Ball Lightning
Ball lightning is a natural phenomenon, or debatably, a pseudoscientific theory. It is sometimes associated with thunderstorms. It takes the form of a long-lived, glowing, floating object, as opposed to the short-lived arcing between two points commonly associated with lightning. An early attempt to explain ball lightning was recorded by Nikola Tesla on March 5, 1904 (Electrical World and Engineer).
Some laboratory experiments claim to produce ball lightning, but there is no consensus that the phenomenon reproduced is related to the natural one. The natural occurrences are, by their nature, difficult to document accurately. Consequently many scientists continue to dispute the existence of ball lightning as a distinct physical phenomenon (see, for example, the review by Singer (2002)). In one such occurrence, Singer reports that staff at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge apparently saw ball lightning, although Brian Pippard, the Head of Department, was skeptical on its reality.
Sometimes the discharge appears to be attracted to a certain object, and sometimes to move randomly. After several seconds the discharge leaves, disperses, is absorbed into something, or, rarely, vanishes in an explosion.
Ball lightning has been seen in places as diverse as "escorting" World War II bombers, flying alongside their wingtips. During this period, due to the enigmatic nature of this phenomenon, these appearances were referred to as "foo fighters." Other accounts place ball lightning as appearing over a kitchen stove to wandering down the aisle of an airliner. One report described ball lightning engulfing and following a car, causing the electrical supply to overload and fail.
One of the earliest recorded, and most destructive, occurrences is thought to have taken place during The Great Thunderstorm at Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, in the United Kingdom, on October 21, 1638. Four people died and around 60 were injured when what appears to have been ball lightning struck a church.
Another reference to ball lightning appears in Laura Ingalls Wilder's book On the Banks of Plum Creek [Harper Trophy, 1937] in which the lightning appears during a thunderstorm near a cast iron stove in the family's kitchen. It is described as appearing near the stovepipe, then rolling across the floor, only to disappear as the mother chases it with a willow-branch broom.
Notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley also reported witnessing what he referred to as "globular electricity" during a thunderstorm on Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire in 1916. As related in his Confessions, he was sheltered in a small cottage when he "noticed, with what I can only describe as calm amazement, that a dazzling globe of electric fire, apparently between six and twelve inches in diameter, was stationary about six inches below and to the right of my right knee. As I looked at it, it exploded with a sharp report quite impossible to confuse with the continuous turmoil of the lightning, thunder and hail, or that of the lashed water and smashed wood which was creating a pandemonium outside the cottage. I felt a very slight shock in the middle of my right hand, which was closer to the globe than any other part of my body."
A famous example of the violent potential of ball lightning occurred in 1753 when Professor Georg Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia created a kite flying aparatus similar to that built by Benjamin Franklin a year earlier. He was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, when he heard thunder. The Professor ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the experiment was underway, a large ball lightning showed up, collided with Richmann's head and killed him, leaving a red spot. His shoes were blown open, parts of his clothes singed, the engraver knocked out; the doorframe of the room was split, and the door itself torn off its hinges.
Recently scientists at Tel Aviv University claim to have produced ball lightning in the lab using a microwave drill and ceramic substrate.
A popular hypothesis is that ball lightning is a highly ionized plasma contained by self-generated magnetic fields: a plasmoid. This hypothesis is not initially credible. If the gas is highly ionized, and if it is near thermodynamic equilibrium, then it must be very hot. Since it must be in pressure equilibrium with the surrounding air, it will be much lighter and hence float up rapidly. Magnetic fields, if present, might provide the plasmoid's coherence, but will not reduce this buoyancy. In addition a hot plasma cannot persist for long, because of recombination and heat conduction.
There may, however, be some novel form of plasma for which the above arguments do not fully apply. For example, a plasma may be composed of negative and positive ions, rather than electrons and positive ions. In that case, the recombination may be rather slow even at ambient temperature. One such theory involves positively charged hydrogen and negatively charged nitrites (NO2) and nitrates (NO3). In this theory, the role of the ions as seeds for the condensation of water droplets plays an important role.
Other suggestions include:
- that some stored chemical energy is slowly being released, providing persistence and thrust.
- that ball lightning is some form of induction phenomenon. (Ball lightning having allegedly been witnessed inside metal aircraft.)
- that the lightning is a Hill's vortex, like a smoke ring.
Blood Rain in India (Kerala)
This natural phenomenon, actually since the date of July 25 and September 23, 2001, the rain falls down with a wide red. Just cash it makes the world community was shocked. There was what was like this. Moreover, the rain fell in southern India's Kerala region overwhelmingly believe in the greatness of god. It was raining heavily and colored red and other colors are yellow, pink and green. Actually, the black rain in Kerala had happend and also concentrated around the beginning of 1896 and several times since then.
At first, the experts argued that it was caused by the impact of venomena hypothetical meteor burst, but from the research conducted by the Indian government knows and they concluded that the rain which fell in Kerala air caused by spores from local terrestrial algae productive.
Especially the year 2006 the blood-colored rain came down in southern Kerala India, this is massively covered by media both locally and worldwide. Furthermore, the Indian State governments continued to conduct research on a rare natural phenomenon, the next Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam proposed research on the controversial hypothesis that the colored particles extraterrestrial cells.
The first rain fell in Kottayam and Idukki districts in the southern region of India. Not only red rain, the first 10 days of rain were reported yellow, green and even black. After 10 days, rainfall intensity subsided until September.
The rain fell only on a limited region and usually only lasts about 20 minutes per rain. The local residents find the clothes dried in the sun turns red like blood. Local residents also reported the sound of explosions and light rain that preceded the explosion is believed to be a meteor.
Rain water samples are taken soon to be investigated by the Indian government and scientists. One of the independent scientists who examined them was Godfrey Louis and Santosh Kumara from the University of Mahatma Gandhi.
They collected more than 120 reports from local residents and collect samples of red rain water from areas along 100 km. The first time they thought that the red particles are particles in the water-borne sand of the desert Arabs.
This never happened in July 1968 where the sand from the Sahara carried by the wind to cause red rain in England. But they found that the red elements in the water is not a grain of sand, but the living cells.
The composition of these cells consisted of 50% Carbon, 45% oxygen and 5% other elements such as iron and sodium, consistent with the other components of biological cells, and cells were also dividing. The cell was between 30-10 micrometers in diameter with a thick cell wall and has a variation in membrane nanostructure.
But there is no identifiable nucleus. Each cubic meter of samples taken, there are 100 grams of red elements. So when summed, then from July to September there were 50 tons of spilled red particles to Earth.
At the University of Sheffield, UK, an expert named Milton Wainwright microbiologically confirmed that the red elements are living cells. This is stated because Wainwright had found the DNA of the cell elements, although he has not managed to extract it.
Because of the red particles are living cells, the scientists theorized that particles that are blood red. According to them, possibly meteorite exploded in the air had been massacred a group of bats in the air. But this theory was rejected because of lack of evidence that supports such as bat wings who fell to earth.
By linking between the sound of explosions and light rain that preceded it, Louis put forward the theory that the red cells are extra-terrestrial beings. Louis concluded that the red material came from a comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploded over the skies of India.
A study conducted by doctoral students from Queen's University, Ireland named Patrick McCafferty find a record of history linking colored rain with meteor explosion.
McCafferty analyzed 80 reports of colored rains, 20 reports of water turned into blood, and 68 examples of similar phenomena like black rain, milk or honey rain that falls from the sky.
36 percent of those samples was connected with the activity of a meteor or comet. Such incidents occurred from ancient Rome, medieval Ireland and England and even California-19th century.
McCafferty said, "there seems to be a strong relationship between reports of rain in color with meteor activity, the red rain of Kerala match these patterns and can not be ignored."
So, whether the red rain in Kerala are from outside the earth? Some scientists are skeptical necessarily rejected this theory. But some other scientists have not found the answer quickly glanced back to an obsolete theory proposed by the physicist Sir Fred Hoyle and Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe, a theory known as Panspermia, a theory that life on Earth originated from outer space.
According to both scientists in outer space in the beginning there was a cloud of interstellar gas that contains bacteria. As the cloud shrinks due to gravity to form a star system, the bacteria is in it still survive in the comet.
Source: http://id.shvoong.com/society-and-news/environment/2040816-blood-rain-india/#ixzz1ZdN50fbA
Raining Animal
“Raining animals” is a rare phenomenon, but occurrences have been reported throughout history in many different
countries. Recently there was a report of Spangled Perch falling in Lajamanu, Australia in March of 2010. The animals most likely to fall from the sky during a rainstorm are fish, frogs, and birds. Sometimes the animals survive the fall just fine, although they are in a bit of a shocked state. This suggests that they have returned to the ground shortly after they have been lifted up... but by what?
Several witnesses to frogs raining down have noted that the animals were healthy, and quickly returned to normal behavior. In some cases, however, the animals have descended encased in blocks of ice. Body parts rather than whole creatures may also appear from the sky. What the heck is going on?
One theory suggests that high winds traveling over water can pick up animals and carry them a long distance before "releasing" them. This aspect of the phenomenon has never been scientifically documented.
A French physicist, Andre-Marie Ampere, was one of the first scientists willing to take accounts of raining animals seriously. He suggested that frogs and toads roam the countryside and that strong winds may indeed pick them up and carry them vast distances, but was unable to prove it.
A more recent theory involves waterspouts. The idea is that tornadoes and waterspouts have the ability to pick up animals and “relocate” them to places far away from their origins. A tornado can actually suck up an entire pond, and redeposit its inhabitants in a rain of animals some distance away. The problem with this theory is that it does not explain how all the animals involved in one episode would be of the same species, which tends to be the case with rains of animals.
Birds and bats are a different story. Whole flocks in flight may be sucked up by thunderstorms and tornadoes, and then rained down in new locations, sometimes directly atop one’s head.
While showers of birds or bats may be fairly easy to understand because they are a flying animals while showers of frogs or fish remain enigmatic, since neither scientists nor witnesses have been able to document any of the prevailing theories.
Spontaneous Human Combustion
There is much speculation and controversy over SHC. It is not a proven natural occurrence, but many theories have attempted to explain SHC's existence and how it may occur. The two most common explanations offered to account for apparent SHC are the non-spontaneous "wick effect" fire, and the rare discharge called static flash fires. Although mathematically it can be shown that the human body contains enough energy stored in the form of fat and other tissues to consume it completely, in normal circumstances bodies will not sustain a flame on their own.
Over the past 300 years, there have been more than 200 reports of persons burning to a crisp for no apparent reason.
The first reliable historic evidence of Spontaneous Human Combustion appears to be from the year 1673, when Frenchman Jonas Dupont published a collection of Spontaneous Human Combustion cases and studies entitled De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis. Dupont was inspired to write this book after encountering records of the Nicole Millet case, in which a man was acquitted of the murder of his wife when the court was convinced that she had been killed by spontaneous combustion. Millet, a hard-drinking Parisian was found reduced to ashes in his straw bed, leaving just his skull and finger bones. The straw matting was only lightly damaged. Dupont's book on this strange subject brought it out of the realm of folkloric rumor and into the popular public imagination.
On April 9, 1744, Grace Pett, 60, an alcoholic residing in Ipswich England, was found on the floor by her daughter like "a log of wood consumed by a fire, without apparent flame." Nearby clothing was undamaged.
In the 1800's is evidenced in the number of writers that called on it for a dramatic death scene. Most of these authors were hacks that worked on the 19th century equivalent of comic books, "penny dreadfuls", so no one got too worked up about it; but two big names in the literary world also used SHC as a dramatic device, and one did cause a stir.
The first of these two authors was Captain Marryat who, in his novel Jacob Faithful, borrowed details from a report in the Times of London of 1832 to describe the death of his lead character's mother, who is reduced to "a sort of unctuous pitchey cinder."
Twenty years later, in 1852, Charles Dickens used Spontaneous Human Combustion to kill off a character named Krook in his novel Bleak House. Krook was a heavy alcoholic, true to the popular belief at the time that SHC was caused by excessive drinking. The novel caused a minor uproar; George Henry Lewes, philosopher and critic, declared that SHC was impossible, and derided Dickens' work as perpetuating a uneducated superstition. Dickens responded to this statement in the preface of the 2nd edition of his work, making it quite clear that he had researched the subject and knew of about thirty cases of SHC. The details of Krook's death in Bleak House were directly modeled on the details of the death of the Countess Cornelia de Bandi Cesenate by this extraordinary means; the only other case that Dickens actually cites details from is the Nicole Millet account that inspired Dupont's book about 100 years earlier. book about 100 years earlier.
In 1951, the Mary Reeser case recaptured the public interest in Spontaneous Human Combustion. Mrs. Reeser, 67, was found in her apartment on the morning of July 2, 1951, reduced to a pile of ashes, a skull, and a completely undamaged left foot. This event has become the foundation for many a book on the subject of SHC since, the most notable being Michael Harrison's Fire From Heaven, printed in 1976. Fire From Heaven has become the standard reference work on Spontaneous Human Combustion.
On May 18, 1957, Anna Martin, 68, of West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was found incinerated, leaving only her shoes and a portion of her torso. The medical examiner estimated that temperatures must have reached 1,700 to 2,000 degrees, yet newspapers two feet away were found intact.
On December 5, 1966, the ashes of Dr. J. Irving Bentley, 92, of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, were discovered by a meter reader. Dr. Bentley's body apparently ignited while he was in the bathroom and burned a 2-1/2-by-3-foot hole through the flooring, with only a portion of one leg remaining intact. Nearby paint was unscorched.
July 1, 1951 -- Perhaps the most famous case occurred in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mary Hardy Reeser, a 67-year-old widow, spontaneously combusted while sitting in her easy chair. The next morning, her next door neighbor tried the doorknob, found it hot to the touch and went for help. She returned to find Mrs. Reeser, or what was left of her, in a blackened circle four feet in diameter. All that remained of the 175-pound woman and her chair was a few blackened seat springs, a section of her backbone, a shrunken skull the size of a baseball, and one foot encased in a black stain slipper just beyond the four-foot circle. Plus about 10 pounds of ashes. The police report declared that Mrs. Reeser went up in smoke when her highly flammable rayon-acetate nightgown caught fire, perhaps because of a dropped cigarette. But one medical examiner stated that the 3,000-degree heat required to destroy the body should have destroyed the apartment as well. In fact, damage was minimal - the ceiling and upper walls were covered with soot. No chemical accelerants, incidentally, were found.
In 1944 Peter Jones, survived this experience and reported that there was no sensation of heat nor sighting of flames. He just saw smoke. He stated that he felt no pain.
- Deposits of flammable body fat - Many victims have been overweight - yet others have been skinny.
- Devine Intervention - Centuries ago people felt that the explosion was a sign from God of devine punishment.
- Build-up of static electricity - no known form of electrostatic discharge could cause a human to burst into flames.
- An explosive combination of chemicals can form in the digestive system - due to poor diet.
- Electrical fields that exist within the human body might be capable of 'short circuiting' somehow, that some sort of atomic chain reaction could generate tremendous internal heat.
No satisfactory explanation of Spontaneous Human Combustion has ever been given. It is still an unsolved mystery.
- The burns are not distributed evenly over the body; the extremities are usually untouched by fire, whereas the torso usually suffers severe burning.
- In some cases the torso is completely destroyed, the bones being reduced completely to ash.
- Small portions of the body (an arm, a foot, maybe the head) remain unburned.
- Only objects immediately associated with the body have burned; the fire never spread away from the body. SHC victims have burnt up in bed without the sheets catching fire, clothing worn is often barely singed, and flammable materials only inches away remain untouched.
- A greasy soot deposit covers the ceiling and walls, usually stopping three to four feet above the floor.
- Objects above this three to four foot line show signs of heat damage (melted candles, cracked mirrors, etc.)
- Although temperatures of about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit are normally required to char a body so thoroughly (crematoria, which usually operate in the neighborhood of 2,000 degrees, leave bone fragments which must be ground up by hand), frequently little or nothing around the victim is damaged, except perhaps the exact spot where the deceased ignited.
All reported cases have occurred indoors.
The victims were always alone for a long period of time.
Witnesses who were nearby (in adjacent rooms) report never hearing any sounds, such as cries of pain or calls for assistance.
In the witnessed combustions - people are actually seen by witnesses to explode into flame; most commonly. Here the witnesses agree that there was no possible source of ignition and/or that the flames were seen to erupt directly from the victim's skin. Unfortunately, most of the known cases of this type are poorly documented and basically unconfirmed. Sometimes there are no flames seen by the witness.
Non-fatal cases - Unfortunately, the victims of these events generally have no better idea of what happened to them than do the investigators; but the advantage to this grouping is that a survivor can confirm if an event had a simple explanation or not. Thus, there are far fewer cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion with survivors that can be explained away by skeptics without a second look.
Sometimes victims develop burns on their bodies that have no known external cause. These strange wounds commonly start as small discomforts that slowly grow into large, painful marks.
Sometimes the victim will exhibit a mysterious smoke from the body. In these odd and rare occurrences smoke is seen to emanate from a person, with no associated fire or source of smoke other than the person's body.
