New model and estimation of the danger of ball lightning

Abstract

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.

Effective attraction between oscillating electrons in a plasmoid via acoustic wave exchange

“…According to the model of Dvornikov & Dvornikov (2007); Dvornikov (2010Dvornikov ( , 2011 these objects can be implemented as spherically symmetric plasma oscillations. Note that analogous idea was also discussed by Shmatov (2003). To explain the long lifetime (up to several minutes) of a natural plasmoid we put forward a hypothesis that plasma could be in a reduced resistance state.…”

Possible formations of sprites in the free electromagnetic field

“…If the BL under consideration does not disappear due to a collision with some obstacle, several tens percent of this energy will be converted into energy of photons being of the order of 10 5 210 6 eV during the time of the order of 1 s. At standard conditions, the typical lengths of attenuation of flux of such photons in the air are in the range of about 50-400 m. It also seems that usually the high-energy photons and electric pulse are more dangerous for a human being than the thermal influence and shock wave which according to the observational data (Shmatov, 2003) can be created by BL, too.…”

Axially and spherically symmetric solitons in warm plasma

“…It should be noted that the idea that spherically symmetric oscillations of electrons underlie the BL phenomenon was independently put forward in Ref. [25].…”