Ball Lightning and Plasma Cohesion
John Gilman
Abstract
The phenomenon of ball lightning has been observed for a long time, but the nature of these luminous balls has been unknown. It is proposed here that they consist of highy excited Rydberg atoms with large polarizabilities that bind them together. Thus the cohesion of the balls comes from photon exchange forces (London dispersion forces) rather than the more usual electron exchange (chemical) forces. The cohesion in plasmas generated at the back faces of detonating explosives has a similar basis. Estimates are given to justify this interpretation.
Create a lesson
Related papers
Experimental setup for testing nanocalorimeter sensors as a plasma diagnostics tool
Carles Corbella, Feng Yi, Andrei Kolmakov
Gradient-Based Construction of Collisionless Steady-State Guiding-Center Distributions in Tokamaks and Stellarators
Jingyi Yu, Chang Liu
Indirect-Drive Fusion Target Design for Commercial Fusion Energy
C. R. Weber, A. L. Kritcher, S. Bhandarkar et al.
Efficient laser ion acceleration in near-critical density plasmas in the picosecond pulse regime
Joshua Luoma, Andreas Kemp, Andrew Longman et al.
Helicon wave propagation, plasma generation and interaction with low-frequency waves in toroidal magnetic configurations
Simon P. H. Vincent, Mounir Alfazzaa, Patrick Quigley et al.
Kilojoule-scale laser acceleration enabling efficient generation of electron-positron and muon beams
R. Babjak, M. Pouyez, C. Badiali et al.