Abstract
ONE of the difficulties about ball lightning is to explain the relatively large and stable diameter of the balls which would appear to be around 10–20 cm1, which is large relative to the dimensions of the main high-temperature and high current-carrying regions of these high-current discharges at atmospheric pressure. The purpose of this communication is to suggest that the lightning channel may, so to speak, ‘spring a leak’ at a ‘joint’, and allow an escape from it of the jet of hot gas which flows along it2, because of the decrease in current and current density in the return stroke from ground to cloud3.
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References
Singer, S., Nature, 198, 745 (1963).
Bruce, C. E. R., in Recent Advances in Atmospheric Electricity, edit. by Smith, L. G., 461 (Pergamon Press, 1959).
Bruce, C. E. R., Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 183, 228 (1944).
Bruce, C. E. R., and Golde, R. H., J. Inst. Elec. Eng., 88, 487 (1941).
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BRUCE, C. Ball Lightning. Nature 202, 996–997 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/202996b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/202996b0
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