Ball lightning has until this time defied physical explanation. This report summarizes the requirements that must be satisfied by any valid theory, reviews and evaluates previous theories, and evaluates the new theory of Finkelstein and Rubenstein developed under an AFCRL-monitored grant. It is concluded that the latter theory is the only promising one to date but that even this theory needs to be modified. A modification is proposed which would remove the remaining objections and it is suggested that experiments rather than further theoretical development will constitute the next decisive step.

In 1837 a comprehensive discussion of lightning appeared in the Annual of the French Bureau des Longitudes with a section on ball lightning which provided for the first time a readily available source in the scientific literature of the basic properties of this curious natural phenomenon. The author, Francois Arago, was the dominant influence in the French Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth century, having become a member of that august body at the age of twenty-three. His attention alone doubtless served at that time to establish the validity of scientific interest in the problem. In addition his discussion covered some of the major questions associated with ball lightning in a nota bly clear-sighted, effective style. Later reconsideration of the same questions often provided no significant improvement over Arago's discussion. There followed a dauntless band of varying but always small number who attempted to account for an apparently simple natural occurrence, a ball of fire usually seen in thunderstorms, with the best knowledge that advancing science could provide. All attempts to deal with this phenomenon were in variably frustrated. The characteristics of ball lightning could be readily cataloged, but they firmly resisted both experimental reproduction and theo retical explanation. One may say that to this day there is no explanation accepted by a large number of scientists. Several investigators of great ability and considerable accomplishment in different fields of science, including Faraday, Kelvin, and Arrhenius, took note of the problem.

Ball lightning has until this time defied physical explanation. This report summarizes the requirements that must be satisfied by any valid theory, reviews and evaluates previous theories, and evaluates the new theory of Finkelstein and Rubenstein developed under an AFCRL-monitored grant. It is concluded that the latter theory is the only promising one to date but that even this theory needs to be modified. A modification is proposed which would remove the remaining objections and it is suggested that experiments rather than further theoretical development will constitute the next decisive step.

Ball lightning has until this time defied physical explanation. This report summarizes the requirements that must be satisfied by any valid theory, reviews and evaluates previous theories, and evaluates the new theory of Finkelstein and Rubenstein developed under an AFCRL-monitored grant. It is concluded that the latter theory is the only promising one to date but that even this theory needs to be modified. A modification is proposed which would remove the remaining objections and it is suggested that experiments rather than further theoretical development will constitute the next decisive step.

Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail, Or prone-descending rain. Wide-rent, the clouds Pour a whole flood, and yet, its flame unquenched, Th’unconquerable lightning struggles through. Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls, And fires the mountains with redoubled rage. Black from the stroke, above, the smould’ring pine Stands a sad shattered trunk; and, stretched below, A lifeless group the blasted cattle lie. James Thompson, “The Seasons” (1727) have been investigating ball lightning for more than two decades. I published a ball lightning report in Nature in 1976 that received worldwide publicity and I consequently many people wrote to me with accounts of their own experiences. Within a very short time, I had accumulated about 200 firsthand accounts, and the file has continued to grow steadily since then. Several things impressed me. Few of those who wrote to me had any detailed foreknowledge of ball lightning at the time of their observation. Nonetheless, once reports of other phenomena such as St. Elmo’s fire had been eliminated, the remaining descriptions were remarkably consistent. Furthermore, nearly all who contacted me were keen to have an explanation of what they had seen and seemed entirely sincere.

Ball Lightning is trying to tell people over many centuries not only that their knowledge is limited but also to prompt them that there is a perfectly new world governed by the same physical laws where light bubbles are responsible for many phenomena which are called at present abnormal. Ball Lightning is a combination of intense light and a film of air compressed by the light. The compressed air provides circulation of the light in the film. The circulating light, in its turn, provides air compression. It can be said that Ball Lightning is a self-confined light, circulating in a thin spherical layer of compressed air, which is produced be the same light. In other words, the light circulates in a spherical trap, which was set up by the same light. Such puzzles of behaviour of Ball Lightning as penetration through windowpanes, movement in a direction which does not coincide with the direction of the wind, accompanying of airplanes and penetration in their salons, radiation of "cold" white light can be explained only on the basis of the considered concept. The presented theory of light bubbles disproves arguments of opponents that the existence of light bubbles contradicts laws of physics. Methods and the means used in non-linear optics and theory of optical resonators on the basis of waves of type whispering gallery are applied for the description of the phenomena inside a nucleus and internuclear interactions. Consideration of a nucleus as an analogue of a Ball Lightning with finite life time enabled to propose a new approach to an explanation of the phenomenon of natural radioactive decay. Knowledge of physical conditions in Ball Lightnings and the assumption that these conditions are favourable for acceleration of radioactive decay give a lot of information about processes responsible for such decay. Acceleration of radioactive decay opens a way to development of new alternative sources of energy.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Three-Body Trilogy, Cixin Liu's Ball Lightning is the story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against the drive to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences. When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier. While Chen’s quest for answers gives purpose to his lonely life, it also pits him against soldiers and scientists with motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge. "Wildly imaginative."—Barack Obama on The Three-Body Problem trilogy Tor books by Cixin Liu The Remembrance of Earth's Past #1 The Three-Body Problem #2 The Dark Forest #3 Death's End At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.