Known for millennia, but still considered a phenomenon, ball lightning’s origins have confounded researchers since it was first observed. While a full explanation of the nature of ball lightning is still beyond our grasps, scientists in China have moved one step closer to an explanation, recording the spectacle's optical spectrum for the first time.
According to a paper publish in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers at Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, China fortuitously recorded high-speed video and spectrograph recordings of a ball lightning event while studying everyday cloud-based lightning.
Using their spectrograph recordings researchers were able to detect spectral emission lines that matched the elemental signatures associated with silicon, calcium, iron, nitrogen and oxygen – the constituent parts of soil. Given that evidence, it appears that the theory that ball lightning could be a vaporized silicon mechanism might yet bet correct... At least in this case.
Although the jury is still out with this new research research we’re now one step closer to understanding one of the world’s longest enduring, most spectacular, natural phenomenon.
Image and Video Courtesy of Physics