Ball Lightning: The Living Fire That Drifts Through Walls and No One Can Explain
For as long as people have huddled indoors during thunderstorms, a small number of them have witnessed something that should not be possible. In the midst of the tempest, a glowing sphere of fire appears — a luminous ball, often the size of a grapefruit or a little larger, burning with a steady or flickering light. It floats. It drifts slowly through the air, sometimes drifting in through an open window or down a chimney, moving across a room past terrified onlookers, hovering, wandering, seeming almost to possess a purpose. It lasts a few seconds, occasionally longer, and then it either fades away, or vanishes silently, or bursts with a sharp report, sometimes leaving behind a sulfurous smell and scorched traces of its passing. This is ball lightning, and though it has been reported for centuries by witnesses of every kind, from peasants to sea captains to scientists, no one has ever been able to fully explain what it is. It is one of the oldest and most stubborn unsolved mysteries o...