Interesting video on ball lightning:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-cS8bA0Un0tM/encounters_with_ball_lightning/ 

Ball lightning (BL) is luminous spherical ball that has the look and feel of regular lightning except for its shape and stability.  In nature ball lightning can persist for many seconds and usually travels horizontally along transmission lines or the ground.  Sometimes it is seen in airplanes.  It can travel easily through air, glass, ceramic or water.  Public sightings are rare, but ball lightning is created in the lab and in microwaves on a regular basis.

Even though natural ball lightning makes only a rare appearance, there are some well documented  occurrences.  Probably the most famous sighting occurred in the 18^th century when the physicist Georg Wilhelm Richmann was struck dead in his home by ball lightning.  On his forehead was a red spot, his shoes were blown open and his clothes were burnt.  A friend nearby was knocked unconscious while the door to the room was knocked off its hinges.  

Edward Lewis (http://www.padrak.com/ine/ELEWIS1.html) reports that the ”manifested energy per size of BL was much higher than any known chemical effect -- up to about 100,000 Joules per cubic centimeter of ball lightning. In comparison, TNT manifests energy at about 2000 Joules per cubic centimeter of material.”

Not all scientists are convinced that ball lightning is a ball of plasma, however it is a popular notion. That ball lightning is a highly ionized plasma contained by a self generated magnetic field means it is a plasmoid.  However, for ball lightning to be a plasmoid, there would have to be some accounting for why it doesn’t quickly (at the speed of light) recombine into atoms and why reports that ball lightning is cool to the touch when plasma is very hot.  These two conditions puzzle many scientists.

The puzzle could be solved if a double layer could surround the plasma ball like a skin.  It is a skin that protects the plasma inside from mixing with atoms on the outside.  If the plasma ball is slightly negative, then the ball as a whole would attract positive low energy ions to its boundary like a layer of insulation making it seem like the ball is cool.

A plasma contains particles like electrons, ions, atoms and molecules.  A non-collisional plasma is one in which these particles do not interact with each other.  (No moshing allowed.)  However, the particles can move in waves.  That would be like line dancers, they don’t dance with each other but they are all in sync.  When ionized, the environment oscillates. 

If we have a ball of plasma surrounded by a double layer which repeatedly breaks down and rebuilds itself in oscillations or pulses, and this double layer is a container for the plasma and it is a resonance cavity for a couple of waves, a long one and a short one.  One wave effects the electrons and the other wave effects the positive ions.  Then we have the elements necessary to have a self assembly of a plasma ball commonly referred to as ball lightning.  If this ball is tuned correctly, it could last indefinitely.  This process has yet to be accomplished in the lab, but experiments are ongoing, and it is only a matter of time.

See the following reference:

Romanian Reports in Physics, Vol. 57, No. 1, P. 61–70, 2005PLASMA PHYSICS

EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS ON THE MECHANISMOF GENERATING MICROWAVES IN PLASMA DEVICESB. OPRESCUUniversity of Piteºti, Faculty of Sciences, 1, Târgul din Vale Street, Piteºti, 0300, Romania,e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (Received June 3, 2004)Abstract. The aim of the paper is emphasizing the possibility of stimulating the emission ofelectromagnetic waves in the centimetric domain within a plasma column coupled with a pulsatingdouble layer of electric charge. The experiment indicates the stimulation by the double layer of alongitudinal iono-acoustic stationary wave. When the plasma column is crossed by a rapid electronbeam, coming from a cathode of special geometry, for instance as a result of the processes of electronacceleration in the electric field of the longitudinal stationary wave, there appears an electromagneticfield within the range of microwaves. The paper also presents a phenomenological scenario of themicroscopic mechanisms that induce the appearance of the pulsating double layer and, as aconsequence, the generation of the microwaves.Key words: double layer, electron beam, iono-acoustic waves, microwave.

REFERENCE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVDU-6opEqA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8WQvBXcI_0

http://www.hackinghardware.com/tc/uap_vol2_ch2_wp2.pdf