This morning, I came across an article on ball lightning entitled Ball Lightning Bamboozles Physicists. the point of the article was that ball lightning is an unexplained phenomenon. There are actually lots of unexplained phenomena in science, like for example, the exact mechanism by which evolution occurs. The lack of an explanation here has given credence to the “intelligent design movement” which I take aim at in a posting entitled Evolution or Intelligent Design?
Nevertheless, the biosciences have done themselves no favour by skipping over this gap in the evolution narrative.
The Credibility of Ball Lightning
Physicists did the same with ball lightning for many years. Basically they simply denied that the phenomenon existed no matter how often it was reported. And then in an airplane traveling over New York City during a thunderstorm in the 1960s, one of the passengers reported seeing a glowing sphere emerge from one wall of the aircraft, drift considerately down the aisle, avoiding passengers, and disappear through the rear of the aircraft.
This observation of ball lightning aligns entirely with many other descriptions of it, particularly in the fact that ball lightning “passes through walls”, whether they be the walls of houses or the fusilage of an airplane. What was different about this report was only the reporter of the event. He happened to be Professor Roger Jennison of the UK’s University of Kent. If the distinguished Prof had reported meeting aliens or spotting Big Foot, then in all probability, he would have been urged to “spend more time with his family”. However, ball lightning was only a few yards North of believable and the emergence of a credible eye-witness dragged it into “believability”.
The Irreproducibility of Ball Lightning
There have since been many reports of ball lightning documented. The phenomenon may be related to the strange lights that appear and disappear in some locations across the world (see
Mysterious Lights in the Night which describes balls of light in the night phenomena) – the only difference being that these “lights in the night” are not associated with thunderstorms at all. Ball lightning and the appearance of unexplained lights are not disputed by science, they are just not credibly explained by science.
Physicists have not yet managed to reproduce floating balls of electricity. And worse than that, every potential explanation they come up with is to some degree testable in the laboratory – which means they haven’t found a credible explanation yet. In my view this is a good thing, because it serves as a reminder that there are many things that we do not know.
And On To Thunder Stones
Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry and a brilliant pillar of the French scientific establishment proclaimed that “Stones cannot fall from the sky, because there are no stones in the sky.” He wasn’t the first to advance this argument, Aristotle was, arguing that “the heavens were perfect and thus couldn’t contain loose stones.” and Isaac Newton agreed with him. Lavoisier’s argument was more damaging to science, because it prompted a number of museums that had collected meteorites to discard their valuable specimens. The Académie Française changed it’s mind about meteorites following a shower of about 2000 rocks that fell over L’Aigle before the eyes of multiple witnesses.
Thunder stones are stones that seem to correspond with lightning strikes. They are not entirely explained simply because no-one is entirely sure that the phenomenon is real. The possibility is that, sometimes, when lightning strikes a stone comes hurtling down with the lightning bolt, landing somewhere in the vicinity. The phenomenon is reported occasionally, but pretty impossible to prove – and the candidate stone (and who can be sure it really was the stone that fell, if there was one) i.e. the “thunder stone” often turns out to be a meteorite.
It is possible then, that when a meteorite falls through a thunderstorm it creates sufficient turbulence in the atmosphere to provoke an ionization path down which lightning simultanously travels. However, unless the phenomenon is acknowledged, the explanation is meaningless.
~ Master Yoda
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i’ve also seen three pieces of stones which is claimed to be thunder stones that had been preserved for a several decades, almost a century which has been passed through generations and generations. we are mythically right but we would like to run the scientifically test on those stones. do you know that where or how can we test that stones? if it is possible can we test by ourselves, i mean there must be some special character about those stones. because we are worried that they will replace those stones. thanking you.