Nexus - 0802 - New Times Magazine-pages

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MAKING BALL LIGHTNING TO ORDER Speculations abound as to the true nature — ward, as ball lightning could then be made by Albert Budden © November 2000 of ball lightning, and over the past 156 _ to order and experimented upon in the lab. years a remarkable family of theoretical It is then of the greatest ificance the Speculations abound as to the true nature — ward, as ball lightning could then be made of ball lightning, and over the past 156 to order and experimented upon in the lab. years a remarkable family of theoretical It is then of the greatest significance that models for these mysterious electric fire- two electrical engineers, Kenneth Corum balls has appeared in the scientific litera- and James Corum, in Ohio, USA, have ture. Some of these have been quite recently succeeded in producing, to order, bizarre, such as the proposal that ball light- such electric fireballs in many beautiful ning is the result of nuclear fission, the colours. active process of atomic bombs. However, However, just as startling is their revela- the number of actual experiments in the __ tion that the instructions to accomplish this laboratory has been minimal, and armchair have been publicly available for over a theorising based on second- and third-hand hundred years, tucked away in the note- reports has been the most common way of _ books of the legendary turn-of-the-century tackling the enigma of ball lightning. physicist, Dr Nikola Tesla. It is the Corums' unique reinterpretation of Tesla's THE CORUMS' BREAKTHROUGH 1899 Colorado Springs notes that has Attempts at reproducing ball lightning —_ brought what amounts to a long-overlooked have been disappointing and have eluded _ secret back into the public domain. physicists worldwide, although success in As if this weren't enough, another sur- this would of course be a giant step for- prise is the Corum brothers' revelation that he phenomenon of ball lightning has been a fascination over the centuries but remains a mysterious riddle to scientists, partly due to its transient an elusive nature. Typically although not exclusively occurring during thundery weather, this electrical artefact can take various forms— most commonly appearing as a globe o light, about the size of a grapefruit, which fades out harmlessly after a few minutes. However, historical records also report metre-wide fireballs which exploded like a bomb, wrecking houses and tearing of: limbs from those caught in the blast. Consider, for example, the following 19th-century report from France, which archaically refers to the phenomenon as a "thunderbolt": "On 11 July 1809, at Chateauneuf-les- Moustiers at about eleven o'clock in the morning, a thunderbolt entered the church just as the bell was ringing and a large con- gregation had taken their seats. The thun- derbolt exploded with great force, wound- ing eighty-two people and killing nine out- right... There were several dogs in the church at the time of the explosion, and all of them were killed." Another 19th-century case provides examples of the weird effects that can occur during close encounters with ball lightning: "On 24 August 1895, about ten o'clock in the morning, several people saw a whitish globe of about one-and-a-half inches in diameter descend out of a violent rainstorm and, on touching the ground, break up into two smaller globes. These ‘lightning beads' immediately rose to the height of the chim- neys on the nearby houses. One went down a chimney and exploded in the kitchen, causing great damage. The other ball descended another chimney, passed through a room in which were a man and a child, without harming either of them, and went through the floor, perforating a brick with a clean round hole about half an inch in diameter." THE CORUMS' BREAKTHROUGH Attempts at reproducing ball lightning have been disappointing and have eluded physicists worldwide, although success in this would of course be a giant step for- Primary: —™ ', Jmxin (1m above ground) cy Rotary Break —* 9 Power Mains Diagram showing details of apparatus used to make ball lightning. Note that both the high and low frequency secondary resonators are excited by the same primary. The system was tuned so that after the primary spark broke, the low frequency resonator gave a maximum voltage of 2.4 MV at 66.6 kHz and the high frequency resonator attained 200 kV at 156 kHz. 60 Hz Power Mains NEXUS - 47 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2001