Ball-lightning: why it still puzzles us

Ball-lightning - why it still puzzles us

Zeus hurling a plasmoid (thunderbolt)

"Greek Zeus-Jupiter hurling a lightning-bolt. Juergens suggest that this 'unreal' bolt may be all too real, a plasmoid of electricity of immense power, well beyond the bi-dental fork that represents Jovean lightning in the typical artistic sublimations." (Alfred de Grazia,  Chaos and Creation, 1981).


Of all the phenomena of an "Electric Universe," ball lightning has been one of the least studied by Western science. Yet research in this subject has been carried forward more systematically in Russia and in Eastern Europe, in the frame of research on plasma phenomena.

The state of the art of Russian research in ball-lightning was exposed at the II. International AIS-2010 "Atmosphere, Ionosphere, Safety" Conference in Kaliningrad, Russia June 21-27. We present here, for all the buffs of electrical phenomena, and all those interested in physics, the abstracts in English of the presentations that were made at this conference, which was co-sponsored by the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development.