Re: Ball lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Harold Weiss by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <hweiss-at-new.rr-dot-com>

Hi Nir,

I posted a pic, I think under Candle?, of streamers in a burning chunk of
car tire, with zinc wicked candles looking similar.  The carbon in the soot
seems to make a fullerene type of sootball filled with ozone.  I have also
made balls with just carbon dust sprinkled on the topload.  Conditions on a
TC with carbon present are similar to those in fullerene manufacture except
an inert gas/vacuum atmosphere.  In our case it is a combustable enviroment
so the balls ignite and float away.  Explosive balls may occurr when dust
fragments impact them and break them up, allowing the combustion process to
speed up.

The Courm's were able to pass balls thru glass that had carbon smudges on
the opposite side.  They also looked at it as a charged aerogel.  Buckyballs
are known to posess superconducting properties when doped with akali metals.
They had a conductance theory, that had the ball heat and breakdown the
glass.  My theory is that the charged ball creates a capacitor between the
ball and carbon film on the opposite side of the glass.  I have an idea that
the buckyball may be superconductive at combustion temprature in the
presence of ozone.  I wouldn't have a clue on how to test this.

Ball size does appear to be related to power available.  As I built larger
coils, the average ball size increased.  With my 6" 1.4KW coil, I have seen
1 ball at 18mm, and one out of the side of the secondary at 1cm.  Average
balls seem to be in the 5-6mm range, with none lasting more than about 1
sec.  It should be interesting to see what happens with the 15" coil once I
get the 10KVA pig hooked up to it.

David E Weiss

 > Original poster: "Nir Wingarten by way of Terry Fritz
<teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <nirzvi-at-yahoo-dot-com>
 >
 > Hi all
 >
 > I wanted to write about the strange, yet studied
 > Ball Lightning
 > It happens around high-voultage arcs, flies in the
 > air, sometimes fast sometimes slow. It can pass throu
 > walls(acctually it discharges it self to the other
 > end)
 > It is about 3 centimeters in radious and is very hot.
 > It can last up to an whole hour and even more(!)
 > prehaps you experienced such a phenomenom, if so
 > please let me know.
 >
 > Yours truelly
 > Nir(NOT NEAR) Weingarten
 >
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