball of lightning floating about the ground moving towards her friend, before she could react it had passed straight through her friend, apparently her friend didnt even notice except for that it got brighter around her for a second or 2
I have a story that has been passed down on my family. One of my grandparents had this happen in the early part of the 19th century. The ball came in the front door burning through a screen. And moved slowly through the house and out the back door that was open. The back had a deep covered porch and the door was often left open even if it was raining. There was a smell of ozone and metal left in the air.
Well Simon, it's simple! Ball Lightning is a Magic the Gathering (4th edition first printing!) 6/1 creature with the Elemental creature type and the abilities of Trample, Haste, and Sacrifice this creature at the beginning of your end step. 🤣
I’ve witnessed this phenomenon, during a very severe tornado warned storm, and it was amazing. I was in awe of it slowly hovering in the sky above my apartment, only saw it for moments, ran to grab my phone (was an older iPhone as this was many years ago) and by the time I returned to the window, it was gone. It was golden white and was like it had waves of energy fluctuating around it, almost like it was some kind of plasma? It just looked like pure, bright energy, like a really good special effect. It felt natural and yet unnatural.
I was in a restaurant in FL and it was a bad thunderstorm. There was a huge window facing the road, we were sitting and waiting for food. Lightening struck a power line pole and a ball of blueish color lightening split in 2, one going each way down the power line. It ran into a transformer blew it off the pole and continued down the line for at least a quarter of a mile. The power went out. Luckily the resteraunt was running the grill with gas and server us eventhough the power went out. I will never forget those balls running down the power line. Was a crazy experience to witness.
I couldn’t agree more! just the wikipedia page of Upper-Atmospheric Lightning is a fascinating read, and the story behind the discovery of STEVE is great, and just how different it is (both visually and physically) than aurora! I hope someday TIFO does a video on some of these phenomena as well
I had an experience of ball lighting myself. It was around 1997 in Fort Worth, TX, and I was out working on my car, trying to finish up because there were storms on the way. That was when I heard this loud crackling sound, and when I looked up to see what it was is when I saw a large blue ball about the size of a very large beach ball with white lightning bolts moving around the ball. I would guess that it was moving about 35mph (56kph) in a straight line from west ro east coming from the rough direction of the income storms.
I experienced/accidentally produced ball lightning in the late 70s when I was a child. I’m embarrassed to have done something so stupid when I fully knew better, but I slipped a pair of tweezers into an outlet in our bathroom while I was at the sink. There was a loud buzz and flash that didn’t harm me in the least, but startled me causing me to jump backward and land sitting on the toilet. Well, to my surprise, the flash remained in the form of a brightly glowing sphere of light, about 7-8 inches in diameter, that proceeded to slowly but steadily move from the outlet across the top of the counter about 10 inches above it, and then continuing across the room until in disappeared through the bathroom door on the opposite wall. I was stunned at what I had just observed, and a minute later, my mom was banging on the bathroom door wanting to know what happened. In the aftermath, the outlet was melted, tweezers were half vaporized, and there was a round singe mark on the inside of the bathroom door. From the initial flash until the ball completed its transit was probably 5 seconds in duration, traveling a distance of about 10 feet.
We were sitting in am old gravel pit in a car at night in the late summer. We had been enjoying a campfire but an approaching thunderstorm made us take cover in the guys car. As the storm came closer and before the rain started we noticed a weird phenomenon out of the ground about 20 feet in front of us. There was a number of fuzzy balls of lights coming out of the ground in front of us. These light balls were spinning in a corkscrew pattern and they were lasting about 30 seconds. Most of them were going about 5 feet from there starting point on an upward path at an angle of about 60 degrees. The balls were starting at one center point and were going out all around the 360 degree circle. Some of them even flew past the side of the car before disappearing. After watching this light show for about 45 seconds and moving closer to the windshield to get a better look a bolt of lightning struck the ground in the center of the circle and we were scared spit less by the massive crack of instantaneous thunder that followed. Then blinded and partially deafened we heard the heaven open up and the rain come pleating down on the roof. Once we recovered we got the heck out of there.
I've seen what I assume was ball lightning at sea in the Caribbean. 80 miles off Cuba headed to Central America. Relatively smooth water ,steady 10 knt wind, with a heavy thunderstorm due south. Though we weren't in the storm , we could see what I assume was ball lightning skipping across the surface a couple miles away. Blue in color ending in a bright flash. Followed by thunder maybe 5 seconds later. Capt.Bob SV ( Sailing Vessel ) 27th Chance, Tampa Fl, USA 🇺🇸
When I was an apprentice in a power plant, I’ve seen a tiny ball of electricity form and stay suspended in between an electrical contact. I was able to see this many times due to all the testing on our air blast circuit breaker. It would stay there as long as the power was on but we always had to shut it off soon due to the heat generated by the ball of electricity. Found out there was a stray DC voltage leaking in to the circuit that was causing it. So AC would be on one side of the contact and DC on the other. When the contact closes and opens immediately, the ball of electricity would form and stay suspended in the middle. I don’t know how this is actually possible, but all I know is that it stopped when I located and isolated the DC power.
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Ball lightning is because of the same thing that makes Northern lights , it's not just when there is a storm or thunder etc... I have seen it twice in my life Also fun fact lightning Also shoots upwards not just down to the earth and that is more strange because where does it go ?
The nazi had studied it alot also that it can stop eletric devices working nazi documented this when there Morse code stored working in norway similar to a emp charge
I believe I've seen it myself, though not in nearly as spectacular a fashion. I was standing at my window, watching a terrific light show as lightning streaked from one end of the sky to another. Then, one bold made it about halfway through the sky, but its end curled! The bolt itself faded like any other, but the round curl kept going, and in its wake there were small orange glowing "embers" left in a trail. Eventually, the ball too faded out and it was over. To explain it this way makes it sound like it lasted a long time, but this probably took place in less than 3 seconds. There was hardly even time to be surprised by it before I realized what I might have seen. This was about 7 years ago.
When are you going to start to read your script properly?
A few days ago I stumbled across the video below which contains some footage of ball lightening starting at the 1:20 mark.
th-cam.com/video/K-mV_8aeQsk/w-d-xo.htmlsi=GrdIXS8VKe5CGVnT&t=80
Ball lightning is future humans trying to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back.
😂😂😂best comment lol
^^^^^Best comment award 🥇
in this age of AI revolution it makes sense
Apparently you can't have two much of a good thing.
"I'll be back"
I’ve seen one kill a person less than hundred meters from me in 1995 in Brno, Czech Republic.
It was at a disability hospital, a four-story building forming half court-yard with a tractor parked there and a person smoking a cigarette next to it.
I watched a perfect orange sphere about the size of the football descending along lightning rod cable without touching it. It took about two seconds for it to descend the 3 stories, then about 2 m above ground it jumped horizontally towards the tractor. When it touched it disappeared, and the man on the other side of it fell down dead.
There was no smell no sound and only thing they found on the person was small burn underneath his watch.
I remember the authorities not believing me. I was 19 at the time.
@@thomaskrejci5237 I can believe the cops not believing you. They think everyone is lying. Unless it was someone you knew, or had a beef with , why make up that story ? Kinda specific... What happened kid ? Well... Uh... No... You made that up. Cops... ugh.
that's amazing like a novel
That stinks they dismissed what you saw . And only a little shock can end you
But of course you don’t have footage
@@hopefullynotbutprobably6643it was 1995 dude. The first camera phones wouldn't be coming out for another 5 years, did you expect him to lug around a VHS camcorder at all times or what
I’ve never seen ball lightning, but I’ve been in thunder snow, which is absolutely terrifying. You could feel the static in the air. All the hairs on your body stood straight up and you could see flashes around you from the lightning, but it was snowing so hard you couldn’t see 5 feet in front of you. It was like being in a neon light there was a purplish blue glow everywhere.
Lighting strikes during a snowstorm are also absolutely blinding. Like a flashbang each time. The flash stuns the retina and freezes a black-&-white version of the current images in your vision for a couple of seconds each time. At least in my experience.
That's elmos fire. It's the air becoming ionised from. The high voltage potential. You were lucky not to be struck
@@MrRedeyedJediNO big deal if he was struck....
@davelowets yeah, will only fry your heart with 300kv, no big deal
I had an experience with this when I was about 8. I was sitting at the table in the dining room. The table was next to a window. The weather was bad. A lot of rain. When there was a flash of lightning an orb of light about the size of a basketball came in the window. It wasn't just a steady light. It looked like crackling electricity but no sound. It flew over the table, then dropped down to skim over the floor and flew towards the refrigerator. As it approached the refrigerator, it flew up and over the refrigerator and through the wall to outside.
My Aunt was in the kitchen and witnessed it too. I don't remember a smell afterwards. It didn't do any damage to the house. It was a spectacle I will never forget.
😳 that is wild
My great grandmother said this happened to her... it was in Houston, Tx back in the 50s- a bright ball of light came in through the window, went across the living room, and then up and out the chimney.
Similar to what my mom and grandmother had, it popped out of the oven after a lightning strike outside, went around the kitchen and eventually flew into a wall and disappeared.
I had the same experience when I was 12… no damage no noise late at night. I will never forget the fear I felt.
This was south Texas. I wasn't afraid... just in awe and mesmerized by such a strange sight. Later I heard of St. Elmo's fire and thought that is what I had experienced but later learned of ball lightning and realized that is what I had seen that day. Of course this was way before cell phones but even today, they occur so suddenly and vanish as quickly I doubt anyone would be able to record it unless they were already recording an event and it happened simultaneously.
This is why you don't mess with a mage.
Smh funny!
Mages when I cast a non-magic missile:
💯
This is why a play as a mage 😂
Hokus pokus, your dick in focus!
Honestly, with phenomena like ball lighting, it's no wonder tales of magic used to be so commonplace. After all, if nowadays we still have trouble comprehending it, what were our ancestors supposed to think? Just imagine...
During an intense storm suddenly a ball of lighting comes barreling through your home/church, bouncing and swerving, before striking someone dead. What else would you think other than "yeah, he just got smote". It's up there on the same level as getting hit by a meteorite.
Exactly! Man, imagine if you knew NOTHING about the physical sciences whatsoever & saw this! Or a meteor! Or lightning for that matter! Our poor ancestors must’ve been terrified!
"Women deserve an equal say in politics and if I'm wrong, may God strike me down"
An orb of ball lightning floats in through the window, maneuvers around everyone else and touches the man, killing him instantly.
"Well, chaps, I suppose we'll start suppressing women's rights, treating them like property, and all that. Shall we?"
"Yeah, s'pose we must do. No other option really"
This explains so much of the bad stuff from history
Tribe: Everyone arguing over who stole Kronk's sweet melon.
The Universe: Hey guys, you ever see an eclipse before?
Tribe: Repent, the end is nigh! REPENT!
The Universe: Calm down, humans, it was just a bass drop... You'll get it in a few million years.
@@RndmBad A few hundred millennia or so
It’s debated when “modern” humans originated, but somewhere between 50k to 300k years ago. Around 50k years ago is where we see archeological remains like cave paintings, but fossilized remains matching ours date back further.
My brother witnessed it traveling down a barbed wire fence as a young kid so I've always accepted it's existence. I believe that one was orange and around the size of a basketball.
I got to see ball lightening during a thunderstorm sitting drinking coffee with my grandfather in the milk room on his dairy farm… coolest shit ever, greatest memory ever. Lightening struck the barn we were in, and rolled out into the yard in front of us until it got so small it disappeared… when it came off the lightening rod it was the size of a VW…. I truly feel blessed to have witnessed it. The blessing is the fact it happened when my grandfather was there… simple things in life.
I'm so jealous!
A VW Fox or a VW Crafter? Two very different sized VWs.
That's so cool! I MAY have seen ball lightning when I was motorcycling near Yosemite during a lightning storm. It was daytime and a tree near the road got hit, but there was a little sphere of blue light that passed above the road. Not certain, but it was odd enough that I remember it more than 50 years later...
A few years later I almost got hit - I was on the peak of a 13,000 foot mountain in Colorado when it clouded up and rained briefly. There was a marker made of sticks wired together to make a cross, and as my friends and I approached it, the wire was buzzing quietly, and as thunder was rumbling closer, it became obvious that it was time to leave - you could feel your hair trying to stand up too....yikes!
@@udenszirnis1644beetle….is my guess.
@@stevengill1736 you saw it. That’s it. I just moved to Colorado and moved out in a month. Such a beautiful place. Just couldn’t live there. I hope Colorado finds itself. Gods country for sure.
My father saw two instances of ball lightening, when he was flying in the Aleutians during WWII. In the first case, he noticed it on the wing of his P-40. He tilted the plane and the ball rolled down the wing, through the fuselage, and out onto the other wing. He did this several times, rolling it back and forth from wingtip to wingtip - but each time it got a bit smaller. Finally, when it was quite small, it dropped over the wingtip and was gone.
In the second occurrence, he was test flying a transport (don't recall the type) and the ball lightening appeared inside the plane, ricocheting from side to side and melting the floor and seats wherever it touched anything. When it got to the rear of the plane, it went out through the tail and was gone. (He had to report this as 'a lightening strike' since ball lightening 'did not exist'.)
The first example sounds like St. Elmo's Fire, rather than ball lightning.
@@derekstein6193 I think you have a good point: It is quite likely that what we call "ball lightening" is really several different phenomena combined into one label. For example, the clod of dirt hypothesis would not explain any of the aquatic or aerial instances, but seems to be supported for terrestrial lightening over a silicon geology.
Foo fighters are ball lightning?
@@janetchennault4385its not. Ball lightning has a clear definition. Ball lightning dont interact with matter such as rolling the way its described.
I saw 2 ball lightnings on Ahvenanmaa, Finland. It was as the worst lightning storm I've ever seen was calming down. We where sitting out on the porch drinking. The sea was really wild and it rained pretty much, so there were no boats out. There were still a lot of lightnings, 5-10 per minutes. All of a sudden I see a orange ball coming out of the bay next to ours, I was emitting a warm glow, not at all blinding, distance maybe 200-250m, hovering about 2 meters over the surface, it was absolutely quiet. We discussed what it could be, UFO or ball lightning. Then my mother saw another one, exactly alike, coming out of the new bay over. They continues on a collision course for about a minute, until the got out in the waterway. There they merged went down the waterway in an incredible speed. I would say about 200-300km/h, some disagreed and said 100-200km/h, and some said a lot faster. All I know is that it was one hell of a lot faster then any boat I've seen in my life. Especially in such rough waves. The thing I thought was most eerie, was the absolute silent.
I saw ball lightning once, around 1990. A summer thunderstorm had just ended - at least, the rain had ended - and I was standing on a 2nd-story porch overlooking the street. It was dark, perhaps 10 pm, and the air was very still. A ball of white light about the size of a basketball came drifting down the center of the street, about five feet above the pavement, accompanied by a hissing/fizzing sound. The ball passed in front of me, traveled another 20 feet or so, and then vanished with a slight pop. No steam, no smoke, and if there was any odor it didn't drift my way. I knew what it was immediately, but to this day I remain astonished by the sight. I have an extensive technical background, but nothing I know of physics and chemistry could come close to explaining it.
The number of reports where the ball travels straight down a defined path (e.g. a street or a church aisle) seems to be significant, but I have no clue what that suggests.
The paths could possibly be explained that they follow "walled columns" of air that are bordered by types of walls, whether its street curbs or church pews.
Your story is too detailed which means its fake news
It might be interesting to see if there was sewer or or other infrastructure under the road. I made a plasma ball in my microwave with a grape😅. I know with that experiment there are several factors required for it to work but these descriptions remind me of it. There's some fun examples of it on youtube.
@@modelenginerding6996 Overhead wires are another possible "guide".
I'm surprised we don't get more video or photos these days, given the several billion cellphones out there.
@@jpdemer5 for sure, I thought you omitted as some places have underground. I've heard of airline passengers seeing what sounds like ionized air go down an isle during a lightning strike.
Having the spectroscope and camera run for a long time to record one and get spectroscopic analysis of what it is made of was a brilliant idea.
They weren't planning on seeing ball lightning, they themselves admit they were very lucky. There's a whole documentary on it. th-cam.com/video/j2cO0_3IDyA/w-d-xo.html
@@tomcass240it's actually a wonderful documentary. Such a fascinating phenomenon. I've witnessed it myself, and so wonderful and a person to see all the data and that we were not crazy
We used to see this rather frequently when I worked for a 50,000 watt AM radio station at the tower array location. Sometimes during or right before a storm it could be seen rolling between the towers. The chief engineer said sometimes when the main transmitter tube was close to needing replaced it would form in the tube cubicle and fall to the concrete and dicipate like marbles when the larger ball broke up.
I saw it once, when I was young. We were driving down the highway in Texas during a storm. Out the window, on the side of the car I was sitting on, I saw a blueish white orb skipping down the side of the highway, even with our car. My whole family saw it, as did the people behind us. I saw them pointing. It kept pace with us for about 15 seconds before turning off into a field and dissipating. It was terrifying!
26:46 this theory of hallucination also seems not not account for why multiple people would witness the ball of lightning in the same place behaving the same way; as it moves around, people would almost certainly experience seeing slightly different locations of the phenomena instead of a shared experience all seeing the ball of lightning occurring in the exact same place
If we hallucinated as much as skeptics claim, no one could drive a car!
If ball lightning happens when no one is around, did ball lightning happen?
also the electromagnetic pulse produced by a lightning strike lasts only a fraction of a second, basically as much as the strike itself lasts
@@MisterTalkingMachine The EM field from lightning is brief, but in the example of TMS (now in widespread therapeutic use, not experimental), the effect lingers after the brief magnetic field is collapsed.
@@beenaplumber8379 interesting, I'll look into it
I heard an extremely large explosion in my backyard one summer afternoon. I had earlier been on my roof blowing out gutters and noticed some dark clouds several miles away. I had used a 20 ft aluminum ladder to get on the roof and left it there while I cleaned up inside the house. After the explosion, all my electrical went off in the house. I called my neighbor across the street with my iPhone to see if his power was off. He said he was standing at his front door and had seen a large white light ball above my house. The explosion literally shook my house. I soon found out that it took all the electrical devices in four nearby houses out, garage door motors, microwaves, tv's, computers, etc. I had to replace every electric device in my house. My neighbor who saw the ball said it was not a streak of lightning. He was certain it was a light ball! Now, I know what it was. Thanks for the video.
When my mother was young, she worked in a garment factory and told a story of a ball of fire that came in through a window, circled around the room and then back out another window. She said it was bluish in color and about the size of a baseball. There were scorch marks around the walls, but no other damage.
I had ball lightning in my living room, near my records for about a second about 2 years ago. (too quick for me to grab my phone as it vanished as quickly as it appeared) at the end of a thunderstorm. It fried my TV and the macbook that was connected to it. I managed to fix the TV with a replacement motherboard. I needed a new macbook though and unfortunately I hadn't done a recent backup!
Was your macbook plugged in?
edit: ah, never mind. It was connected to the TV 🙂
How convenient. TH-cam is full of liars. The fact you are already explaining why you didn't capture it tells me everything I need to know
In my 40 years, I have seen two ball lightning.
One came through our ipen fireplace and went through the apartment, and then through the porch glass door that was closed. This happened in the late 80s.
The second time, we were waiting for the school buss, and one appeared from a powering and did a couple of maneuvering before exploding in a bright white flash and a loud bang. That was in the early 90s.
The first one did not explode but just fizzled out.
None of them made any sound except for the explosion one.
I haven't seen a space alien, haven't seen a ghost, haven't seen a zombie, not even an Elvis impersonator, but I have seen a blue ball lightning.
Thats because one of these exists. The others do not.
ah yes, obviously Elvis impersonators don't exist XD /joking
I've seen the ghost of an Elvis impersonator play ping-pong with and alien zombie using ball lightning. What are the chances, right?
Thank You, Thank You very much.
I have seen ghosts and also UFO's 3 times. We are not alone.
20:50 Girlfriend's eyes now tracking me as I suspiciously walk over to the microwave, whistling, with a box of matches...
I'm sure there will be a lot of posts like this. My grandmother sat in her living room watching television, in I guess about 1961 or 1962, when what she described as a "ball of fire" came in through a window on her left, traveled across the room in front of her, and hit one of those big, 50s style clocks on the wall to her right. The clock stopped working but otherwise seemed undamaged. The wallpaper around the clock wasn't burned but I distinctly remember the unusual, scorched pattern on the wallpaper around it. I don't know if there was a smell or any sound. If there was, she never mentioned it.
Dang! Ball Lightning would have been a good story for X-Files!
I've never seen it myself, but my Mom once told me of the time she saw ball lightning back in the 60's in central Florida. She heard a boom as the transformer on the electric pole across the street blew and looked out just in time to see this softball-sized blue orb fly from the sparking transformer to the chain-link fence around their yard. It quickly wiggled it's way down the top of the fence, all the way to the back yard (a bit less than a hundred feet), and then jumped to an orange tree next to the fence and split it in half before it was gone. Definitely sounds like something I don't want to mess with haha! ^_^
That would be such a wild thing to experience! Frightening but fascinating!
Story sounds extremely fabricated
@@ixinor Oh noes, some guy with a fabricated user name on the internet doesn't believe me. Ask me if I care.
@@olencone4005 its why i protect people against lies
@@ixinor Baseless accusations from behind a fake name. Yeah, ask your mom to wake me up when you get to something I should care about.
The following experience was not a hallucination. In 1983 or 4, while working as a QC inspector at Aero Sound Engineering in Crockett, TX, I saw an extremely bright light out the small door across from the offices. Being free to walk around, I went to the door; outside, it was much brighter than daylight, and drifting slowly downward was a round, smooth, intensely bright blue-white ball the size of a basketball. When it descended on and stuck to an overhead cable. The cable was through the equator of the sphere. That is when I noticed the electrical crackling noise as it moved slowly to the left {west} until it contacted the transformer at the following phone pole. At that point, it exploded loudly, sparks flying around it.
I was a broadcast engineer in the Orlando Florida radio market and one day around 2001 or so my colleague Andy and I were at the WXXL FM radio transmitter site for the weekly check up. There was a thunderstorm happening and I was standing in front of two high power Continental FM transmitters that were combined together to produce the 100,000 watts for the radio station power. I was holding a clipboard and filling out a form with the blanks for the meter readings when the 830 foot tall tower took a lightning strike. The transmitters dumped off the air and restarted and I heard a loud arcing that seemed to go on for way too long coming from some two way radio racks far behind our transmitters.
I turned to look at Andy and right behind him and above was a glowing blue globe the size of an orange that seemed to have come out of the wall. I said "Andy, look at that". Andy says "That's ball lightning!". It moved slowly down the narrow space between our transmitters and a block wall at just overhead level. I was holding the clipboard so I started to fan the ball very aggressively with the clipboard making a bunch of air motion on it but that didn't change it's path at all. Andy wanted me to poke the ball with the clipboard but I said "no, it will catch on fire". I reached into my pocket and pulled out my leather wallet and started to poke it into the ball. A tiny bit at first and then all the way in and that didn't change the ball either and didn't have any effect on my wallet. The ball moved onward for a few seconds more and then just vanished.
Woulda ground out through your body, it's still electricity. You might have seen some swamp gas. Cool story though!
Another fabricated story
And the credit cards were fine?
Its been close to 15 years since myself and a few other nerdy friends made microwave plasma. The one thing i thought was most interesting was the sound of the magnetron during the few seconds the plasma ball existed. The characteristic buzz was significantly louder. The plasma ball also emitted a sizzling sound. We used a candle that we would place a small glass jar over. When the oxygen was consumed and the flame extinguied itself we would press start. There would typically be several flashes like the plasma was trying to form but couldn't, then suddenly it would form and self sustain, ricocheting off thr inside of the glass jar. It would then pass through the glass jar and skitter around the ceiling of the microwave for several more seconds before dissipating. Now that i think about it, that was the one thing that all the plasma balls had in common, it always tried to travel vertically as far as it could go. Not sure if this is due to heat or what.
3:58 "The Hunt For Ball Lightnign" 🤣
That's way more dangerous than lightning.
Someone didn't proof-read
Beat me to it.
I was scrolling down to comment this 😂😂
@or knew exactly what they where doing alano3457
A family member of mine as well as myself have seen ball lighting on separate occasions. It came in through a key hole in a cabin they were in during a storm and was no more than 1 inch in diameter. It hit the wood wall and disappeared. I'd heard the story repeatedly, only to see a variation of it myself over a lake while camping in the Idaho panhandle. It was during a heavy storm and looked about 3ft in diameter, bright purple/blue and moved over the lake supersingly slow, no faster than a bird flies, running steadly parallel to the water about 10ft above the surface. It dispersed quickly after travelling roughly 60 to 100 ft. Very happy to see you did a video on this. Thanks.
When I was aged about 6 (1981) I was at home with my Grandmother, my parents had gone out. A MASSIVE thunder storm came through, which even to this day was the most violent electrical storm I've ever seen (including Miami tropical storms, and big thunderstorms in the Southern Alps of New Zealand)....An orange glowing ball floated in through the front window (without breaking it), bounced around the front room, and out of the back door of the house. For some reason, my Grandmother ALWAYS insisted on keeping the back door open during thunderstorms, and maybe it was for THIS exact reason, however she never explained her reasons. There was no physical trace left behind by the ball, no burns, no damage, and thankfully it didn't touch either myself or my gran. There is NO doubt in my mind that Ball Lightning IS real, but I've no idea what the process of creating it is!
The door has to stay open to give the elements a way out again 🤔.
Simon, I'm always impressed by how you plow through some of the most complicated and technical information and keep that nonchalant delivery. also, your research staff is top notch. Very nice presentation.
Additionally, I've also seen ball lightning, briefly. It was at a generator explosion on a military location. This was a large diesel powered 840 KW DPGDS. One of the diesel engines got into a "runaway" status and finally the whole thing exploded. There was fire, arcs and sparks everywhere. But on the side of the generator a small ball just sort of bounced off of the side, floated away for several seconds and then just faded out. At the time I thought it may just be some super heated metal like magnesium that had vaporized into a hot ball. But now, I'm pretty sure it was ball lightning.
I've heard old people in the southern US talk about blue balls of fire rolling down rural roads. They say its spirits of the dead. Maybe what they saw was ball lightning?
Edit: Has anyone else heard of the Appalachian practice of "talking the fire out" of a burn/wound?
"goodness gracious great balls of fire!"
So THAT'S what that song means! ;^=[}
This sounds very similar to the "Hessdalen lights". A light phenomenon that has been going on for many years in a valley in Norway. It has been recorded and observed many times. It is probably not related to ball lightning (but we do not know what ball lightning is so..) - as it can happen during any type of weather.
I lecture at a local uni where one of the profs have been studying this phenomena for years. Even had students camp out at the site for weeks at a time. - and setup remote automated observation posts at the location. They even managed to get some spectrograms (that show rare earth metals).
They do not know what it is - but it is clear it is not "little green men" but some sort of natural phenomena.
Google "Hessdalen lights".
The Gulf coast is a high lightning area, so sightings would be likelier. "Talking out the fire out" probably works to reduce pain by psychosomatic effects. Many rituals could do this. For instance, Rasputin really could reduce the severity of bleeding, but not by divine power.
Look up 'anomaly' from the Metro franchise. I don't believe it to be connected to souls of the dead, even though they also appear in the games, but it's a notable example, probably inspired by some folk tales devs ran into
Lue Elizondo talked about the ‘hitchhiker-effect’ recently. Perhaps ball lightning is related to the UAP phenomenon somehow?
Simon I've been following you for years. You're such an intellectual. I wish there were more people in the world like you.
The plasma weapons in Halo may not be so unrealistic after all
We had one come out of our telephone when the line was struck by lightning it passed 2 feet from me out through the window without shattering the glass, bounced a couple of times and fizzeled out. Coolest thing ever
Experienced it in our house late 90s. Lightning storm was just starting, and both front and back door were open to let my siblings run inside, you could see one door straight through to the other. There was suddenly a loud bang and a big sphere of light like a tiny sun suddenly appeared over our kitchen floor. Simultaneously, several electronics malfunctioned or were destroyed (answering machine, tv, and our doorbell started ringing and would not stop. I was so amazed and terrified, as a teen laughed and cried at the same time. My entire family (8 of us) were there and witnessed it together. Still one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
The one story I heard about ball lightning (in a house in our neighborhood) also included a lot of electronics being destroyed. My father always told us to unplug the TV during thunderstorms because he had seen the result (he was the local TV repair man).
The last theory doesn't account for multiple witnesses seeing the exact same thing.
My Nan was hit by ball lightning when she was a child. It followed her with every turn and finally overtook her and went under her feet. She had to learn how to walk, talk, feed herself, and take care of herself all over again
My family lived in Fiji during the late 1950s. On one of their trips back to New Zealand they had ball lightning enter the cabin, roll along the entire plane and disappear through a bulkhead wall. About twice the size of a soccer ball. They said the remainder of the trip was very quiet & subdued...
my grandpa had a run-in with one as a child in the 1950s and it left such an impression on him he told the story until he died. apparently they were in math class while there was a thunderstorm outside and it just floated in the window. their teacher froze in awe and said "nobody move." the ball lightning floated up to the teacher very close to his chest then it just turned around and floated back out the window. as a child i never thought of this but that teacher was basically seconds from a gruesome death in front of a class full of 9 year olds and he kept his cool for their sake. what an incredible presence of mind
Our little cottage got struck by ball lightening when I was little. Came in through the window, hit the wall a couple times, leaving holes as big as large caliber rifles. There was a hum all the time, except when it hit the wall when it made a huge bang each time. Then it went back out of the window. All the electrics in the cottage were fried. Fascinating phenomenon
Yeah no, thats not what ball lightning does. Theres a dutch company that actually tests it. Your story is a lie.
@@ixinor no it isn't. Why would I lie? For what possible purpose? This happened. In a small cottage in the early seventies
@@Bibblethruster Because thats not how ball lightning works. Also within the laws of physics impossible.
I dont know you tell me? Why do you fabricate a story?
@@ixinor The dutch company you're referring too, "convectron natural fusion" is pretty much a scam. Dijkhuis has published some papers in the field of ball lightning research, but the company has achieved nothing but lose it's investor's money. It's not the only company to have done this either, there are many companies claiming to have achieved sustainable fusion through harnessing the as-yet unknown physics behind ball lightning. But the problem with these companies is that they haven't proven they've achieved anything other than constructing glorified particle accelerator's. It's not fair to call someone a liar when you have such a limited amount of knowledge on the subject yourself. You can't claim to know what ball lightning can or cannot do unless you have a proven theory to back up those claims. If you're actually interested in ball lightning, go do some research instead of wasting time calling random people on the internet liars.
Along with my grandmother I saw ball lightning as a child (late sixties). A very bright ball, about 6 inches across, seemed to fizz along back and forth our fence at the bottom of our garden, about 70 yd's away. It did this for about 5 seconds then exploded in such a bright flash I fell backwards on to the floor. Not from any pressure wave but from the surprise and intense shock (Physiological not electrical). My grandmother did not fall back but said it definitely entered the kitchen (where we were). I don't think it did, but the light was so bright and such a surprise it could play tricks with your senses.
10:21 Common phenomenon at Muncie Indiana's old Westinghouse large power transformer factory. One of the tests for a new transformer was to shoot it with lightning from a large capacitor. A large switchgear array called the shooting crane was used to charge up the capacitor. As it was clicking along and building up the charge, it was fairly common to see ball lightning climbing the stairs along side the switches. It was more common if storming outside. I only witnessed it once, but it was pretty neat.
When I was a teenager in the 1970s I knew five boys who were caught in a field just as a thunderstorm brewed up. This was in north Florida where such storms were quite common. Most kids were taught not to seek shelter under any tall object such as a tree or barn, but these boys decided to run into an old two story tobacco barn that was nearby. While inside with the doors open, they were struck by lightning which knocked them all down, but only four of them got back up. The fifth boy was dead. I later spoke with one of the survivors who was a friend of mine and he described the event as involving a massive blast of air and a large round fireball which streaked through the barn. I don't recall him mentioning any smell, but after watching this video I wonder if it might have been ball lightning.
I saw ball lightning in my house when I was a kid. It was so weird that I would second-guess my memory of it today if not for the fact that my mom saw it too. A white or maybe bluish white ball of lightning, about the size of a basketball, appeared from an electrical socket and slowly floated across the room for a few seconds before exploding with a crack like thunder. It left burn marks on a plastic table in the room, although the marks came off with a wet paper towel. I was just a couple feet away from it when it all happened. This was during or around the time of Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana, which I think was 2006.
Great video! I actually saw ball-lightning twice in my life. First time when I was a bus driver in North Staffordshire, England, around 1984. I was leaving Cheddleton Hospital driveway heading to Cheddleton village and we, me and all the passengers, saw several orbs of ball lightning over what was Britain's Paper Mill in the valley. The other time was 1999 when I was cycling south in Sweden from the Arctic Circle around midnight in July - it never got dark. I saw a ball moving over the trees horizontally a distance in front of me - I thought it was aliens!
5%... I consider myself lucky to have seen it. The remnants of hurricane Frederick were passing through Tuscaloosa, AL as I was on my way to final exams. The weather was horrendous and on 15th St. I saw this amazing phenomenon. I knew what it was because I'm a reader. It was a bright iridescent blue about the size of a basketball moving slowly along a power line. It was like a membranous mass of jelly as it moved. I'm glad I saw it, and glad I was about 50' away.
You sure it was during finals? Hurricane Frederick was in mid September. I was in Birmingham, and Fall quarter at South Alabama started a week or so later
Thats not ball Lightning
I remember some bad tornados in t town. Used to live in Duncan house on Reed street. BP beer runs subs from subway... Saw nasty lightning strike hit the tracks behind Atlanta bread co big orange sparks and blue blob of energy that down track a few feet and was gone.
My wife and i saw ball lightning when we lived in Vermont. It was one of the craziest things ive ever seen. It floated up into the sky and exploded into a massive ball of electricity. My wife saw it go into the garage, float around, then exit. Thats where I started seeing it. Absolutely nuts.
I saw a lighting blob when I was 8 or 9 y.o. I was walking home from school on a pissy wet day when a smallish bolt of lightning hit a power pole near where I was walking, a blob formed on the top of the pole and then floated off and over the biscuit factory next to me. It was crackling and changing it's shape as it floated away. It lasted about 30 to 45 seconds and was about the size of an oil barrel, I wasn't the only one to see it but no one ever mentioned again.
Me and my twin brother and our mom witnessed it in central Illinois. After spending a couple of hours in the basement, waiting for the tornado warnings to end, we were all in me and my brothers room. Me and mom were reaching for an article of clothing on the floor when a bright white ball the size of a volleyball, flew into the floor between us, (as fast as lightning). My brother was on the other side of the room and saw it go from ceiling to floor in a flash. No damage was done, except for a small dark discoloration on the ceiling. It was years before one of us heard of ball lighting and we found out what it was.
I've seen it, at "Screaming Woods" in Pluckley, UK. Me and three friends were walking by the side of Screaming Woods on a dirt farm track. In the distance we saw a very bright white light, far brighter than motorbike headlights were in 1984.. It headed towards us along the track at a great speed for the 'road conditions' of the track, maybe 50-60 mph. When it got close my friends all ran into the woods, I stayed back a little longer, until it was maybe 30 yards from me, then I ran into the woods. My friends described what happened as I ran into the woods, and they described it as "fizzling out" about 10 yards after it passed where I had been standing. There was a very strong smell of ozone, something that I knew due to having a 12V DC trainset as a kid..
My personal guess, partially fortified by this video, is thet they're small particles of matter that hold a capacitive charge. Capacitors in Class C amplifiers (If memory serves me correctly from my electronics tutoring, in their name) but also by practical experience in the world of rock n roll sound work, capacitors hold a charge for about 1.5 minutes after the amplifier is turned down and switched off... You don't disconnect any speaker cables until you hear that 'Click" as the capacitors discharge..
Just positing a theory, by all means debunk with superior understanding. I'm all ears!
I also had a 12v DC trainset as kid, but I'm curious as to what that has to do with ozone?
@@memitim171 Ozone is created by electric sparks.
My late aunt had a very similar experience to that described in this video of ball lightning in an airliner. It also, coincidentally, occurred in an airliner around New York City.
She grew up in San Antonio, TX, but had married a man from New York. In the early 1950s, she had been visiting family in San Antonio, and was returning to New York. I believe she was riding in a Douglas DC-4, an unpressurized airliner with four piston engines. She was seated just a row or two behind the cockpit door at the front of the cabin
There were storms over the city as they were on a night approach to La Guardia Airport. Lightning was flashing very brightly around the aircraft, and strong turbulence was bouncing them in all directions. The passengers were terrified. Suddenly a rapid series of brilliantly bright flashes of lightning and loud crackling noises took place. She was sure that the lightning had struck the airplane. A moment later, a bright ball of lightning came whizzing up the aisle and exploded with a very loud bang against the closed cockpit door. She said the ringing in her ears never completely went away for the rest of her life.
Here in south America is called ¨Centella¨ and they are quite dangerous to be an ilusion, there are several videos filmed during electrical storms that show how they are and the damage they cause
I can't find any information when searching google for "centella". Are you sure that's the correct spelling?
My grandmother saw ball lightning when she was a teenager in West Virginia in the 1930s. She was home alone in the middle of the afternoon when a terrible electrical storm blew up. She was laying on a sofa waiting for the storm to pass when there was a tremendous crash and an orange ball of electricity came “rolling” through an open window (no screens in windows then). It was about the size of a basketball and appeared to “roll” across the room several feet off the floor. It passed thru the room and out a different open window on the opposite wall from where it entered. Upon exiting the window it hit a tree and exploded - splitting the tree trunk in half. As it passed her, she could feel all of the hair on her body stand up from the static charge.
I´ve seen a ball lightning once, in our kitchen. It came from our phone, was about fist size, yellow-white in color. It went through the kitchen and just disappeared. No bang or sound. No storm around, the weather was nice. I was just baffled.
I have seen what I believe to have been ball lightning when fencing on a farm. They were flashes off light much like hand grenades. They started at one end of the valley and got closer and then passed me and carried on passed me, then came back the other way. I would estimate around 20 plus individual blasts, around 10 to 20 feet above ground.
The farmhouse of a friend got struck by ball lightning in the eighties. It was almost totally distroyed.
my mother talked of ball lighting . happened in our house. before i was born. but yea its real AF. But I also almost had a midair with the basketball UAPs in 05, taking off out of Taji
@@Rex-ii2yz Same. A friend of mine says he and his family saw ball lightning in their house back in the 80s. Fun fact; his father was a professor of physics at the local uni at the time.
Prove it
My GF’s great-grandparents and grandmother and other siblings would sit in the middle of their cabin on the open prairie in chairs on glass isolators. She said she was told that it was to protect them from the lightning balls.
When my mother was a young teenager living in Vernal, Utah, she experienced ball lightning. It came bouncing down the street and she said it actually bounced through a house leaving a dark burn mark. Interesting fact: my mother was raised in a real log cabin.
From my research using Tesla coils, ball lightning is carbon based in the form of an aerogel or fullerene impregnated with ozone. Conditions in the lightning strike are similar to how fullerenes are created, except that fullerenes are created in an inert gas environment. Power is also a requirement, as the more power available, the larger the ball that can be created. With a small coil running from a 12KV 30mA NST, I was able to achieve balls up to 1/4 inch using a small chunk of burning car tire to produce the soot. The balls ran the full gamut of colors mentioned in this video. A coil running a 12KV 60mA NST achieved balls to 1/2 inch, and a coil with double that power went to 1 inch balls. In reports, in every case a source of carbon is present along with an electrical discharge. Like a jet aircraft. The outside and inside of a jet aircraft is covered in a fine layer of soot. If the static discharge system is inoperable St. Elmo's fire will be seen around the windows and a ball can form and pass through the window by capacitive action, as the soot on both sides creates the capacitor.
Pls Video your Tesla coil Experiment i want to create some ball lightning thanks
@@KalkigerKolben It won't happen because he made it up lol. Doubling power to double a SPHERE already gives it away as nonsense. Basic geometry makes that impossible.
It baffles me but the comments here of their experiences are literally 90% a lie, 9% possible lie and 1% of no clue@@TheJaguarthChannel
My parents were watching TV around 10:45 PM when a ball lightning entered through the closed window floated straight across the living room and zipped into the center of the CRT television, killing the TV instantly. It singed the bug screen on the window and left a small dark spot in the center of the TV tube. I had gone to bed just about a half hour earlier and missed the fireworks! It was strange as we live on a farm, there was a 40 foot windmill nearby (converted into a large weather vane), a 90 foot grain elevator and 6 grain bins, and a Behlen galvanized steel shed nearby. That was over 35 years ago and has never happened since.
Lol, I get TMS treatment 5 days a week and I've never seen a single errant blip of light, much less full-on hallucinations.
Will you ask for a refund?
@@walsakaluk1584 Nah, but the rest of the taxpayers might want to. I'm just gonna finish the protocol and switch to 'shrooms
Because TMS is fucking scam... ECT is where it's at.
Lol , most of the comments are bs anyway
My grandfather once mentioned that he experienced a ball lightning. When he was little he said that it came down the chimney of their fireplace. It launched the metal fence(don't know the name of it. A metal fence like thing in front of open fireplaces.) out of the windows and half way across the field outside. The ball then went out a window and disappeared.
My mother and father have separately told me how they were visiting a relative and seeing a ball lightning zigzag along a water hose in the yard, cutting the hose into fifteen centimeter sections before flying in the air and striking the barn wall. Where the ball lightning struck, there was for a long time a small circular burn mark that the relatives later painted over.
I would have left the burn there, how often does someone point out damage to your property and you get to say "Ball lightning."? 😂
@@memitim171 It'd been there for thirty years and barely visible even if you knew where to look. If it had been up to me, I'd have cut out the scorched piece of plank and preserved it somehow :D
My roommate's father from Quebec Canada saw ball lightning once in the late 1970s in a small village during the winter . The story was told to me long before internet in 1990s . They had put too much wood in the wood stove on a late winter night . The father opened the front door and upstairs window to cool down . A glowing orb not much larger than a basketball floated in the upstairs window and slowly came down the stairs still suspended and drifted effortlessly out the front door . The only strange phenomenon I experienced was a hole- punch - cloud .
My sister made ball lightning when she was about 8. Everyone else was in the living room watching tv and she had gone to her room to see how the electrical outlet worked.
She shorted it out of course, but as the breaker flipped and the lights went out, a small 3 inch ball of light came out of her room and hovered through the living room and kinda fizzled out of existence after about 6-7 seconds. It wasn’t noisy, but it had a hum like a refrigerator.
I saw ball lightning once. There was a massive thunderstorm with loads of cloud-cloud flashes but due some oddity of air pressure / inversions it was totally silent and I have never seen anything like this since. While watching this a glowing something appeared from behind a tree and moved until it passed behind another tree and did not reappear. I have no idea how big it was or how far away as there was nothing to refer it to, all I can say that it was at least 50m away as this is how far the trees were. It might have been a km a way and moving fast or 60m and slow.
A very memorable evening.
“Northwest Normal University” is exactly what I’d name my super weird experimental sciencing facility. That’s good OPSEC right there.
„Ordinary university of mundane science”.
Dang, now I got an almighty hankering after opening a Northwest Abnormal University :D
In 1970 my father had just got off the phone with a friend one of the subjects of the conversation was ball lighting. My father didn't believe it existed. 10 minutes later ball lighting came through the window and exploded by his leg. The explosion burned through his pants and gave him burns as well as leaving a burn mark on the floor. It also knocked out the electricity in a mile radius, burned out every device in the house with a transistor, and arced all the circuit breakers closed. Loudest bang I ever heard.
I think I may have experienced this as a teenager. I'm not 100% sure, I'm a bit of a hypochondriac about just anything like this admittedly, so I don't even trust my own memory, but I remember being in my house upstairs and it was storming like crazy and I just remember hearing buzzing and looking out the window and seeing like a ball of light maybe a couple hundred yards outside my window. It was weird I could tell it was supposed to be lighting but it was a ball. It suddenly exploded with the loudest thunder I've ever heard, just as I saw it, but didn't do any damage. A weird smell, maybe sulfuric might have been there too, I vaguely recollect that, but maybe I'm just trying to fill gaps. This is weird lol
I really enjoyed this, 10 years ago was woken up by loud a thunderstorm at night and while my wife and I were talking while lying in bed a volleyball sized bright light blue ball came thru the wall in the corner of the room floating into the room lasting about 5 seconds and disappeared. On the other side of the wall is where the electrical service attaches to the house no damage was done but thought somehow a lightning strike traveled the power lines and discharged thru the wall. Oddly enough the 100amp service to the house did not have the whole house breaker trip when this happened. My dad described similar ball lightning during a family dinner in the 50's when he was a kid, and a blue ball came thru the wall over the table where the family was eating and went out thru a mirror on the opposite wall which was cracked when it went thru.
Simon could you do an update to the Bell Island Boom video on DTU? Since there’s new info about ball lighting and that’s one of the best DTU videos
My great aunt once told me a story of a storm that happened in the 1930s on Black Island Newfoundland, where a ball of lightning floated in through the window, went down the stairs to the basement, then passed into the wall and disappeared. The dirt clot hypothesis would make a lot of sense based on the geology and abundance of organic matter as it was being farmed at the time. The rocks there are granites, basalts, and iron rich shales that produce fine brown dusts of oxides.
Ahh Ball Lightning, i witnessed a electric motor blow up in a cooler, witnessed a pneumonia ball Lightning, via electric explosion
Ball lightning = terminator entering the timeline. If it asks for your clothes, boots or motorcycle just give it up.
I saw ball lightning once I think in 1991, though maybe it was something else. I was in the passenger seat when my dad was driving. We saw a bolt of lightning hit a hillside. The lightning then broke up into three or four balls of lightning that Zig zagged back and forth before they disappeared into the ground. Even though we were not that close to it, we could still hear a loud sizzling noise.
All I know is you have to sacrifice it on your end step
lol, I saw the title of the video and came to make a similar joke! 🤣
I got that reference!
Common card. Nothing special. 😂
There's a family story handed down amongst my relatives that a great uncle and some of his cows were killed when ball lighting entered his barn during a storm. it was described as about the size of a basketball, and floated slowly along about a foot off the ground down the middle of the barn floor. I wonder if this had anything to do with the methane undoubtedly in the barn. My dad also had a strange story about tinkering with the back of an old cathode type TV: a 4" bolt of blue-green electricity appeared out of the back of the TV, headed towards his hand, but was moving slowly enough he could yank his hand aside and then watch it float there a few seconds before it exploded with a loud bang.
Praise be to Whistler and his writing and editing disciples. I want to know more about this real bad.
I've only seen ball lightning once. It was during a power outage, and I'd just laid down for bed. I was sitting there thinking about how unnerving it was to not hear anything, not even the background hum of electricity in the house. I normally slept with a fan on for noise, and with the dead silence, I was wide awake. Just a couple minutes after laying down a white, crackling (visually, but silent) orb of electricity appeared near the top of the door (which led outside) and traveled along the top edge of the room towards a closet directly opposite the door, then vanished. I witnessed a light of light phenomenon in that house, almost all during power outages, many of which I've never found a satisfying answer for. Now I'm wondering if they all couldn't have been attributed to ball lightning.
Off-topic, but the sci-fi Three-Body Problem trilogy has a prequel about involving ball lightning.
I witnessed ball lightning once. I was a kid & my grandmother was driving on a back road. It had been storming, but wasn’t really raining much at the time. It was about 2.5-3 feet in diameter. It came down from the sky at roughly a 60 degree angle. Quick enough to startle us, but slow enough for her to react and slam on the brakes. It hit the road in front of the car, seemed to skip once & then “bounced” up in the air striking the top of a palm tree that exploded into flames.
You did not mention aliens: I'm schociked: Do you hear me SHCOKCED!!!
Spirits 👻
My gran always told told us about her and her friend when they were in their 20's, and my gran was picking up her friend in her car during a thunderstorm, her friend came out the house and as she was running to the car my gran saw this ball of lightning floating about the ground moving towards her friend, before she could react it had passed straight through her friend, apparently her friend didnt even notice except for that it got brighter around her for a second or 2
4:55 That's a dust storm
Saw your comment at exactly that moment.
Spooky.
Same@@NelsonZAPTM
I have a story that has been passed down on my family. One of my grandparents had this happen in the early part of the 19th century. The ball came in the front door burning through a screen. And moved slowly through the house and out the back door that was open. The back had a deep covered porch and the door was often left open even if it was raining. There was a smell of ozone and metal left in the air.
Well Simon, it's simple! Ball Lightning is a Magic the Gathering (4th edition first printing!) 6/1 creature with the Elemental creature type and the abilities of Trample, Haste, and Sacrifice this creature at the beginning of your end step. 🤣
It's first printing was in August 1994's "The Dark" set. 4th edition was it's first reprinting in April 1995.
@@TheKalaxis Oh snap, I did put 4th as first printing! 🤣 I have done the fail. But! It shall stay for the sake of posterity.
I’ve witnessed this phenomenon, during a very severe tornado warned storm, and it was amazing. I was in awe of it slowly hovering in the sky above my apartment, only saw it for moments, ran to grab my phone (was an older iPhone as this was many years ago) and by the time I returned to the window, it was gone. It was golden white and was like it had waves of energy fluctuating around it, almost like it was some kind of plasma? It just looked like pure, bright energy, like a really good special effect. It felt natural and yet unnatural.
I'm liking your videos when I open them, to make sure I don't forget 😂
I was in a restaurant in FL and it was a bad thunderstorm. There was a huge window facing the road, we were sitting and waiting for food. Lightening struck a power line pole and a ball of blueish color lightening split in 2, one going each way down the power line. It ran into a transformer blew it off the pole and continued down the line for at least a quarter of a mile. The power went out. Luckily the resteraunt was running the grill with gas and server us eventhough the power went out. I will never forget those balls running down the power line. Was a crazy experience to witness.
Electrical atmospheric reactions are so weird. Heck, we only recently proved sprites, earthquake lights, and steve exist.
And yet, birds aren't real
Which Steve?
I couldn’t agree more! just the wikipedia page of Upper-Atmospheric Lightning is a fascinating read, and the story behind the discovery of STEVE is great, and just how different it is (both visually and physically) than aurora! I hope someday TIFO does a video on some of these phenomena as well
I had an experience of ball lighting myself. It was around 1997 in Fort Worth, TX, and I was out working on my car, trying to finish up because there were storms on the way. That was when I heard this loud crackling sound, and when I looked up to see what it was is when I saw a large blue ball about the size of a very large beach ball with white lightning bolts moving around the ball. I would guess that it was moving about 35mph (56kph) in a straight line from west ro east coming from the rough direction of the income storms.
3:59 "The hunt for ball lightnign"
😂
I experienced/accidentally produced ball lightning in the late 70s when I was a child. I’m embarrassed to have done something so stupid when I fully knew better, but I slipped a pair of tweezers into an outlet in our bathroom while I was at the sink. There was a loud buzz and flash that didn’t harm me in the least, but startled me causing me to jump backward and land sitting on the toilet. Well, to my surprise, the flash remained in the form of a brightly glowing sphere of light, about 7-8 inches in diameter, that proceeded to slowly but steadily move from the outlet across the top of the counter about 10 inches above it, and then continuing across the room until in disappeared through the bathroom door on the opposite wall. I was stunned at what I had just observed, and a minute later, my mom was banging on the bathroom door wanting to know what happened. In the aftermath, the outlet was melted, tweezers were half vaporized, and there was a round singe mark on the inside of the bathroom door. From the initial flash until the ball completed its transit was probably 5 seconds in duration, traveling a distance of about 10 feet.
Ah the legendary “Kugelbltz”
We were sitting in am old gravel pit in a car at night in the late summer. We had been enjoying a campfire but an approaching thunderstorm made us take cover in the guys car. As the storm came closer and before the rain started we noticed a weird phenomenon out of the ground about 20 feet in front of us. There was a number of fuzzy balls of lights coming out of the ground in front of us. These light balls were spinning in a corkscrew pattern and they were lasting about 30 seconds. Most of them were going about 5 feet from there starting point on an upward path at an angle of about 60 degrees. The balls were starting at one center point and were going out all around the 360 degree circle. Some of them even flew past the side of the car before disappearing. After watching this light show for about 45 seconds and moving closer to the windshield to get a better look a bolt of lightning struck the ground in the center of the circle and we were scared spit less by the massive crack of instantaneous thunder that followed. Then blinded and partially deafened we heard the heaven open up and the rain come pleating down on the roof. Once we recovered we got the heck out of there.
Factboy coming in hot
I've seen what I assume was ball lightning at sea in the Caribbean. 80 miles off Cuba headed to Central America. Relatively smooth water ,steady 10 knt wind, with a heavy thunderstorm due south. Though we weren't in the storm , we could see what I assume was ball lightning skipping across the surface a couple miles away. Blue in color ending in a bright flash. Followed by thunder maybe 5 seconds later. Capt.Bob SV ( Sailing Vessel ) 27th Chance, Tampa Fl, USA 🇺🇸
Good gosh all mighty, great balls of fire.
When I was an apprentice in a power plant, I’ve seen a tiny ball of electricity form and stay suspended in between an electrical contact. I was able to see this many times due to all the testing on our air blast circuit breaker. It would stay there as long as the power was on but we always had to shut it off soon due to the heat generated by the ball of electricity. Found out there was a stray DC voltage leaking in to the circuit that was causing it. So AC would be on one side of the contact and DC on the other. When the contact closes and opens immediately, the ball of electricity would form and stay suspended in the middle. I don’t know how this is actually possible, but all I know is that it stopped when I located and isolated the DC power.
Saw it once, when I was a kid.