Ball lightning had been anecdotally described, but has now been created in the lab.
Ball lightning has mystified electricity researchers since Benjamin Franklin first flew his kite in 1752. The very next year, Russian scientist Georg Richmann was killed by ball lightning while flying a kite modeled on Franklin’s experiment.
Since then, dozens of hypotheses have been offered to explain ball lightning, from Nikola Tesla’s seminal 1904 treatise, “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires,” to the most recent explanation offered by University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand) professors John Abrahamson and James Dinniss, that ball lightning is just vaporized silicon.
Here’s the theory: Sand, or silicon dioxide (also called silica) can be vaporized by a lightning strike in the presence of carbon, causing the short-lived, glowing, floating objects called ball lightning. The theory maintains that the silicon vapor glows from the heat produced when it recombines with oxygen in the air. That, according to the hypothesis, maintains the ball shape due to condensing silicon on its outside surface that is bound by the electric charge of the lightning.
To test the hypothesis, Pavo and Paiva subjected a silicon substrate to a high-voltage arc with 140 amps of current. As they moved the electrodes apart, an arc vaporized the 350-micron-thick substrate, creating luminous orbs the size of a golf ball.
140 amps of current is a lot of current. Don’t try this at home.