Re: Golka video: Ball Lightning in lab. WHAT?!!!!!

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Sat, 18 Jun 2005, Tesla list wrote:

> After working on this for some time, after the documentary, he does not
> feel this was ball lightning after all, because it would not go beyond the
> point you saw.

If the large glowing spheres are real and not illusion, then there's
something very weird and unexplained going on here; far weirder than ion
flames in a microwave oven.  The weirdness might be the key to explaining
BL.  Or perhaps those spheres are not gas at all, but instead are
something more normal, like hollow metal bubbles which collapse and
deflate.

I'd be leery of dismissing the importance of "welding spatter"  unless I
was *sure* that it was illusion, or *sure* that it was nothing more
interesting than a hollow metal bubble.  If we cannot convert it into
baseball-sized BL, that doesn't mean much.  After all, maybe it's easily
converted to large BL, we just haven't figured out how.

> So, while there were grain sized surviving metals from the water, there
> were also metal cores with a further out skin also of metal with air or
> steam driven bubble holes on the surface, again tied together with slag.
> Maybe the cooling of air or steam or water froze these semi-hollow objects
> in the state I viewed them.

That might be important.  On the other hand, if you drop some liquid
solder into water, the violent boinling gives it all kinds of weird
shapes.  Is the water the cause of the shapes?  What happens if the
glowing blobs roll around on a slab of ceramic or copper?


> These larger versions or stages may be what you refer to. Not BL after
> all, though very neat to watch.

Yeah!

Even if it's not plasma, etc.  ...if it's *not* just an illusion, then the
books which insist "it's all in your retina" are wrong, and we should
write up a little article to debunk them.


> Bob had changed his view on
> this not being BL some time after the interview with further work but did
> OK the release of the video to the archive because he feels one's failures,
> even documented, should be as much of the records, as one's successful
> efforts. It may provide useful data to other researchers in the future.
> I would agree this effect should be better understood.

> I may get a sample and get you a digital picture of a very close up shot

Even better would be some video from *two* cameras at the same time, one
with a heavy ND filter and the other with a much lighter filter.   That
way we can check for "retina illusion."   If both cameras "see" a glowing
sphere with the same diamter regardless of brightness, then we know that
the diameter is genuine and not caused by retinal overspill.

Also, if the shadows of the glowing spheres were cast upon a
rear-projection screen and videotaped, then the bright glow would be out
of the picture, and we'd watch the actual profile of the opaque parts as
the spheres went through their changes.


> or
> you can access an electric forklift battery bank and make your own, if it
> has enough current.


A high-amp transformer also produced the spheres?  Any idea of the V and A?
The junk store that's going out of business has some 5VAC 100Amp
transformers.






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William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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