Ball light

Essence
Robert Matthews, a reporter of widely-known journal New Scientist in his paper GREAT BALL OF FIRE concluded that ball lightning is a flying bag of paradoxes. It turned out that he is twice right. Firstly, indeed, ball lightning is not a particular case of lightning. It is a ball of fire or more exactly a ball of light or more shortly a ball light. Secondly, indeed, Ball Lightning is a bag. But there are not any paradoxes in the bag. The bag is empty. Ball Lightning is a bag itself. Unlike a conventional bag, Ball Lightning is a thin spherical layer of strongly compressed air where an intense white light is circulating in all possible directions. There is a usual atmosphere air in the ball confined by the spherical layer.
The ball light is a mathematical model, which properties and behaviour in terrestrial atmosphere coincide with intriguing and mysterious properties of ball lightning. The ball light is similar to a soap bubble in the respect that there is a thin transparent spherical shell also. However the shell consists of not a soap film but of a strongly compressed air in which an intensive light circulates in all possible directions. This light exposes the excess air pressure in the shell owning the phenomenon of the optical electrostriction pressure . In turn, the shell is a thin transparent film which refractive index is increased because the air density increases with increasing the air pressure. Such film is a thin-film optical waveguide which curvature is different from zero. Similar optical waveguides are used in integrated optics as they allow to confine the light introduced into them and prevent radiation of this light in free space. Thus, the ball light is a self-confined light. It is the conventional light originating at a streak of conventional lightning. The light is closed within the trap which it has produced for itself. This trap is a shell from a strongly compressed air. The shell with intensive light circulating in it is a ball light. A term “ball light” allows to break a link between ball lightning and usual linear lightning and to overcome many century errors about the ball lightning nature.

From the point of view of a modern science the ball light is an incoherent spatial optical soliton , which curvature is different from zero. The first mention about ball light was in work where it was supposed that, like a conventional soap bubble, there is an excess air pressure not only in the shell but also in the all volume confined by the shell. Later light bubbles where the excess air pressure is available only in the shell have been considered. There was no uniform terminology for observed luminous objects arising at attempts to produce ball lightning in a laboratory. However authors used similar terms in many works.
Above 95 % of ball light energy is in the form of light energy and less than 5 % in the form of the energy of the compressed gas. Unlike a soap bubble where compressed air is located in all volume confined by a soap film, the compressed air in a ball light is confined by a thin spherical shell where an intense light is propagating. This results that possibility of deformation of a ball light is much greater than that a soap bubble. As ball light energy is the light energy mainly, the behavior of a ball light in a usual terrestrial atmosphere is defined by a behavior of light which, as it is known, bents in the direction of the gradient of the air refractive index, at a propagation in an inhomogeneous optical medium.
Ball light features
Small weight and a clear boundary
It is known that substances in a gaseous state have no clear boundary. There should be the surface tension as it takes place for liquids. However liquids have the relative great density which considerably surpasses the air density. Ball light has both a surface tension and small weight simultaneously.
Movement against a wind
It is known that a light beam is not blown off by a wind. Therefore in terrestrial atmosphere ball light is not exposed by streams of air (wind), and moves in that direction in which the air density increases. This direction usually coincides with a direction in which the air temperature decreases or its pressure increases. Ball lights move at a small distance from the earth surface in a horizontal direction as the air density is the greatest at such distance. The air temperature increases near to the surface that entails a decrease in the air density.
Penetration into rooms through cracks
Moving along a gradient of the refractive index, ball light penetrates into rooms through cracks and splits in walls and through chimneys . The ability of ball lights to move along the gradient of the air refractive index enables them to find out cracks and splits. On the other hand an ability of ball lights to deformation enables them to change their form and penetrate through cracks.
Penetration through windowpanes
Unlike all other objects which consist of any particles (electrons, ions, atoms, molecules, clusters, etc.) which are used at attempts to construct object with properties of a ball lightning, ball light is a unique object which can penetrate through windowpanes. Windows is made from glass because glass passes the light but does not pass dust and any other particles. The light from a ball light can penetrate through such glasses. As for the compressed air, the light penetrated through the glass compresses a similar air on the opposite side of the window. Glass is not an obstacle either for light or for ball light .
Radiation of cold white light
It is known that ball lightnings, moving near faces of eyewitnesses, seem cold, that is do not burn down, unlike the solids heated to white luminescence. It is explained by the fact that the natures of radiation from a ball light and from the strongly heated solids are different. Unlike thermal radiation radiated by heated solids, the phenomenon of the molecular light scattering is responsible for the ball light luminescence. Light which is radiated by a ball light circulates in its shell since ball light origination when a flash of usual linear lightning took place. The light circulating in the shell is spent gradually its energy for a luminescence of ball light with white light.
Features of disappearance
Like a soap bubble, ball light disappears instantly and traceless. Ball light becomes unstable In process of decreasing its light energy owning a partial radiation of light in free space. At some moment radiation losses sharply increases and circulating light almost instantly is radiated in free space. Having lost the limiting factor, compressed air extends, creating visibility of explosion.
Production in a laboratory
It would be appear that the first successful attempts to produce in laboratory objects reminding ball lightning, have been undertaken by English physicists Arden and Constable in the end of XVIII century. They caused a powerful charge to be accumulated in a Leyden jar and observed a small fireball illumination at the point of the discharge. The small fireball illumination was about one-forth of an inch in diameter, was red in color, had rapid motion, and terminated with a loud explosion.
In 1953 and 1956 Nauer informed on production of the luminous objects which observant properties completely coincide with properties of ball lightnings. Further, using the concept ball lights, such abnormal properties of luminous autonomous objects obtained in experiments as pushing away a sheet of paper, but burning out a metal foil
, a movement in a direction of liquid nitrogen, a deviation towards the greatest refractive index in ultrasonic air stream, preservation of the integrity, penetration through cracks in obstacles have been explained. The reasons of favorable action of erosion discharge on originating autonomous objects are explained also.
There are strong reasons to believe that the first powerful ball light had been obtained at carrying out of planned works on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The ball light appearing at switching off the powerful generator became a cause of the explosion in the active zone that entailed Chernobyl disaster in 1986 .
Theoretical bases
Negligibly radiation losses
At the initial stage it seemed to many scientists improbable that an increase in the refractive index of usual air by a fraction of percent appears sufficient to confine the powerful light circulating in the ball light shell. To be convinced of it, it is enough to remind that the increase in the refractive index of a core of optical fiber of diameter about 10 microns, used in telecommunication for transmitting optical pulses at a great distance, as compared with the refractive index of glass coating of 125 microns in diameter is sufficient for safely transmitting optical pulses. Transfer of light impulses is not broken, if a loop of several centimeters in diameter is made in the fiber. Now let’s assume that all space unoccupied by the optical fiber is filled by glass with the same refractive index as the optical fiber coating. Such filling does not exert influence on a light distribution in the optical fiber core because the field of a light wave on external border of the coating is negligibly small. As a result we have an infinite homogeneous glass medium with a unique exception. The refractive index is increased by a fraction of percent in that small area of the medium where the optical fiber core is located. However, as follows from a simple experiment, the light introduces in the fiber core propagates not rectilinearly but along the curved core, doing thus a loop.
The similar situation takes place for a thin layer from compressed air of the thickness about 10 microns which refractive index is increased by a fraction of percent as compared with that of surrounding atmosphere. Such thin spherical transparent layer is invisible by a simple sight. The layer passes through itself all beams without appreciable reflection and refractive but it can confine the light introduced into it (the nature is able to introduce the light in the shell). In this case the light circulates in the ball light shell.
Ball light stability
It is much more difficult to be convinced that such ball light is stable. The common sense prompts that circulating light aspires to extend rectilinearly and aspires to increase the radius of ball light. Compressed air also aspires to increase its radius. Therefore ball light should extend, and it cannot be stable. This reasoning has the following defect. Features of the electrostriction pressure . Appearance of abnormal luminous objects took place also in experiments with so-called erosive gas discharges . Properties of ball lights and ball lightning are the same. It is possible to tell that ball lightnings are experimental acknowledgement of existence ball lights in the nature.

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