How can lightning be artificially caused? How to create lightning at home

How to make lightning in Minecraft?

In Minecraft, almost everything is possible, including influencing the weather, causing various phenomena whenever you want. Below you can find out how to make lightning in Minecraft.

How to summon lightning in Minecraft using commands

You can create lightning in Minecraft by entering several commands in the game chat. There are two ways to do this. In the first case, you need to wait for a thunderstorm and enter the following command in the chat: /weather thunder. Then put a space and in triangle brackets indicate the duration in seconds of this weather phenomenon. It should look like this: /weather thunder<15>. That is, lightning will flash for 15 seconds.

During a thunderstorm you need to be more careful as the lighting will become dimmer. However, you can spawn several different hostile mobs, so you should take a weapon with you. Also, during a thunderstorm, you need to stay away from creepers that emit blue light, as they are struck by lightning and can explode.

Also, during a thunderstorm, you can call lightning with another command. You will need to enter the following into the chat: /summon LightningBolt. But you must have a Minecraft version higher than 1.8 installed, otherwise nothing will work.

Summoning lightning using plugins

You can call lightning yourself after installing a special plugin called. You can download it.

After installing it, you can become a real Zeus the Thunderer; you just need to craft a rod that spews lightning. This will require the following resources:

• redstone dust;
• gold bar;
• wooden stick;
• emerald.

You only need to correctly arrange the elements on the workbench: in the third upper cell - an emerald, in the central one - a stick, in the first lower one - dust, in the lower middle one - a gold bar. The treasured rod will be in your hands, and you will be able to strike any mob with lightning.

You will find more crafting recipes in our section.

In the section on the question how to make lightning at home??? given by the author ~mis_TAKE~ the best answer is Charge the jacket to a high potential with electrification when removing it in the dark.
This is where you will see lightning!
You can build a Van de Graaff generator on this effect and get huge discharges.

Reply from Dmitry Do[guru]
Pet a clean cat, preferably during a thunderstorm; walk barefoot on the carpet and touch a metal object, eight pins and put them in a socket. It’s possible with magic, but I haven’t tried that. Unlike the other one.

Reply from Barefoot[guru]
Cut it from your husband's trousers or from your own sweatshirt!

Reply from Request[guru]
Buy a lock, they are numbered, and insert through the top.

Reply from Caucasian[guru]
Clasp? Few really. Electric - Run around in synth. sweater and take it off. Stat. email

Reply from Vitek Terekhin[guru]
buy an electric shock...

Reply from No name[guru]
first become Zeus
or at least Danae

Reply from Evil Flint[guru]
The surest thing in the microwave. There are hundreds of ways. From regular to ball. Search online for experiments with microwave ovens. You just have to buy more stoves.

Reply from Vyacheslav Kolar[newbie]
It is necessary to bring the contacts from the generator (in operating mode) closer together. Follow safety precautions!!

Reply from Dmitry Golovkin[guru]
Weak discharges can be obtained by ordinary electrification - for example, rubbing a piece of plexiglass with dry wool, and then removing the charge from each surface with any two pieces of metal. When metals come close together, a static discharge will occur.
The second way is to charge a powerful electric capacitor from a direct current source with a voltage of several hundred volts. when the capacitor leads come closer together, a breakdown through the air will occur.
It is also quite simple to make an electrophore machine, which is based on the same static electricity.
If you need (or rather, it’s interesting) to receive powerful discharges, you can make a high-voltage transformer (up to several tens of thousands of volts); the sparks will be up to half a meter long, but they are weak and can generally be passed through your hand without harm - the current strength is negligible.
Eat chemical methods creating microlightning - during the crystallization of a saturated solution of potassium sulfate and sodium sulfate, discharges occur between the resulting crystals and a distinct crackling sound is heard.
But the most grandiose (and, unfortunately, the most dangerous) way is to catch “wild” lightning. For this, about 1 kilometer of very thin copper wire(it's not hard to get), a gunpowder rocket and appropriate stormy weather. A wire is attached to the rocket and launched into a thundercloud. If particularly successful, several lightning bolts will strike the rocket in succession.

Experiment to create ball lightning.

We report the successful experimental creation of ball lightning in the open air. A description of this process was found in the recently published laboratory notebooks of N. Tesla for 1899. Photographic material is presented and a discussion of the experimental technique is carried out. Based on an analysis of B. M. Smirnov’s work on the airgel (fractal) model of ball lightning, it was concluded that his theoretical model provides a description consistent with the type of fireballs that Tesla created and which we observed.

Introduction. Exactly following Nikola Tesla's high-frequency technique, the description of which was found in his notes, in August 1988 we began to create electric fireballs in the air with a diameter of ~2 cm. Tesla's work was carried out 89 years earlier, in the summer of 1899 and, as follows from open literature, has never been replicated or verified. Although the creation of fireballs was repeated in the laboratory, recorded by a large number of photographs and videos, the physics hidden behind their formation and development was not clear enough to us at that time. Having a high-voltage, high-frequency technique for creating this phenomenon at will, we could not clearly explain the nature of the formation and evolution of fireballs obtained by this method.

Tesla's detailed, remarkable observations in 1899 put forward several hypotheses about the nature of fireballs, but we felt that more was needed to clearly understand the phenomenon than the ideas of physics of a century ago. Any progress in the technique of producing fireballs requires an understanding expressed in the language of the most modern physics. Despite the fact that we were well acquainted with the works of Kapitsa and a large number of publications on ball lightning by Western scientists over the past 150 years, we nevertheless did not take the opportunity to analyze the latest achievements of Soviet researchers.

Recent successes of Soviet scientists. In June of this year, we became aware of significant progress in creating the theory of ball lightning, the results of which were published in the Soviet scientific press. Much of the recent Soviet work contains as many unsatisfactory and strange abstract theorizing on ball lightning as the work appearing in Western scientific literature. However, among them there are a number of interesting publications which, we think, describe Tesla's method for creating ball lightning with reasonable certainty. We have placed them in the list of references under numbers. This progress was achieved primarily thanks to the efforts of B. M. Smirnov and his colleagues from the Institute of Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk. From the very beginning, Smirnov realized the futility of all models of ball lightning that did not include an internal source of chemical energy. He also clearly understood the role that aerosols, aerogels, filamentary structures, plasma chemistry and the combustion of dust particles could play. With the advent of the concept of a fractal and the physics of diffusion-limited aggregation, Smirnov was able from the late 70s to the mid-80s to strongly develop the airgel theoretical model, in which active substance ball lightning is an electrically charged structure consisting of intertwined submicron filaments, i.e., a porous fractal cluster with a large chemical capacity. Almost the entire frame of such an airgel structure is occupied by free pores.

The release of energy from a chemically charged fractal cluster can be described by a multi-stage combustion process. As an example of such a process, Smirnov proposes multi-stage combustion of a fractal cluster of charcoal dust in ozone absorbed by the cluster itself, as a model process in ball lightning:

where α and β are the rate constants of the slowest stages of the process depending on the temperature at which coal is saturated with ozone and, according to his calculations, the characteristic time values ​​are quite long. The combustion of charcoal in adsorbed ozone is simultaneously an intense and slow process of heat release. The predicted temperatures and lifetimes are consistent with observations of ball lightning. In this model, the color and glow of ball lightning are created in a manner similar to what happens in pyrotechnics due to the presence of luminous components of the composition. This theoretical model of Smirnov is capable of satisfactorily explaining the various properties of ball lightning.

Fractal phenomena and the root cause of ball lightning. The Chemical History of the Candle has been a source of wonder and fascination ever since it was first discovered in the mid-19th century. Faraday gave the Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution. His famous talks are an excellent introduction to the basic principles of combustion and are available in modern editions. It was Faraday who pointed out the main role of soot and carbon particles in the glow of a flame.

Modern developments in cluster science have deepened our understanding of the formation of dust, soot, colloids and condensed aerosols. Studying the growth of fractals has provided a new look at the growth of soot when carbon particles are added in the process of chaotic coagulation.

Interesting in many respects, and perhaps even the beginning of a new direction linking fractals and smoke, was the publication of the results of a remarkable experimental study done by Forrest and Whitten. They observed ultrafine smoke particles (about 80 A in diameter) and found that the particles stick to each other and form chain aggregates. Their laboratory experiments showed that fractal structures actually form within a few tens of milliseconds after the thermal explosion of materials.

Forrest and Whitten's setup consisted of a tungsten filament electroplated with iron or zinc. The thread quickly heated up when a short high-current pulse passed through it, the deposited material evaporated from the thread and formed a dense gas (metal vapor), the spread of which into the surrounding atmosphere was limited by diffusion. The dense gas consisted of more or less homogeneous spherical particles. Hot particles moving rapidly from the heated filament stopped due to collisions in the environment and formed a spherical halo at a distance of about 1 cm from the filament. At this distance, the particles began to condense and stick together, forming aggregates like chains, which then settled on the electron microscope slide. Subsequent studies of the condensed phase showed that it has fractal properties. (Analyzing this line of research, it is necessary to note the early work of Beisher, who showed that magnesium oxide smoke in an arc discharge contains chain aggregates, while in smoke in the absence of an arc, ultrafine particles simply form a dense aerosol.)

Smirnov's profound insight was to realize that this fractal cluster could be invoked to explain the structure and properties of ball lightning. A stunning confirmation of the ideas of Smirnov and his colleagues are the words from his recent work: “We will proceed from the fact that ball lightning has the structure of a fractal cluster.” There is no doubt that Smirnov's in-depth research and analysis provide the best physical explanation of ball lightning available in modern science.

High-frequency installation for creating ball lightning. There are many works devoted to the description and analysis of Tesla's generator, starting with the classic work of Oberbeck, published in 1895. However, in our opinion, all of these descriptions are based on a flawed theoretical model and leave much to be desired from a technical point of view. (Thus, they treat the setup as a lumped circuit and overlook the fact that the current distribution at the resonator stage is a quarter-wave sine wave with I max (V min) at the bottom and I min (V max) at the top.) Until we We used Shelkunov’s concept of “averaged characteristic impedance” and did not apply the linear theory of slow wave propagation to Tesla’s resonators, we could not accurately predict the action of a high-voltage, high-frequency generator and, accordingly, create fireballs. Our model is quite reliable when used to analyze data from Tesla's laboratory notebooks for 1899.

The main part of Tesla's fireball setup consists of a quarter-wave helical slow-wave resonator located above a conducting, grounded plane. Our resonator is magnetically coupled to a high peak power (approximately 70 kW) spark discharge generator operating at 67 kHz. The actual average power delivered to the high-voltage electrode was on the order of 3.2 kW (this generated a 7.5-m RF discharge). The power Tesla used was, of course, 100 times greater than what we consumed with our rather modest equipment.

Installation action. The spark discharge generator produced 800 pulses per second, and the spark duration was 100 μs. The secondary winding of the high-frequency resonator had a measured coherence time of 72 μs. This means that the induced incoherent polychromatic oscillations take 72 µs to create a standing wave and generate a high voltage at the top of the resonator:

Where S- deceleration coefficient of the spiral resonator. The Smith circuit can be used to conveniently demonstrate the operation of the high voltage section of the installation.

Tesla installations have several important advantages over other high-voltage devices (such as van de Graaf and Marx generators). Not only do they achieve high energy, but they also allow for intense cycling, i.e. high repetition rates and high average power work. According to Tesla's instructions, a short piece of thick copper wire or carbon electrode extends from the side of the high-voltage electrode. When said electrode is discharged, the RF resonator releases energy quickly, in a pulse. (Tesla noted in many places that the creation of fireballs requires the creation of "fast and powerful" discharges.) The burst of released energy appears in the form of a spherical ball or what may be a fractal "bubble". This method of creating fireballs is determined by the relaxation of vaporized metal or coal particles, and the resulting clusters are not different from those resulting from aggregation limited by Forrest and Whitten diffusion. Tesla's instructions for using a rubber-coated cable tip or copper wire to "facilitate the ignition of the spark" are helpful. We assume that diffusion-limited aggregation took place in either copper vapor or coal vapor (as a result of evaporation of either the wire or its insulation). As in the case of SiO 2, under such conditions, condensed ϹuО 2 can also form an airgel. The formation of the fractal ball is not much different from what Forrest and Whitten observed (except that it was charged by a high-voltage electrode). By the way, the old-style rubber insulation was covered with soot.

But, as Smirnov points out, the simple formation of a porous fractal cluster will not be a sufficient condition for the appearance of ball lightning with a lifetime greater than a few milliseconds. Fractal formation was obtained from soot in Faraday candles, but for the formation of ball lightning, which lives for several seconds or more, other components are also necessary. We emphasize that Tesla’s installation is a source of ozone and other chemically active particles. We believe that these, and perhaps other particles, are quickly absorbed by a charged porous fractal cluster. The plasma temperature in the discharge region where the structure is formed is sufficient to cause a multi-stage combustion process.

Experimental observations. Using the installation, the diagram of which is shown in Fig. 1, we observed a large number of fireballs with a diameter ranging from several millimeters to several centimeters. The fireballs' lifetimes typically lasted from half to several seconds, and their color varied from dark red to bright white. Some of the fireballs were accompanied by a loud sound as they disappeared, while others appeared and disappeared.

Sometimes it was difficult to record the phenomenon on photographic film using the technology available to us. In some cases the video recording turned out to be excellent. The duration could be estimated from the frame rate of the video equipment. But for standard films, both the frame rate and shutter speed were too slow. However, the photographs often turned out to be adequate to the image. In a remarkable sequence of photographs, fireballs can be seen appearing on the opposite side of a window pane.

In the photo fig. 2 you can see how the fireball smoothly slides from right to left and up. (In fact, the fireball first formed and was then struck by the streamer. The result was an image of the fireball being penetrated by the streamer.)

The white fireball had a diameter of about 2 cm. The electrode was made of copper wire, and a shutter speed of 1/125 s was used when shooting.

The length of the streamer exceeded 1.5 m. Other luminous areas and bright dots faintly visible.

When taking a photo, fig. 3, many fireballs were visible to the naked eye, but only one of them was caught by the camera. It can be seen rising from left to right in relation to the central part of the streamer. Notice the bright and dark areas of the streamer. The diameter of the fireball was about 2 cm, and the length of the streamer, on the right, exceeded 2 m. The electrode was a copper wire; a shutter speed of 1/125 s was used. In the photo fig. 4 there are two fireballs formed close to each other. Sliding to the right. they faced different streamers. A shutter speed of 1/4 sec was used.

In the photo fig. 5 shows five large fireballs (about 2 or 3 cm in diameter), several luminous points and a brightly glowing section of the streamer about 30 cm long. A shutter speed of 1/4 s was used. (The red glow in the lower left corner of the photo is due to intense heating at the base of the arc.)

In our laboratory experiments, fireballs typically formed near the high-voltage resonator and streaked outside the streamer either above or below it. This seems to satisfy the name "Kugelblitz" - ball lightning.

Videos of fireball evolution indicate that fireballs originate near the electrode and are then struck by streamers. Initially they are the size of a sphere of 6 mm, which then begins to grow. It seems that the ball has frozen, floating in volume, and meanwhile the streamer goes out. Then a new streamer hits the floating ball and it gets bigger. We observed how six discharges hit one ball in succession, and it increased each time. A fireball was observed that grew from an initial 6 mm sphere into a fiery red globule with a diameter of 5 cm in a time of 1 s. Sometimes some balls with moving spots (like spots on the sun) were seen rotating. Some fireballs appear transparent next to the bolts that shoot through them. We observed several glowing formations that changed color over the course of evolution and eventually exploded as a supernova. Moreover, in accordance with the previously stated assumption, placing a wax candle on a high-voltage resonator enhances the appearance of fireballs.

Photo fig. 6 is enlarged to show the globular structure of a single large bright isolated electrical fireball. In reality, the fireball was approximately 1 cm in diameter. Fireballs have a spherical structure, which suggests that surface tension must play some role in the evolution of ball lightning. A slight but noticeable darkening of the limb and an almost solid image indicate that ball lightning is optically dense. The electrode was a wire wound on a wax candle; a shutter speed of 1/4 s was used.

Photo fig. 7 was made while filming the formation of a fireball near a high-voltage electrode. After sorting the frames on the display, an individual frame was re-photographed on the color monitor.

The sequence of events was quite remarkable. At first, the fireball appears to appear out of “nothing” (since it was not there in the previous frame). In the next frames, the streamer leaves and disappears, leaving the ball lightning slightly increased in size and hotter, as shown in the photograph in Fig. 7. (Watching streamers is also a fascinating activity - streamers often appear as if they are made of a bright liquid substance that is seen being injected and moving towards them. This substance is apparently added to the substance of the ball lightning and increases its size.)

From the sequence of video recordings, it becomes clear that the picture can give the wrong impression, because the fireballs, together with the streamers, look like golf balls strung on a sword. In reality, the installation (which makes 800 interrupts per second) produces a very large number of discharges per second. These discharges hit the fireballs quite often during the exposure time and give photographs of the formation of ball lightning in the streamer. In reality, the streamers jump from ball lightning to ball lightning, flashing a blinding light. In infrared photographs, fireballs are much brighter than streamers. This means that they are significantly hotter than streamers.

Video photographs provide another opportunity to observe weak variations in the distribution of glow across the disk of ball lightning. In one particular case, ball lightning was actually surrounded by a luminous shell similar to the star M-52 (the rings of Nebula in the constellation Lyra). The amplification of the resulting signal reveals a large true glow of the spherical shell of ball lightning. In astrophysics, this only happens with particularly hot O and B type stars.

The photograph (Figure 8) can cause anxiety. The image contains a dozen large spherical globules in the same row and at different stages of development when they are hit by the same streamer. Fireballs, starting as red dwarfs, progress through states of varying colors and sizes to a giant blue-white stage. It appears that some will explode as supernovae, while others will cool as red giants. Shutter speed 1/4 sec. A charcoal pin is used instead of a rubber-coated copper wire to “light the spark” of Tesla. A high voltage electrode with a diameter of 30 cm is visible on the left.

In our work, we photographically confirm the “passage of ball lightning through window glass” in our laboratory experiments. We also report alternative electrical devices to obtain the same results.

Conclusions. Analyzing the results obtained, we believe that, as in the Forrest and Whitten installation, in this case, high-current pulses emanating from the copper wire and charcoal electrodes on the high-voltage electrode can create fractal clumps that quickly adsorb ozone and other chemically active components from the near-electrode region. The electrically charged airgel structures formed exhibit the characteristic properties of ball lightning. This fractal nature of electrochemical ball lightning was first proposed and theoretically studied by the Soviet scientist B. M. Smirnov. There is no doubt about the similarity between these fireballs produced in a high-voltage generator and ball lightning occurring naturally in atmospheric electrical thunderstorms.

We also note that these results closely support Tesla's historical experiments to create ball lightning. There can now be no question about the reliability of his records of 1899 and the veracity of his observations of ball lightning.

Concluding remarks. Tesla had no ambivalence about the observation and laboratory creation of electric ball lightning. Describing the research of 1899 on ball lightning, he said: “I managed to determine the method of their formation and create them artificially.” Unfortunately, during his life he did not choose to introduce his experimental technique to the wider scientific community. We are lucky that he left behind such detailed and interesting documentation. Just before the closure of his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Tesla wrote in his diary: “The best study of this phenomenon can be made by continuing experiments with more powerful installations, which are substantially developed and will be constructed as soon as time and means allow me.” The reason for the recording was that he returned to New York, began building a large transmission station on Long Island, was pursued by creditors, and suffered financial bankruptcy before he could complete the equipment.

Time has passed, and now ball lightning can be carefully studied in a controlled laboratory environment. We think that the work that Tesla left unfinished can now be resumed. With the development of technology and concepts available to modern scientists, rapid progress in this direction is sure to be made.

The quotation at the beginning of the work is taken from Kapitza's talk, "Memories of Lord Rutherford," at a meeting of the Royal Society in 1966. Kapitsa, who himself inspired much of the work on ball lightning, continues: "The main features of Rutherford's thinking were great independence and great courage." These qualities are the characteristics of all those who have contributed at least something to the forward movement of civilization. However, as Kapitsa pointed out, nowhere is this more critical than in scientific matters. Of course, these courageous traits were also present in the life of Nikola Tesla, an experimental physicist, engineer and inventor.

It seems appropriate to us to finish the work with Tesla’s own thoughts, which came to him in the first hours of the 20th century. and written in his diary just a few days before leaving for New York from his laboratory in Colorado Springs, covered with snow and riddled with loneliness: “It is a fact that this phenomenon can now be artificially created, and it will not be difficult to learn more about its nature » ( N. Tesla, January 3, 1900).

Unfortunately for modern civilization, these remote research facilities on Rocky Mountain soil were closed forever in January 1900, and the electrical wonders performed within these walls remained a mystery until our generation.

Laboratory experiments with atmospheric electricity reveal a lot, but mysteries still remain.

It turned out that cold plasma in a rarefied medium in the presence of a rapidly varying electric field has little to do with it.

There has been a ball lightning workshop at the St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics for several years. Here a small installation was invented and created that reproduces with sufficient accuracy the natural process of the birth of lightning on a damp surface: there is a copper input that plays the role of a lightning rod, a quartz tube with an electrode, and an open surface of tap water.

The role of the thunder cloud is a 600 µF capacitor bank, which can be charged up to 5.5 kV. This is a serious voltage - the slightest carelessness when working with it poses a mortal danger.

It was described in detail in an institute preprint dated March 24, 2004. The water in the polyethylene cup must be grounded; for this, a copper ring electrode is placed at the bottom. It is connected by an insulated copper busbar to the ground. The positive pole of the capacitor bank is also grounded.

From the copper input, a well-insulated busbar leads to the central electrode. This is a cylinder of iron, aluminum or copper, 5-6 mm in diameter, which is tightly surrounded by a quartz glass tube. It rises above the water surface by 2-3 mm, the electrode itself is lowered down by 3-4 mm. A cylindrical hole is formed into which a drop of water can be dropped. The end of the copper wire from the negative pole of the capacitor bank must be secured to a long hard rubber handle.

If you quickly touch the copper input with this spark gap, a plasma jet will fly out from the central electrode with a pop, from which a spherical plasmoid will separate and float in the air. Its color will be different: a bright whitish plasmoid will fall from the iron electrode, green from the copper electrode, and white with a reddish tint from the aluminum electrode: such plasmoids are seen by pilots when lightning strikes the plane.
To get real ball lightning, you need to insert a cylinder of porous carbon into a quartz tube. Such coals are used in arc spectral analysis. Porous carbon can be impregnated with various solutions and suspensions.

If you apply an aqueous extract from the soil, with organic matter, particles of coal and clay, to the electrode, then when discharged, classic “orange” colored ball lightning will fly out of the electrode. True, she will live no longer than a second, but this is enough to examine her in all details and admire her.

Obtaining real ball lightning is not difficult. You need linear lightning striking some kind of lightning rod, and damp air.
In order to study the properties of ball lightning, we had to make thousands of them.

First of all, electrical measurements have shown that ball lightning is, indeed, an autonomous formation: the current in the discharge circuit disappears after a tenth of a second, then the lightning moves freely and glows due to the accumulated energy.

Surprisingly, ball lightning has room temperature!

Lightning, by the way, is not much hotter than a cucumber in the garden. This paradox is associated with the special state of ions in the ball lightning core. Each ion generated during the discharge is immediately hydrated - in humid air it is tightly surrounded by water molecules. Opposite ions are attracted to each other, but water molecules prevent them from getting closer. A special state of matter arises—hydrated clusters.

Computer modeling has shown that in hydrated plasma the rate of ion recombination slows down sharply. If in “dry” plasma it occurs in a billionth of a second, then for ions conserved in a cluster, recombination is delayed for tens and hundreds of seconds. During this time the lightning will glow.

In the ball lightning core, hydrated clusters with a large dipole moment form chain and fractal structures. A cloud of warm, humid air can accumulate enormous energy, up to a kilojoule per liter, if it receives it during discharge in the form of separated ions of different signs.

Thus, the mystery of ball lightning can be considered solved. But just recently it took its place among the mysteries of nature discussed on television and in the press, somewhere next to UFOs, the Tunguska meteorite and the Bermuda Triangle.

And this is not surprising. The myth of ball lightning has fed more than one generation of journalists and scientists.

In pursuit of sensation, colorful details were introduced into reports of ball lightning. The farmer's simple story: “There was a strong clap of thunder. A ball of fire, the size of a fist, ran down the drainpipe and dived into a barrel of water. The water gurgled. I walked over and stuck my hand in the water. The water seems to have become warmer...”, after four consecutive reprints in newspapers, turned into a scientific work on calculating the energy reserve in a volume the size of a fist, capable of evaporating a volume of water the size of a barrel.

The famous ball lightning hunter Igor Pavlovich Stakhanov (1928-1987) had to develop a special technique for interviewing eyewitnesses in order to separate reality from speculation and fiction. After critical processing of eyewitness accounts, Stakhanov, like James Dale Barry ten years before him, came to the conclusion that in most cases, ball lightning is a luminous spheroid, 12 x 25 cm in diameter, freely floating in the air and existing 12 seconds. Less commonly, ball lightning has the shape of a torus or crown. It is usually painted in different shades yellow-red in color, there are also gray-blue and lilac tones and, sometimes, greenish - from an admixture of copper.

Most lightning has a visible luminous core and a surrounding shell. Sometimes the core rotates around a horizontal axis. In rare cases, glitter is visible inside the zipper, as in New Year's ball. It never chars paper or fabric and does not produce the feeling of a heated body. Usually it disappears without a trace, although sometimes it explodes with a sharp bang, like a balloon containing hydrogen or methane.

In the rarest cases, ball lightning can last ten seconds. The chemist Mikhail Dmitriev was lucky enough to observe remarkable lightning in 1867 on the river. Onege. The air that day was clean, well washed by rain. After a strong linear discharge with a thunderclap, ball lightning appeared above a long (130 m) raft of wet logs that formed a conducting plane. Ball lightning, with a gray-blue core and a bluish shell, slowly moved over the raft, gradually rising, came ashore and, after random movements among the trees, disappeared. It lasted for more than thirty seconds. Dmitriev managed to take air samples near the lightning. The analysis showed that the samples contained elevated levels of ozone and nitrogen oxides, as happens after a thunderstorm.

Ball lightning is far from the only natural phenomenon associated with atmospheric electricity. In addition to them, there are linear lightning, current jets, beaded lightning, blue jets and sprites, various forms of sitting discharges and St. Elmo's fire. Linear lightning is a formidable natural phenomenon and is a powerful high-voltage breakdown of a humid atmosphere. Most often, a linear discharge occurs above the ground in the cloud layer.

Current jets, a rarer phenomenon, are the flow of electric charge through a channel left by linear lightning or a high-energy cosmic particle. Current jets are being intensively studied. They can be obtained artificially by launching a rocket with a wire tail into a thundercloud. An electric charge flows down the wire and a luminous trace with a round luminous head appears.

Under certain conditions, the head of the jet, enriched with electrons, can separate and exist for some time in the form of an autonomous luminous formation.

The current stream always moves along the line of least electrical resistance. It most often enters the house through a chimney, electrical wiring, telephone or television cable. It can fly into a window, flowing around the glass, and sometimes makes a hole in it.

In strong winds, when the air is electrified by friction, current jets appear in clear weather. Then the electric charge flows off invisibly, and only in the narrows of the channel does a bluish glow appear.

In the mountains, in the pure rarefied air, current streams and the fires of St. Elmo appear more often than on the plain. Climbers often suffer from electric currents. Without going into details, they call them “ball lightning”.

The negative charge that comes to the surface of the earth during a linear lightning discharge spreads along a narrow electrically conductive channel. If this channel comes to the surface again, then a plasma jet can escape from it, from which ball lightning will separate and float. Rare eyewitnesses have seen the birth of ball lightning. All the more significant is the incident that occurred on one geodetic tower with a simple lightning rod made of an iron cable. It was carelessly buried at the base, its end sticking out of the puddle. When lightning struck the lightning rod, a dazzling jet burst out from the end of the cable, from which a luminous lump separated and floated in the air.

One of the most amazing and inexplicable properties of ball lightning is its ability to shoot gold wedding rings from your hand without causing burns. Golden or copper ring made of wire, suspended in the path of ball lightning, loses part of its mass, which can be determined by weighing. Apparently, this phenomenon is associated with accelerated recombination of ions on the metal surface, which is accompanied by its sputtering.

Our ball lightning workshop was visited by hundreds of people who wanted to see a rare phenomenon: academicians, scientists, specialists in the field of atmospheric electricity, journalists, television people, and those simply interested in ball lightning.

Eyewitnesses of the natural phenomenon were especially grateful; the demonstration of ball lightning evoked in them memories of a previous meeting with them. New details were revealed. It turned out that there are many more observers of short-lived ball lightning than those surveyed by Stakhanov; many simply do not attach importance to their encounter with this fleeting phenomenon.

For some viewers, the flash of the plasma jet caused a persistent afterimage on the retina. It exists for ten seconds and moves in space when you turn your head. How can one not recall the theory that long-lived ball lightning is not a physical, but a physiological phenomenon.

Of course, this theory is not correct: ball lightning can certainly live for more than ten seconds. This is by no means a lump of plasma, as some believe. This is a complex physicochemical formation - a club of lukewarm, humid air with an abundant population of hydrated unlike ions bound into clusters that form a certain structure surrounded by a negatively charged shell. The physics of ball lightning is the physics of enormous currents at relatively low voltage.

It will take years to study such a complex state of matter in detail. The process can be accelerated if a decent premium is set for the method of sustainable production of long-lived ball lightning. We need international competitions to obtain the longest-lived ball lightning. Perhaps this will not be so difficult: it is known that some lightning rods on high-rise buildings are readily visited by lightning throughout the year. It is enough to place a basin of dirty water in the path of the charge drain to get a testing ground for creating real natural ball lightning.