Re: Teslas Ball Lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Mddeming@xxxxxxx 

In a message dated 8/7/05 10:58:04 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
There is no lack of evidence.  These are first hand, witnessed
accounts.  A report by a witness counts as evidence.  The more
witnesses there are, the greater value the first hand accounts
have.

Eye witness accounts without any physical evidence (forensics) is 
considered the LEAST reliable form of evidence.


The objects were reported to be spherical (a geometrical
observation that quantifies the surface structure), bright (a
relative quantification of the luminosity), and they moved slowly
through the air and other objects (a relative quantification of
their velocities).  True, these quantifications need to become
more precise, but they are quantities of the phenomenon,
nonetheless.


Sounds almost identical to UFO sightings.
No, you have data, not urban legends.  Urban legends are based
upon hearsay, which these accounts are not.


Some are, some aren't.

First hand accounts of ball lightning are worth a lot.  The
moderator clearly stated this.  Unless I have missed something,
it is the moderator who determines what evidence has worth on
this list.

Actually, he decides what is interesting and OT enough to be 
distributed, not its intrinsic worth.
And how is it you feel qualified to reduce the
evidence from "first hand account" to "anecdotal?"


an-ec-dot-al\ adj. based on, or consisting of, reports or observations.
All first hand accounts reported to non-witnesses and uncorroborated 
by physical evidence ARE by definition anecdotal. IMO one should not 
be criticized for proper use of the language.

Ah, but you seem to have missed the fact that the first hand
reports had led Terry to propose a means for replicating and
testing the phenomenon.  Terry's suggestions, of course, have
been replicated by Jean Naudin and others with microwave ovens.
Kiril Chukanov has actually built machines that generate large
specimens of ball lightning type effects using microwaves.

ball lightning TYPE EFFECTS - yes. But until someone comes up with a 
working definition and model of just what is and is not BL, we only 
have conjecture about a group of loosely similar phenomena. It could 
just as easily be ignis fatuus in more than one sense. ("Look that up 
in your Funk and Wagnall's")

I must qualify that I have read Kiril's theories concerning ball
lightning (and physics in general) and disagree with some of his
theories.

AMEN Brother!
But that does not detract from the fact he has built
machines that actually produce ball lightning type effects, or
made some valid observations concerning the phenomena.


The connection between microwaves and lightning is dubious at best. 
The connection between burning stuff in microwave ovens and building 
better Tesla Coils is even more so.

Are you placing the guys on this list in the same group as ghost
encounter reports, alien abductions, and fairy sightings?  Are
you, again, saying that the engineers who reported first hand
accounts of ball lightning are making outrageous claims? Correct
me if I'm wrong, but the first hand reports of ball lightning I
read on this list were by qualified engineers who understand the
principles of high potential, high frequency currents.

Irrelevant, since we don't know if high frequency currents are involved.
The
reports I read were qualified in that the reporters questioned
their own physiological experiences, reported contradictions by
other witnesses, and also did not make any claim that we should
accept ball lightning as real.

Then why promote that idea?


Having read numerous other first hand accounts of ball lightning,
and having discussed ball lightning with researchers attempting
to replicate it in a controlled setting, I honestly feel that
these accounts are genuine and valuable to our research.

Our research? "What you mean 'we' kimo sabe?"

Hopefully, with more first hand accounts of this caliber, we will
eventually solve the mystery of what ball lightning actually is
and understand the physics behind it.

My personal theory is that BL is caused by extra-terrestrial borborygmus.

The only burden of proof issue here is whether the reports are
given by honest people.  Since no claims are being made aside
from the fact that they saw what they saw, and I have no reason
to question the integrity of this list's members, they owe no
proof.  It is you who have incorrectly assigned a need for burden
of proof to first hand accounts.  As I mentioned before, a
witness *IS* proof.

In law yes, in science rarely.
Unless you are questioning the integrity of
the witness, there is nothing to prove in a first hand account.

Only the relevance of the account to anything physical needs to be proved.

To clarify this further, to say you saw a ghost is data.  To say
that ghosts exist is a theory.  The theory requires data.  The
better the quality of the data, the stronger the theory becomes.
I don't disagree that the data presented is weak data, but it is
data nonetheless.

    If I close my eyes and press lightly on my eyelids, I "see" what 
seem to be yellowish green nets. If ten other people or 10 million 
other people have this same experience, I still can't catch fish with 
those nets.

Dave


Matt D.

"If a man says he has had a religious experience, the only valid 
conclusion we can draw from his testimony is that he has had a 
religious experience." Carl Jung