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Re: Ball lightning ?



Original poster: "davep by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <davep-at-quik-dot-com>

Tesla list wrote:
 
> Original poster: "Randy by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
><randy-at-gte-dot-net>
 
> OK, I'm gonna just spill my guts here. If you, dear reader, win the
> Nobel Prize for Physics, kindly send me half of the money, and
> mention me if you get the chance. I had intended to experiment
> and prove or disprove the theory for myself, but it's not going to
> happen any time soon, and I could get hit by a bus in the
> meanwhile, so, here goes: <still on-topic, Terry :) >

> From: http://www.ilpi-dot-com/msds/ref/activatedcharcoal.html

> "A single gram of such material can have 400 to 1,200 square meters of
> surface area, 98% of it internal! "
 
> They're talking about charcoal... carbon to be specific. Carbon
> being an integral part of the "sooty smoke" needed to make MW
> oven plasmoids, which "may" be akin to ball lightning.

> It is not hard for me to believe that a lightning stroke might
> occasionally liberate a fresh batch of, say, a gram of carbon to the
> atmosphere. Probably Malcolm, or somebody, can calculate the
> capacitance of 1200 M^2 of carbon vs. the atmosphere, ....and its
> resistance, and just boil it down to a simple RC time constant...
> ummm... I can imagine *several* grams of fresh carbon being
> aerosolized and electrically charged by a strike; ....methinks
> that a few thousand square yards of charged surface area, via a
> poor conductor, COULD discharge a'la ball lightning, in an R/C
> kinda way, for a humanly-comprehendable several seconds.

	IIR, the Corums speculated in a similar area, proposing that
	perhaps the rubber covered wire 'seeded' the discharge with
	carbon.  Also reference to Michael Faradays book (pamphlet?)

		Natural History of a candle...

	(ANY flame is a plasma...  )

	best
	dwp