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From: ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Re: Ball lightening
Message-ID: <40@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Apr-85 14:44:27 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.40
Posted: Thu Apr  4 14:44:27 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Apr-85 03:27:30 EST
References: <56@tekig5.UUCP> <9585@brl-tgr.ARPA> <133@prometheus.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 33

> 
> > Trying to contain plasma for very long seems to be fighting 
> > Mother Nature.
> 
> What?  There is such a paucity of plasma in existence that isn't 
> "contained" by "Mother Nature"  that this is actually kind of 
> a funny thing to say, i. e.  ball lightnings are stable, as are
> stars.   In fact fighting nature by "constraining " the plasma
> from finding its minimum energy state, is "fighting nature".  We
> fortunately have a half billion $ a year program at DOE Office of
> Fusion (Confusion) Energy to do that for us.  And they do it well
> with every possible effort.  When they find one that does it well
> they really get busy, i.e. tokamaks and mirror.  

Let's not be unduly harsh.  Stars are contained by their own gravity.
Clearly one cannot contain a Tokomak plasma that way.  There is a theorem
which states that pure plasma cannot confine itself with self-generated
fields.  It's a good theorem.  The explanation you gave for ball lightning
seemed to get around it by considering the external pressure (from the air)
as well as the internal fields. [Incidentally, I never heard this explanation
before.  Can you give a reference?]  I have met people so impressed by the
evident force of that theorem that they have insisted that ball lightning
is a fluorescence phenomenon with little internal energy.  This is a little
odd since I believe there is at least one historical account of a death
caused by coming into contact with ball lightning.

Note that the person who told me this was an expert on lightning.  He was
giving a colloquium at Fermilab.

"Don't argue with a fool.      Ethan Vishniac
 Borrow his money."            {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan
                               Department of Astronomy
                               University of Texas