For centuries, people have reported seeing strange glowing orbs of light during thunderstorms - basketball-sized balls that hover, drift, and sometimes pass through walls before disappearing or exploding. The phenomenon is called ball lightning, and despite hundreds of years of observations, scientists still don’t know for certain what causes it.
Ball lightning sightings have been reported throughout history. Sailors in the 1700s described balls of light drifting through their ships during storms. Pilots have reported them inside cockpits. There are credible photographs and videos, though most are hard to verify. Reports describe them as anywhere from cherry-sized to over a foot across, usually lasting just seconds to a minute, glowing in colors from yellow to white to red.
Several theories try to explain ball lightning. One says it’s a glowing cloud of charged silicon vapor (created when ordinary lightning strikes soil). Another suggests it’s a tiny pocket of plasma trapped by magnetic fields. In 2014, Chinese scientists accidentally recorded a real ball lightning event with scientific instruments - and the spectrum suggested vaporized soil minerals, supporting the silicon theory. But no one has reliably reproduced it in a lab. Ball lightning remains one of meteorology’s last big mysteries.
