How is ball lightning formed? How is it different from ordinary lightning? How to prevent it?

In summer, thunder rumbles at night during thunderstorms, flames shine in the sky, and bright and dazzling lightning cuts across the quiet night sky. Lightning is a weather phenomenon that everyone is accustomed to. Authoritative experts have calculated that the global average requires 100 lightning strikes per second. Most of the lightning we often see is in the shape of forked branches rather than vertical wireframes. Scientists have different explanations on this matter.

Dutch scientist Manuel Elias explained that there are two media in the air charging and discharging process, namely neutral gas and a "channel" filled with hydrolyzed gas. The "channel" will have a conductor at a certain time. The current flows freely during charging and discharging, and the hydrolyzed gas and the neutral gas will merge due to the instability of the boundary, thus causing a bifurcation. Branch-like condition.

Scientists also explained that whether the branching phenomenon occurs depends on the strength of the electrostatic field. If the field is strong, it is also possible that the negative electrode and anodizing gas will quickly produce a "flourishing" lightning state. In addition to net-like lightning, there is also a kind of ball lightning, which is one of the signs that scientists have been exploring for more than ten years. Basically all understanding shows that ball lightning occurs in thunderstorms and follows an ordinary lightning strike. It often occurs suspended in the air very close to the floor. It is easy to rebound after touching the ground, and the substances that are touched are usually burned. At present, there are many reports about ball lightning from various countries around the world.

The heat caused by lightning drives the nitrogen molecules in the air to disintegrate. Nitrogen and oxygen fuse to produce nitrogen oxides. Dissolved water produces sodium cyanide. Weak sodium cyanide water lands on the road and in the soil. Phosphate and nitrite are converted into phosphate and nitrite in the layer, which are very important to vegetation and microorganisms. The ball lightning that occurred in Germany more than 10 years ago was unique. We saw a big fireball fall from the sky, hit the top of a big tree, and immediately dispersed into more than 10 small fireballs, fell to the ground one after another, and disappeared, just like a goddess scattering flowers.

In a leisure resort in the Soviet Union, two children took shelter from the rain on the eaves of a cattle pen. Suddenly, an orange fireball rolled down from the apricot tree in front of the door, heading straight towards them. In panic, a child kicked it, and with a rumble, the strange fireball exploded. The two children were knocked to the ground, but they were not injured. Afterwards, everyone realized that the fireball was a rare ball lightning.

A strange thing happened in a small town in the United States called Longyonville: a housewife clearly remembered that the food she put in the refrigerator was raw, but When she returned home from the market, she opened the refrigerator and found that all her food had turned into vegetables. Later, through analysis by scientists, it became clear that this was also a joke made by ball lightning. I don’t know how it happened, but it got into the household refrigerator and turned the refrigerator into a heating stove. What’s puzzling is that the refrigerator was not destroyed!

An Austrian named Dreikinger The doctor, on the night when his wallet was stolen, was invited to treat a man who was struck by lightning. He found that there were two "b"s printed on the soles of the man's feet, which were the same size as the "b"s on his lost wallet. It turned out that the wallet was in this man's pocket.

On the evening of July 22, 1962, when Chinese scientific staff were conducting scientific research on lightning on the top of Mount Tai, they saw a strange ball lightning with their own eyes. With a loud noise, the scientific staff who were working in front of the window all night discovered that a red fireball with a diameter of about 15mm rushed into the room from the gap in the west window, and flew out of the chimney about a few seconds later. The moment it left the mouth of the chimney, an explosion occurred and the fireball disappeared. The hot water bottle and lamp oil on the table were shattered, and the chimney was also damaged. There was a 103 cm long mold stain on the sheet where the fireball passed through.

On January 6, 1979, in Jilin City, China, some people had seen a ground-mounted ball lightning spinning around the office of the weather observation station company for several times, then jumping up and flying eastward. arrive. It was like a big lamp, shining brightly all the way, and finally fell into the Songhua River and disappeared. On July 9, 1981, with a thunder, we saw two orange fireballs, with a squeaking and whistling sound, rolling down from the dark clouds and falling at the Pudong Gaoqiao Bus Station in Shanghai. The two fireballs collided on the road, making a loud noise and disappearing.

At about 19:45 on the evening of September 16, 1993, the weather in Binhai County, Jiangsu Province was extremely hot and the standard air pressure was very low. Suddenly, a red dragon came from the Dongyuan Group of Dongcun, Dongkan Town, a certain county. Village West flew eastward, and when it flew into the air near Yang, it turned into a fireball and rushed into the room. Then there was a loud noise. One person was killed by lightning, and his clothes, pants, and hair were burned away, and two others were killed. He was knocked unconscious to the ground and suffered burns in several places on his body. He later escaped after being treated.

Rare weather phenomena such as ball lightning have aroused endless reverie among people who are full of curiosity. For a long time, ancient people could only express it through imagination. Picture it as an elf riding a ball of fire, or as a monster that spits fire from its mouth and dominates an area.

At the beginning of the 19th century, scientists began a long search for ball lightning.

Although ball lightning is rare, over the past two centuries, we have obtained a large amount of visual data, including the personal witness records of some scientists. Ball lightning is a unique type of lightning, but its origin has not yet been clarified. Some people think it is a vortex-like high-temperature plasma; some people think it is also a special type of air charge and discharge.

The new scientific progress has led some scientists to introduce fractal theory into the study of ball lightning, and proposed a fractal ball lightning model: small particles of high-temperature floating dust produced at the moment of a general lightning charge and discharge. It collides with the surrounding materials and bonds to form an intricate porous structure - a molecular structure-shaped structure. It has a relatively stable appearance, but its density is very small, and most of its volume is gaps. It is precisely this gap that stores the kinetic energy of ball lightning, which is a kind of mechanical energy. The release of kinetic energy may be a chain-like chemical change.

Based on the known natural laws, scientists have proposed dozens of models, all of which can express some of the characteristics of ball lightning to varying degrees. However, because ball lightning cannot be studied directly in the laboratory, sufficient data cannot be obtained, and many of the phenomena in the reports seem to be relevant, therefore, a widely recognized model has not yet emerged. 200 years have passed, and nature is still showing off its wonders. What secrets are hidden in it? I firmly believe that one day people will be able to solve the mystery.