Scientists uncover mystery of ball lightning

I'm pretty sure I saw ball lightening once when I was a child. It was in the courtyard of our house during a lightning store - a ball of translucent orange that was stationary for a moment before whisking away.

Nobody ever believed me.

They still haven't replicated it or taken a photo. It's just theoretical modelling.

This might be an explanation for ball lightning, but I'm pretty sure it can't be the explanation.

I saw ball lightning once. Got caught in a thunderstorm at 12,000 feet in the Sierras -- well above timberline -- and watched the lightning striking around me while I hid under a boulder. I was essentially in the centre of the thunderhead; things got pretty wild. At one point I saw two or three lighting balls (I thought they were maybe 1-2 feet in diameter, although estimating distance in such an environment and which such unfamiliar sights is probably a lost cause), and one thing in the distance which looked like a bobbling string of pearls.

The nearest window would have been about 20 miles away, so that can't be the only explanation.

The full pdf is not accessible and the abstract is too light.

Many ball lightning have been witnessed in absence of windows. What's the point of such explanation ?

It is a frequent behavior to select one caracteristic of a multi variated phenomenon and derive from it an explanation. Obviously the explanation can't account for all the other caracteristics of the phenomenon. But that seem to be a detail.

BTW my father proposed an explanation of ball lightning that he presented at AIS in 2011. The proceedings are not yet published.

The explanation is that ball lightnings are plasma bubbles. The plasma is in the thin layer of the bubble. The ions ocillate radialy. The ball consumes ozone and follows ozone gradians.

There are two types of lightning balls. One that ends by lighting off silently and one that ends by an explosition. If my memory is right the difference comes from the nature of the negative charge carrier. In one case they are electrons and in the other negative ions. But I'm not sure.

This is just the main idea. There is much more to it.

To create ball lightning experimentally we thus at least need ozone.

I can't comment on the quality of the theory described here, but I hope you realise there is silicon everywhere - most common minerals contain a substantial proportion of Si.