A new model of ball lightning is proposed. The main model assumption is that ball lightning has a core consisting of clouds of electrons and totally ionized ions which oscillate with respect to each other. According to the model, ball lightning emits high energy photons that are sometimes dangerous for human beings, and in a number of situations it can kill humans by electric pulses; the ball lightning energy can be of the order of 106 J and even greater. The electric charges that need to be injected into the atmosphere to create ball lightning and the currents, providing the injection of such charges, are estimated. These estimates predict that ball lightning can be created in the experiments with ordinary lightning or powerful electrical installations.

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The lifetimes, volume densities of energy, electron and ion densities and other parameters of ball lightning cores with the nonrelativistic electrons are estimated. The model according to which the motion of the electrons of the ball lightning core is the superposition of the oscillatory motion and the thermal motion in the directions perpendicular to those of the oscillations is proposed. Some problems related to isolation of the ball lightning core from the atmosphere and the transfer of the atmospheric pressure on it are considered.

It is shown that collisions of alpha particles with protons could not result in the physically important manifestation of avalanche proton-boron fusion in experiments at Prague Asterix Laser System.

It is shown that scattering of the laser-accelerated carbon ions in the material of the protective membrane of a fast ignition, indirect compression target without cone can result in a significant increase in the hot spot radius and will complicate significantly or even prevent the effective shaping of the bombarded region of the compressed fuel.