Light may hold ball lightning together
 

About 40% of the way down the page:

http://tinyurl.com/33dp4

Light may hold ball lightning together
 

"paul" wrote in message


http://tinyurl.com/33dp4

The trouble with these shorter links thingumies is that you never know
where it's going to take you. Nor what info is being exchanged.

Photos and many eyewitness accounts, however, verify its existence; the
challenge for researchers has been to try to figure out how a plasma
could confine itself and hold itself together in the atmosphere for
extended periods of time

The polarizability of such atoms is large, and the interaction energy
between the atoms scales as the square of the polarizability.

All very fetching but worked out after the fact as a possibility not a
proof.

Bear in mind that other recent research has come up with the
unexplicably rapid diffusion or rather disipation of electicity in the
air, thwarting explanations of more common lightning.


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Light may hold ball lightning together
 

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:42:15 +0000 (UTC), "Michael McNeil"
wrote:

"paul" wrote in message


http://tinyurl.com/33dp4

The trouble with these shorter links thingumies is that you never know
where it's going to take you. Nor what info is being exchanged.

Photos and many eyewitness accounts, however, verify its existence; the
challenge for researchers has been to try to figure out how a plasma
could confine itself and hold itself together in the atmosphere for
extended periods of time

The polarizability of such atoms is large, and the interaction energy
between the atoms scales as the square of the polarizability.

All very fetching but worked out after the fact as a possibility not a
proof.

As is borne out by the "may" in the headline. Unless one can create
ball lightning "on demand" in a controlled environment the theories
(as in much of science) will be worked out "after the fact".