RE: [TCML] Ball Lightning Weather Phenomenon?

["Brian" <brianb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris/all,

I've just completed a number of exhibits for the Technorama Science Museum
in Switzerland and will be heading there from the US at the end of the month
to install them. In addition to these three exhibits kVA also built a number
of Tesla Coils for the museum with an interesting "Hands On" configuration
(trying to keep this on topic). I can share more details on the Tesla Coils
after September 15th if anyone is interested.

The three exhibits I personally built are all based on High Voltage Pulse
Discharge Machines (Moderators - While these are not Tesla Coils they are
High Voltage / High Current devices and of interest to many coilers but I'll
ask for responses to be taken off-line). 

Among these exhibits is a machine which creates 20cm Spherical Plasmoids
that separate from the generation device, float up another 20-60cm, and are
able to sustain themselves for a short period of time. I will not claim that
these are "Ball Lightning" but they are atmospheric pressure spherical
plasmoids with characteristics very similar to what has been reported as
"Ball Lightning".

Please Note - My work was on creating a museum quality
experiment/demonstration while the credit for the original scientific work
goes to Sergei Stepanov at the Russian Acafemy of Science in St. Petersburg
Russia, who in 2000 published the first paper utilizing this configuration
and was very helpful to me. Sergei's experiments were recreated at the Max
Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik in Berlin in 2006 with one of their
pictures receiving a lot of attention and overshadowing Sergei's work.
http://www.ipp.mpg.de/ippcms/de/presse/pi/05_06_pi.html
 
Before these devices were shipped from California to Switzerland the
Director of the Technorama Museum wanted to do some experiments and
investigation of his own. His goal was to look at the instant a plasmoid was
initiated, what happens when a wire explodes, and what goes on when a can
crushes. With that in mind we brought in a high speed digital camera crew
and took some awsome high speed pictures which I hope to share with you in
September. At the moment though you can see some behind the scenes shots at 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4XLUfBR0AU (please remember we weren't trying to
shoot a great picture of a plasmoid we were trying to see what happens when
it was initiated. We also learned some very interesting facts about how a
can crushes and that the finished shape we see after the event is not what
happens by the work coil alone. And the exploding wire produced absolute
beautiful pictures with a welth of detail. Again, I should be able to post
some of these pictures and video after the clients press release in
September but you can get a teaser in the You-Tube video above.

Sorry for this long winded post but I'm stepping out here and trying to
share as much information as I can without giving away any of kVA's or our
clients proprietory information. I hope this is taken by the TCML community
in the positive way I intended.

Regards,
Brian B.

TCML Member since (well almost the beginning of the TCML - Thanks Chip)


-----Original Message-----
From: tesla-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:tesla-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Chris Rutherford
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 7:20 AM
To: Tesla Coil Mailing List
Subject: [TCML] Ball Lightning Weather Phenomenon?

Hi All,

A little off topic, although some people have attepted to produce ball
lightning from a Tesla coil.  I found this youtube video of a 'weather
phenomenon' and I was just wondering if anyone has seen it before or
could comment on its authenticity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ioN-3UWYrY

Thanks

Chris
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