Re: Tesla Coils & Ball Lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Tesla list wrote:

>      the others admitted seeing the same things.  These observations were
>      omitted from the technical reports since they did not appear on the
>      recording cameras nor on the oscillograph records."  THE LIGHTNING
>      BOOK, P. Viemeister"
>
> 	How reliable is Viemeister?

That's a good question.  But you mean "how honest is Viemeister?" It
wouldn't be a question so much of "reliability," it would be a question of
lying in print, of making stuff up that didn't actually happen and then
putting it in a book.  That's very different than publishing a second hand
story from an unreliable source.  (heh, how reliable were those engineers?)

> I find it hard to think that any of the
> engineers I know could keep something like that to himself!!!!!

How many people on this list, having witnessed Ball Lightning, quickly
told others about it?  Didn't they wait until someone else came forward
with an eyewitness account?  If it takes guts to be the first on this list
to admit to seeing BL, this indicates that there is still some danger to
being labeled "ball lightning quack."

ALso, not "engineers," but research staff on a science project, which is
90% of the way to being a professional scientist.

Has anyone here ever been afraid of being seen as a "lightning-ball
quack?"  Since the 1980s the attitude towards BL has lightened up
immensely.  In earlier decades, the scientific community thought that
reports of BL were as bad as reports of alien abduction or bigfoot:
since BL didn't exist, if you reported seeing it, you were either lying or
crazy or a very poor observer, no other choice.  Today quite a few
researchers are convinced that BL exists, and many more are unsure about
it, so they wouldn't assume that a BL eyewitness must be lying or
delusional.


>  We like
> to talk about unusual stuff.  If there IS such a thing as ball lightning
> I'd like to see it under safe circumstances.

:)     I'd like to see it even if there was a danger of serious injury!




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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com
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