Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning
Author: Mark Stenhoff
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2005-12-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0306470926

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

Ball Lightning
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-08-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765394081

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.

Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning
Author: Herbert Boerner
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2020-08-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9783030207854

Ball lightning is an enigma. These luminous objects that appear occasionally during thunderstorms and can reach several meters in diameter have been a mystery to science for about 200 years. Despite several thousands of reported observations, their nature is still unknown. In this book, well documented cases of ball lightning are described and used to unravel some aspects of this mysterious form of atmospheric electricity. Throughout the book, the author discusses the various facets of the problem in an accessible but rigorous style, delivering a readable and informative text that will captivate the curious reader. He finally reaches the surprising conclusion that the solution to this puzzle may have been hidden in plain sight for many years. A foreword by Earle Williams, leading lightning researcher at MIT, introduces the book.

Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning
Author: Paul Sagan
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2004-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0595313949

In BALL LIGHTNING: Paradox of Physics, Paul Sagan lists 230 unpublished cases from Oak Ridge National Laboratories. By their mysterious propulsion, navigation, confinement and flight against winds, fireballs "defy" gravity. His novel Sagan-Hill Hypothesis explains fireball propulsion (inertialess negative gravity) and also the Flatwoods event of September 12, 1952. A witness, Sagan publishes his interviews with other witnesses and speculates that machine intelligences hide inside comet belts. Sagan explores atmospheric physics, lightning, network analysis, quantum physics, the EPR Paradox, Wolfram computation, MONDs, WIMPs, Multiverse Theory, chaoplexity, M-Theory and more. Sagan illuminates the profound changes necessary for post-modern physics to accommodate something that is foreign to our current physics. Written for the intelligent reader, this book's remarkable clarity and minimum of mathematical notation make it accessible to both the scientist and casual reader.

Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning
Author: Herbert Boerner
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2019-07-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030207838

Ball lightning is an enigma. These luminous objects that appear occasionally during thunderstorms and can reach several meters in diameter have been a mystery to science for about 200 years. Despite several thousands of reported observations, their nature is still unknown. In this book, well documented cases of ball lightning are described and used to unravel some aspects of this mysterious form of atmospheric electricity. Throughout the book, the author discusses the various facets of the problem in an accessible but rigorous style, delivering a readable and informative text that will captivate the curious reader. He finally reaches the surprising conclusion that the solution to this puzzle may have been hidden in plain sight for many years. A foreword by Earle Williams, leading lightning researcher at MIT, introduces the book.

Science Of Ball Lightning (Fire Ball)

Science Of Ball Lightning (Fire Ball)
Author: Yoshi-hiko Ohtsuki
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1989-08-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9814644102

This is the first proceedings held on scientific research on the ball lightning (fire ball). Eyewitness accounts of bars lightnings were presented and analysed by experts from USA, Germany, USSR, Hungary and Japan. The theoretical model on the ball lightning, and experimental research from various instruments were discussed.

The Nature of Ball Lightning

The Nature of Ball Lightning
Author: Stanley Singer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1468418661

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.

The Modern Myths

The Modern Myths
Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2022-10-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226823849

With The Modern Myths, brilliant science communicator Philip Ball spins a new yarn. From novels and comic books to B-movies, it is an epic exploration of literature, new media and technology, the nature of storytelling, and the making and meaning of our most important tales. Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called “modern myths.” But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties. We keep returning to these tales, reinventing them endlessly for new uses. But what are they really about, and why do we need them? What myths are still taking shape today? And what makes a story become a modern myth? In The Modern Myths, Ball takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.

Ball Lightning Physics

Ball Lightning Physics
Author: V. Torchigin
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2015-04-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9781511669641

It is generally recognized that the Ball Lightning (BL) is a shame of modern theoretical and experimental physics. At present above 2000 publications are known, above 200 various theories are suggested. But nobody can explain even approximately the intriguing and puzzling behavior of BLs. As is market in last book of BL, all theories have one thing in common - none work. The explanation of the BL phenomenon is deadlocked. There is an opinion that the contemporary knowledge about Nature is insufficient to explain the BL. We are trying to show that the knowledge is sufficient but its usage leaves much to be desired. BL problem is an example when a common sense overcomes the conclusion derived from generally accepted physical laws in spite of the fact that the conclusion is confirmed by the phenomenon observed by thousands of eyewitnesses. In 2002 we put forward the hypothesis that neither plasma nor other material particles form BL. In is immutable fact that BL radiates the light. We concluded that BL consists of the light only. But it is known that the light is an electromagnetic wave that propagates in a straight line in a homogeneous optical medium at very great speed. We assumed that the light can propagate along curve closed trajectories that are embedded in a sphere of several centimeters radius. But what is the reason that forces the light to propagate in such a way. Our answer - the reason is the light itself. The light can be self-confined. Seemingly, this is an oxymoron like dry water or hot ice. But the contemporary knowledge allows an existence of the self-confined light. This is an optical space soliton that can be considered as the light that is self-confined in one direction. Once the light can be self-confined in one direction, it can be self-confined in other two directions also. Thus, the contemporary theoretical knowledge does not prevent an existence of the light confined by a limited volume. As a result, BL obeys to laws of optics rather than laws of mechanics. That is why BL behavior differs radically from that of the conventional material objects consisting of molecules, electrons, ions, clusters, nano-particles and so on. We have published about ten papers in International scientific physical journals where we have shown that the behavior of the self-confined light determined by known laws of optics and physics is identical to intriguing and puzzling behavior of natural BL derived from numerous evidence of eyewitnesses. We have explained how BL can penetrate in rooms through window panes, why BL can move upwind, how BL can catch up a flying aircraft and penetrate into its cabin. It is not surprising that BL seems not hot although it radiates the light, the spectrum of which corresponds to the temperature of the body heated up to several thousand degrees Celsius. However, our theory has not gained a generally accepted recognition even though it is mentioned in Wikipedia. We analyze the causes and came to the conclusion that common sense layman in the field of optics protests against the existence of SCL in nature. They consider the self-confined light as an oxymoron, like dry water or hot ice. As far as experts in optics is concerned, that we need to recognize that the contemporary notions about optically induced forces that are foundation of our theory are incomplete and erroneous. In last five years we have published about ten papers in the international scientific physical journals where we presented our notion of optically induced forces. In particular, we have solved the known century-old problem of the theoretical physics about a magnitude of the momentum of light in matter. All these problems are presented in the book in a systematic form.

The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem
Author: Cixin Liu
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2014-11-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466853441

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Over 1 million copies sold in North America “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times • “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Fascinating.”—TIME • “Extraordinary.”—The New Yorker • “Wildly imaginative.”—Barack Obama • “Provocative.”—Slate • “A breakthrough book.”—George R. R. Martin • “Impossible to put down.”—GQ • “Absolutely mind-unfolding.”—NPR • “You should be reading Liu Cixin.”—The Washington Post The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision. The Three-Body Problem Series The Three-Body Problem The Dark Forest Death's End Other Books by Cixin Liu Ball Lightning Supernova Era To Hold Up the Sky The Wandering Earth A View from the Stars At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.