Thank you for shedding light on this topic. Very enlightening. I think it deserves thunderous applause. Weather or not you make more videos on this, this was great.
I actually had some ball lightning float through one of the windows in my living room about 2 years ago. It was a beautiful little blue, sparkling ball about the size of a tennis ball, which aimlessly floated around the room for about 30 seconds before disappearing into thin air. I was mesmerized by it, but, if I had known what I know now about ball lightning then, I probably would've been terrified of it. Ball lightning has been known to start fires, short out electrical systems, and strike people, as well as animals.
I was in hospital last year and i was sitting at the window at night , watching the lightningstorm. I could see the whole city from above and it was really beautiful and all of a sudden lots of lightning strikes at the same time but all of them where orange. The whole skyline in a bright orange light ... one of the most beautiful things ive ever seen :) It also made my time in hospital a lot more enjoyable :DD
When I was a kid I was watching a storm about about 15 miles away from me, then I saw a flash of lightning that split up into two, one side side hit the storm area and the other hit a palm-tree about three quarters of a mile in front of me. And the sun was shining in the area that I was. It was cool and scary at the same time.
Kudos on a well done video from a Meteorologist. Whenever there is a positive strike, all the weather nerds get up in arms. It is a rare and exciting (also dangerous) moment.
Closest I've been to a lightning strike was 15 feet. It hit the railway powerlines as I was openingen the door to the station house to get out of the rain. It was very loud and made the hairs on my arms stand straight up. I felt very, very insignificant, in a weirdly life-affirming way, in the face of all that power.
I was at my front door during a storm and I saw and heard the streamers "tick", felt the electricity on my face and show up as a faint purple lines as my dog ran past me inside. It struck maybe 10 feet in front of me at the end of my porch near the front of my truck. Insanely lucky and one of the craziest experiences I've ever had.
Back when i was in flight school, i had a ground school instructor who flew fixed wing and he told me a story about when he was flying trans Atlantic late night and he saw from start a ball of lightning grow on the outside of the windscreen,then move inside the window and proceed to move from there, the entire way down the centre of the plane, all the way to the back and then heard a loud noise. when they landed there was a substancial section of the tail missing.
Interesting how they only realized there was a "substantial part of the tail missing" when they landed. And interesting how there's no record of this incident, no records of an incident which supposedly significantly damaged an airplane.
My mother tells me about a ball of light that would go really slowly from one point of the ranch always towards a specific mountain. Apparentely it happend quite often and was called "mother of gold", because people believed there was gold underground where it hit.
I remember one 4th of July when I lived in the mountains of Arizona. The fireworks show and carnival was going on in front of me but I was mesmerized by all the different kinds of lightning happening in the mountains to my left. It went on for a long time. I miss being able to be far enough away, but still see amazing things.
I love when a storms right above me and I'm home. When you can feel the boom in your chest. My grandpa was a chem professor and atmospheric researcher here in NM. He said his interest in it sparked (no pun intended) when he was 8 or so and ball lighting came out of his families home phone floated around the room and out the window his aunt said to break the silence and awe " it didn't even burn the curtains"
The weirdest lightning I've seen first-hand was in Okinawa in the '80s. There was just one small round cloud in the sky and every 15 or 20 seconds or so it would flash like a strobe light. It was really bright, and I did not hear any thunder. It was almost as if I UFO was taking flash photos of us.
I'd still like to know what I saw once. A small ping pong ball sized light appeared and quickly floated between me and a friend when we were outside talking. Saw another faster moving one elsewhere that night too. There wasn't any lightning storms and many of us saw the same thing so it wasn't our imagination either.
Awesome ball lightning! Been waiting years to hear more about it. When i was a kid maybe 9 (25 now) years old not sure, I had a science book that talked about it but basically only said that it exists and that we really don't know anything about it. To me its one of the most amazing mysteries! Hopefully i will see it one day. But sounds like we still don't know much.
When my mom was little and lived in South Carolina there was this pretty sizable kind of ball of electricity that was recurrent and would usually pop up during storms, it sometimes would move around the house but would usually stay in the kitchen, sort of jumping off of appliances and other metal stuff, it would last for quite a while too, sometimes even hours, does anybody know what the heck that was?
Had a super intense thunderstorm last year at 2am, normal blue-white lightning but sometimes got the occasional purple one. Quite the experience, ended up lasting almost half an hour with strikes happening within seconds of each other at some points. Course by the time my brain started working again and I tried to pull out my camera it was over >:C
Actually people in my hometown have really good videos of lightening strikes from the other night. It looked like rapid fire fireworks! I screenshot where the lightening lit up half the sky while the other half was completely dark.
I wonder if anyone here could help me identify a lightning phenomenon I witnessed years ago. It was midday, clear skies over me, but far to the west was a massive cumulonimbus cloud flashing with lightning, too distant to hear the thunder. I love lightning, so I watched it for a while. Then, after one of the flashes, the light just sort of ... stayed there. Keep in mind that I was in full Florida midday sun, and this cloud had a spot on it glowing so brightly that I could easily see it. Several seconds later, lightning flashed again and the glowing spot retreated after it, and was gone. But just a moment later, it happened again. Flash and glow ... flash and retreat. I got some friends to come and look to make sure I wasn't seeing things, and they saw it too. It continued the same pattern for about twenty minutes before the glow stopped returning. Unfortunately, this was long enough ago that my cellular phone didn't come with a camera, so this is purely anecdotal. But if anyone has any thoughts about what it might have been, I'd really like to hear them. Thanks!
I think the theory about ball lightening is quiet true, because we always see it happening on the horizon during the rare storms here in Abu Dhabi, hence Abu Dhabi is surrounding by silica sand dessert
My dad saw ball lightning once when he was younger. He and a group of three friends were having a sleepover when lightning struck nearby. They all woke up, then a ball of light drifted into the room. They all freaked out, but it didn't do much before dissipating.
"Remember that lightning has a lot of physics behind it." Literally everything has physics "behind" it. Physics is a science that explain how the universe works. Everything is physics.
I'm pretty sure ball lightning is just matter energized into a plasma state that is adrift in its own convection currents. I saw one float across the street right after a lightning strike in a fenced yard. It was softball sized and silently floated over the front of my car and scared me once I realized how dangerous it would be to come in contact with it.
I saw ball lightening when I was about 17 it seemed to come in through the Tv and whizzed through the house whilst we were eating straight over our dining table as we were eating (lasagne!) and out of the back window. Totally awesome but terrifying too although none of us knew what it was at first
I'm not sure lightning can be black since black is an absence of light, not any frequency of it. It might've been an image that you saw as a result of seeing the bright flash of lightning that messed with your eyes for a second.
Blue lightning is an indication of a high-precipitation with hail www.photocase.de/fotos/68241-high-voltage-blau-stadt-haus-schwarz-wolken-regen-angst-photocase-stock-foto-gross.jpeg Purple or lilac-tinted lightning bolt is often caused by high atmospheric humidity; images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/purple-lightning-troy-q-nelson.jpg Yellow lightning is uncommon; however, they tend to be cooler than the blue, lilac and white. They’re caused to due to a high concentration of dust in the air. And is an indication of a dry thunderstorm with low-precipitation. i.pinimg.com/originals/3f/7b/2f/3f7b2faec2cc185d2a3a89c4b51738d5.jpg White lightning is the hottest, and literally, all bolts radiate white color. They’re an indication of a low concentration of moisture and dust in the air. cdn.digital-photo-secrets.com/images/lightning_grant2. There is no definitive reason for Red lightning however it is said to be the coolest of all the lightning colors. www.scottfillmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/alabama-lightning.jpg
Not bad, but - like most of your efforts - this really should have been at least 10 minutes long. That would be enough time to start to explain the 'WHYs,' rather than just spouting semi-random factoids about such a complex subject. IMO, SciShow has become a lot more superficial over the last few years. :/
Funny timing. Don't know if you've heard, but we over on the EU side of the world, particularly Germany and The Netherlands are getting hit with some beefy thunderstorms over the last month. Hell, we Dutchies had one this morning in the western part of the country. Judging by the loud-ass bang and me almost being blown out of my bed by the sound wave I'd say we've had a strike about 50m or less from my home. Pretty cool experience.
I remember one time I was riding home with my dad from a neighboring town, we'd gone to grab a bite to eat because it was my birthday, and I was staring up at the sky. It was threatening to rain, and was thundering and lightning, and as I was staring up at the sky, I remember seeing a hole in the clouds through which I could see the night sky and a couple stars. The next thing I know, I see three lines of lightning come together to form one massive strike that lights up the sky so bright I had to shield my eyes. I'll never forget it, mainly because what are the chances I'll ever see anything like that again?
0:35 _"One Theory"_ ? You mean we don't know?!?!?!!!? Seriously. Sci show has opened my eyes to just how much common everyday stuff we don't know how it works.
my great grandfather shared stories with my grandma about how there was ball lighting in santa barbara, california (where he lived and i live) when he was a kid but not anymore by the time my grandma was born. definitely not now. it rains like 5 days a year.
So you show us 2 videos/pictures of things that last fractions of a second but don't show us ball lightning that lasts 20 seconds?!? That makes so much sense.
When my mom was a girl, ball lightning came into the house on the phone line. It stayed in the room for several seconds. That was at a time when all phone lines were above ground. I read an article in Scientific American a long time ago that speculated that ball lightning is a sphere of layers of positive and negative charges (like an onion). I don't remember what they said might keep the charges separated (photon emission?).
Zomg, does this mean we could control the movement of a heavy rain storm? Take rain from places that don't need it to places that are in dire need of it? We could even move it to lakes to fill up city water supplies and we could even let it rain over giant funnels and make power with it xD All we need is either a satellite with a powerful electromagnet or perhaps some kind of zeppelin that could transport the rain storm. This would solve all our water problems :D PS: I love that you said "theory" at least twice in this video. More science reporters should be doing that. Props to you, you're more scientific than most ^^
here's another theory. So basically the negatives (electrons) in the cloud repel the negatives in the top layer of soil and then because it is just protons left in the topsoil the electrons in the clouds attract to the protons in the topsoil to make it neutral. And the lightning you see is just electrons transferring from the negative cloud to the positive ground. But then again they are both just theories.
i acctually saw ball lightning in person once. i was about 10 and i was on my schools field talking with a friend as you do and then a ball of lightning slowly floated to the ground about 1.5m infront of us.
+Pepijn Rietveld ball lightning acctually looks kinda cute. sounds wierd but it does. im not normally very lucky so maybe that was me getting the luck id been missing out on in one go eh? :D
Almost got struck by lightning the other day, hit the pool pump while I was on the porch. Sound and pressure almost blew out my ear drums, it was cool.
All my life I've been thinking lightning ocurred because two clouds would collide with such strength that it would generate light. Good to see I was wrong, this theory is much more interesting.
Awesome video! One suggestion; blink No worries! I look at people that way in restaurants when I wanna freak them out. You however made an awesome video
Our metal fence was struck by lightning while my 6 year old son was looking out the window and he described ball lightning! I wish I would have seen it.
:D I did one of my final year uni projects on ball lightning. The other popular theory you didn't mention, first coined by Kapitza involves the creation of meta stable balls of plasma contained between nodes in the electric field. The main reason it's so poorly understood currently is because of how rare it is. This leads to most reports being non scientific eye witness accounts. Even with advanced statistical handling of observer errors no one theory is able to explain all forms of ball lightning: Some has been said to move through walls and glass (not consistent with and theory that relies upon particles) Some are said to have created explosions or evaporated large amounts of water which require more energy than anyone can work out how to self contain in plasma or to explain with the photon model. Basically either there are multiple different phenomenon that we label as ball lightning or we have to discount some accounts as people being mistaken.
"beautiful lightning" yea i thought so too..for a long time..until it hit my house and fried everything i had..made holes in the walls where the wiring was...not to mention the bang....loudest bang you could ever hear
What's the statistics of lightening safety measures and are they worth it? From installing lightening rods (thank you Ben Franklin) to keeping away from plumbing and skipping a shower because there's a lighting storm outside, to avoiding standing under trees in a downpour even though you'd get drenched, etc.
I read back in high school that there was a man struck by lightning 7 times? I also read that he started carrying buckets of water without an explanation as to what the water was for. What purpose does the bucket of water serve when a person gets struck by lightning?
Two huge rain and thunder storms just wrecked this years mid-summer festival in Denmark, just a couple hours ago. :( I had made twistbread dough to bake on a stick over a camp fire... it went into the oven instead. :C _not-as-fun_
What a coincidence. I'm actually in the middle of a lightning storm right now. Normally, I wouldn't see such a thing(I live in Alaska), but I just so happen to be at a family reunion in Nashville. Even though none of my family actually lives in Nashville.
I have heard anecdotal stories that I think are reliable of lightning strikes on a fence line causing ball lighting to travel down the fence. I've seen some strange things, but not that.
Can you do a video on why UA-cam channels develop memes and inside jokes within the comment section over time? Eg Litojonny and the meme that has followed.
I've observed the same phenomenon on two different channels: Techquickie and "Windows Registry as Fast as Possible", and Seeker Daily (formerly TestTube News) and "What are Israel's Violations of International Law?". So, why is there hair violating international law as fast as possible around my Windows registry's anus? Interestingly, these two questions (including butt hair) were answered within a one-month timespan, so maybe there are others that I've not seen. (I've listed two more; anyone know of others?)
I generally view thunderstorms while standing next to my camera. (if the storm if far enough away and or the train won't kill me. alternatively I'm in my car, behind the same camera. And if I'm feeling particularly lazy, or the storm is hapaning when it's bright out, I'll just stay at home and posibally view it from a window...
We can already kind of do that in laboratories. It's just that the natural phenomenon is rare and not entirely understood and we are not sure if it's similar to what can be produced in a lab. Effectively it's just a ball of plasma, which can be created in a multitude of ways, even in your home microwave.
Thank you for shedding light on this topic. Very enlightening. I think it deserves thunderous applause. Weather or not you make more videos on this, this was great.
This comment should be getting more likes for all the puns 🤪
How did you fit 4 puns in this😂
@Samuil Zaychev ...Are you shocked?
@@blackmesa232323 aint no way they came back after 6 years with another pun 😂
@Ethan Byles The hustle never stops 💪
i extremely like the thunder surround sound, no music equipment can ever reproduce the crisp powerful roar.
Dire Straits used thunder in the intro to Brothers in Arms. It is one of the most powerful and emotional intros I'm aware of.
I actually had some ball lightning float through one of the windows in my living room about 2 years ago. It was a beautiful little blue, sparkling ball about the size of a tennis ball, which aimlessly floated around the room for about 30 seconds before disappearing into thin air. I was mesmerized by it, but, if I had known what I know now about ball lightning then, I probably would've been terrified of it. Ball lightning has been known to start fires, short out electrical systems, and strike people, as well as animals.
Awe, no ball lightning footage? TO THE GOOGLE SEARCH BAR!
There is one, search YT - ua-cam.com/video/cIB3NPTdwmc/v-deo.html
Can you order a drink there?
@@AnMCommYes, but it’s hard to find.
I was in hospital last year and i was sitting at the window at night , watching the lightningstorm.
I could see the whole city from above and it was really beautiful and all of a sudden lots of lightning strikes at the same time but
all of them where orange.
The whole skyline in a bright orange light ... one of the most beautiful things ive ever seen :)
It also made my time in hospital a lot more enjoyable :DD
When I was a kid I was watching a storm about about 15 miles away from me, then I saw a flash of lightning that split up into two, one side side hit the storm area and the other hit a palm-tree about three quarters of a mile in front of me.
And the sun was shining in the area that I was.
It was cool and scary at the same time.
Kudos on a well done video from a Meteorologist. Whenever there is a positive strike, all the weather nerds get up in arms. It is a rare and exciting (also dangerous) moment.
Closest I've been to a lightning strike was 15 feet. It hit the railway powerlines as I was openingen the door to the station house to get out of the rain. It was very loud and made the hairs on my arms stand straight up. I felt very, very insignificant, in a weirdly
life-affirming way, in the face of all that power.
I was at my front door during a storm and I saw and heard the streamers "tick", felt the electricity on my face and show up as a faint purple lines as my dog ran past me inside. It struck maybe 10 feet in front of me at the end of my porch near the front of my truck. Insanely lucky and one of the craziest experiences I've ever had.
Back when i was in flight school, i had a ground school instructor who flew fixed wing and he told me a story about when he was flying trans Atlantic late night and he saw from start a ball of lightning grow on the outside of the windscreen,then move inside the window and proceed to move from there, the entire way down the centre of the plane, all the way to the back and then heard a loud noise. when they landed there was a substancial section of the tail missing.
Interesting how they only realized there was a "substantial part of the tail missing" when they landed. And interesting how there's no record of this incident, no records of an incident which supposedly significantly damaged an airplane.
My mother tells me about a ball of light that would go really slowly from one point of the ranch always towards a specific mountain. Apparentely it happend quite often and was called "mother of gold", because people believed there was gold underground where it hit.
Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening!
Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Galileo Figaro...
Magnifico-oh-oh-oooohhhhh....
Magnificooo.
He's just a poor boy from a poor family.
Easy come, easy go. Will you let me go?
I remember one 4th of July when I lived in the mountains of Arizona. The fireworks show and carnival was going on in front of me but I was mesmerized by all the different kinds of lightning happening in the mountains to my left. It went on for a long time. I miss being able to be far enough away, but still see amazing things.
I love when a storms right above me and I'm home. When you can feel the boom in your chest. My grandpa was a chem professor and atmospheric researcher here in NM. He said his interest in it sparked (no pun intended) when he was 8 or so and ball lighting came out of his families home phone floated around the room and out the window his aunt said to break the silence and awe " it didn't even burn the curtains"
The weirdest lightning I've seen first-hand was in Okinawa in the '80s. There was just one small round cloud in the sky and every 15 or 20 seconds or so it would flash like a strobe light. It was really bright, and I did not hear any thunder. It was almost as if I UFO was taking flash photos of us.
"Scientists in China recorded the first video of ball lightning".
**Doesn't show video of ball lightning**
That's so evil
Thanks. I’m not gonna watch.
I know right!
I'd still like to know what I saw once. A small ping pong ball sized light appeared and quickly floated between me and a friend when we were outside talking. Saw another faster moving one elsewhere that night too. There wasn't any lightning storms and many of us saw the same thing so it wasn't our imagination either.
Awesome ball lightning! Been waiting years to hear more about it. When i was a kid maybe 9 (25 now) years old not sure, I had a science book that talked about it but basically only said that it exists and that we really don't know anything about it. To me its one of the most amazing mysteries! Hopefully i will see it one day. But sounds like we still don't know much.
When my mom was little and lived in South Carolina there was this pretty sizable kind of ball of electricity that was recurrent and would usually pop up during storms, it sometimes would move around the house but would usually stay in the kitchen, sort of jumping off of appliances and other metal stuff, it would last for quite a while too, sometimes even hours, does anybody know what the heck that was?
Had a super intense thunderstorm last year at 2am, normal blue-white lightning but sometimes got the occasional purple one. Quite the experience, ended up lasting almost half an hour with strikes happening within seconds of each other at some points. Course by the time my brain started working again and I tried to pull out my camera it was over >:C
Actually people in my hometown have really good videos of lightening strikes from the other night. It looked like rapid fire fireworks! I screenshot where the lightening lit up half the sky while the other half was completely dark.
Been wanting a ball-lightning segment for so long :)
Thanks so much!
It's fascinating to watch lighting in the sky. And smartphones can finally capture images of them using slow motion video.
I wonder if anyone here could help me identify a lightning phenomenon I witnessed years ago. It was midday, clear skies over me, but far to the west was a massive cumulonimbus cloud flashing with lightning, too distant to hear the thunder. I love lightning, so I watched it for a while. Then, after one of the flashes, the light just sort of ... stayed there. Keep in mind that I was in full Florida midday sun, and this cloud had a spot on it glowing so brightly that I could easily see it. Several seconds later, lightning flashed again and the glowing spot retreated after it, and was gone. But just a moment later, it happened again. Flash and glow ... flash and retreat. I got some friends to come and look to make sure I wasn't seeing things, and they saw it too. It continued the same pattern for about twenty minutes before the glow stopped returning. Unfortunately, this was long enough ago that my cellular phone didn't come with a camera, so this is purely anecdotal. But if anyone has any thoughts about what it might have been, I'd really like to hear them. Thanks!
I think the theory about ball lightening is quiet true, because we always see it happening on the horizon during the rare storms here in Abu Dhabi, hence Abu Dhabi is surrounding by silica sand dessert
That was the shortest 3min 30 sec video I've ever seen. There is so much about lightning that is incredibly cool!
I'm still disappointed that we didn't get a video or a picture of a Lightning Ball
its extremely rare but i saw one in person when i was small
Anne Ly oh shit. nice
Nemesis lol not nice... it traumatized me for a couple of months - mind you it was around 4am or so
Anne Ly rip
@@我-b2t me too ive seen it too!!!
My dad saw ball lightning once when he was younger. He and a group of three friends were having a sleepover when lightning struck nearby. They all woke up, then a ball of light drifted into the room. They all freaked out, but it didn't do much before dissipating.
"Remember that lightning has a lot of physics behind it." Literally everything has physics "behind" it. Physics is a science that explain how the universe works. Everything is physics.
yer mom isn't physics
***** well she kinda is
+iNezumi Hahaha xD
Very cool kanye 👌 (not obvius)
watching this during a storm! yolo?
do you live in holland too? because its 23:05 here and i cant sleep because of the sound and the flashes xD
+Merle Doren Yup
Same
Yepp
guess I am not the only one
I'm pretty sure ball lightning is just matter energized into a plasma state that is adrift in its own convection currents. I saw one float across the street right after a lightning strike in a fenced yard. It was softball sized and silently floated over the front of my car and scared me once I realized how dangerous it would be to come in contact with it.
I saw ball lightening when I was about 17 it seemed to come in through the Tv and whizzed through the house whilst we were eating straight over our dining table as we were eating (lasagne!) and out of the back window. Totally awesome but terrifying too although none of us knew what it was at first
As a mobile viewer, I would appreciate the annotation at the end of each video having a corresponding link in the description.
Ball lightning, the phenomenon that sounds the most interesting, and no video clip or picture was attached.
You should do a video on different colors of lightning. I have seen white, blue, purple, and even pink.
I saw red and black once when I was young.
I'm not sure lightning can be black since black is an absence of light, not any frequency of it. It might've been an image that you saw as a result of seeing the bright flash of lightning that messed with your eyes for a second.
Zeldas Champion no such thing as black lightning
Blue lightning is an indication of a high-precipitation with hail
www.photocase.de/fotos/68241-high-voltage-blau-stadt-haus-schwarz-wolken-regen-angst-photocase-stock-foto-gross.jpeg
Purple or lilac-tinted lightning bolt is often caused by high atmospheric humidity;
images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/purple-lightning-troy-q-nelson.jpg
Yellow lightning is uncommon; however, they tend to be cooler than the blue, lilac and white. They’re caused to due to a high concentration of dust in the air. And is an indication of a dry thunderstorm with low-precipitation.
i.pinimg.com/originals/3f/7b/2f/3f7b2faec2cc185d2a3a89c4b51738d5.jpg
White lightning is the hottest, and literally, all bolts radiate white color. They’re an indication of a low concentration of moisture and dust in the air.
cdn.digital-photo-secrets.com/images/lightning_grant2.
There is no definitive reason for Red lightning however it is said to be the coolest of all the lightning colors.
www.scottfillmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/alabama-lightning.jpg
Not bad, but - like most of your efforts - this really should have been at least 10 minutes long.
That would be enough time to start to explain the 'WHYs,' rather than just spouting semi-random factoids about such a complex subject.
IMO, SciShow has become a lot more superficial over the last few years. :/
Facts aren't even correct. No real research gone into this it is obvious, just regurgitated from other 'googled sources'
You are the best! Subscribed!
I saw the title, and just knew you would use Andreas Mogensens footage of a blue jet, so awesome
Thank you very much, I learned a lot
Very relevant, as there is a thunderstorm outside just now
It is very interesting that this video got uploaded today, because i just had a huge thunder storm passing through for a few hours earlier today.
Thanks SciShow! Great job!
I always thought ball lightning was the true cause of "spontaneous human combustion"
Funny timing. Don't know if you've heard, but we over on the EU side of the world, particularly Germany and The Netherlands are getting hit with some beefy thunderstorms over the last month. Hell, we Dutchies had one this morning in the western part of the country. Judging by the loud-ass bang and me almost being blown out of my bed by the sound wave I'd say we've had a strike about 50m or less from my home. Pretty cool experience.
For some reason, I find those storms comforting :-)
I remember one time I was riding home with my dad from a neighboring town, we'd gone to grab a bite to eat because it was my birthday, and I was staring up at the sky. It was threatening to rain, and was thundering and lightning, and as I was staring up at the sky, I remember seeing a hole in the clouds through which I could see the night sky and a couple stars. The next thing I know, I see three lines of lightning come together to form one massive strike that lights up the sky so bright I had to shield my eyes. I'll never forget it, mainly because what are the chances I'll ever see anything like that again?
Sounds like the positive lightning he was describing, that's cool. He said it's really rare!
0:35 _"One Theory"_ ? You mean we don't know?!?!?!!!?
Seriously. Sci show has opened my eyes to just how much common everyday stuff we don't know how it works.
1:29 graphic of streamer climbing to meet strike above. 2:33 ball lightning spheres of gas that lasts 20 seconds.
my great grandfather shared stories with my grandma about how there was ball lighting in santa barbara, california (where he lived and i live) when he was a kid but not anymore by the time my grandma was born. definitely not now. it rains like 5 days a year.
great video. I really enjoyed
So you show us 2 videos/pictures of things that last fractions of a second but don't show us ball lightning that lasts 20 seconds?!? That makes so much sense.
Perfect timing , as it's going nuts outside my window right now!
There was a storm where i live last night so i spent ages researching all this yesterday, just to have a 3 minute video explain it better. gg Scishow.
Very fitting that I watch this while there is a thunderstorm out there!
2:33 ball lightning
I don't know if I have ever seen Red Sprites, but I definitely saw blue jets once.
Could you guys do a video on why when the air is 70 degrees, is perfectly fine, but if a swimming pool is 70 degrees, it's freezing?
When my mom was a girl, ball lightning came into the house on the phone line. It stayed in the room for several seconds. That was at a time when all phone lines were above ground. I read an article in Scientific American a long time ago that speculated that ball lightning is a sphere of layers of positive and negative charges (like an onion). I don't remember what they said might keep the charges separated (photon emission?).
Zomg, does this mean we could control the movement of a heavy rain storm? Take rain from places that don't need it to places that are in dire need of it? We could even move it to lakes to fill up city water supplies and we could even let it rain over giant funnels and make power with it xD
All we need is either a satellite with a powerful electromagnet or perhaps some kind of zeppelin that could transport the rain storm. This would solve all our water problems :D
PS: I love that you said "theory" at least twice in this video. More science reporters should be doing that. Props to you, you're more scientific than most ^^
here's another theory. So basically the negatives (electrons) in the cloud repel the negatives in the top layer of soil and then because it is just protons left in the topsoil the electrons in the clouds attract to the protons in the topsoil to make it neutral. And the lightning you see is just electrons transferring from the negative cloud to the positive ground. But then again they are both just theories.
but the theories about how the positives and negatives separating is evident in this theory too
FYI.. You can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish
REO Speedwagon
My first thought
Unless it's bass :)
what about the glue?
THAST WHY U ME USE SAME DACT TAIPE
i acctually saw ball lightning in person once. i was about 10 and i was on my schools field talking with a friend as you do and then a ball of lightning slowly floated to the ground about 1.5m infront of us.
Woa lucky, they're extremely rare. There's only 1 extremely crappy video in existence of one from 2014... want to see one so bad... :(
+Pepijn Rietveld ball lightning acctually looks kinda cute. sounds wierd but it does. im not normally very lucky so maybe that was me getting the luck id been missing out on in one go eh? :D
You are especially lucky it didn't touch you... because this thing is incredibly powerful.
+Ozone Grif yes very much so. this is a very enlightning conversation :P
Luck isnt real
It's storming here right now and I see lightning almost every damn minute!
Watching this during a thunderstorm
Almost got struck by lightning the other day, hit the pool pump while I was on the porch. Sound and pressure almost blew out my ear drums, it was cool.
All my life I've been thinking lightning ocurred because two clouds would collide with such strength that it would generate light. Good to see I was wrong, this theory is much more interesting.
imagine thinking air could generate light by touching more of the same air 💀
yay! they did a video on the questions I asked.
Yay! I'd been waiting to see something about sprites on here. :-D
Watching this during a thunderstorm :D
You guys should visit Hessdalen, Norway, or maybe you already have. That could lead to an extremely popular video or two.
Awesome video! One suggestion; blink
No worries! I look at people that way in restaurants when I wanna freak them out. You however made an awesome video
Our metal fence was struck by lightning while my 6 year old son was looking out the window and he described ball lightning! I wish I would have seen it.
:D I did one of my final year uni projects on ball lightning. The other popular theory you didn't mention, first coined by Kapitza involves the creation of meta stable balls of plasma contained between nodes in the electric field.
The main reason it's so poorly understood currently is because of how rare it is. This leads to most reports being non scientific eye witness accounts. Even with advanced statistical handling of observer errors no one theory is able to explain all forms of ball lightning:
Some has been said to move through walls and glass (not consistent with and theory that relies upon particles)
Some are said to have created explosions or evaporated large amounts of water which require more energy than anyone can work out how to self contain in plasma or to explain with the photon model.
Basically either there are multiple different phenomenon that we label as ball lightning or we have to discount some accounts as people being mistaken.
I'm intrigued
"beautiful lightning" yea i thought so too..for a long time..until it hit my house and fried everything i had..made holes in the walls where the wiring was...not to mention the bang....loudest bang you could ever hear
What's the statistics of lightening safety measures and are they worth it? From installing lightening rods (thank you Ben Franklin) to keeping away from plumbing and skipping a shower because there's a lighting storm outside, to avoiding standing under trees in a downpour even though you'd get drenched, etc.
Can you guys do another video about red sprites? I've read and seen evidence that they're caused by electrons instead of photons
there was ball lightning at WDW epcot yesterday (6/30/16) and it appeared about twice, about 10-20 seconds from each other
I read back in high school that there was a man struck by lightning 7 times?
I also read that he started carrying buckets of water without an explanation as to what the water was for. What purpose does the bucket of water serve when a person gets struck by lightning?
Two huge rain and thunder storms just wrecked this years mid-summer festival in Denmark, just a couple hours ago. :(
I had made twistbread dough to bake on a stick over a camp fire... it went into the oven instead. :C _not-as-fun_
Brother!
Daniel! oh shit bro I haven't seen you in a while! yeah man I was hoping to go and meet up there with you
I've actually seen ball lightning before, and from what I've heard they're pretty rare O_o
Ball lightning makes you think about how easy it would be to believe in ghosts and that kind of stuff, especially before now
SciShow, please do one on Will-o'-the-Wisps!
What a coincidence. I'm actually in the middle of a lightning storm right now. Normally, I wouldn't see such a thing(I live in Alaska), but I just so happen to be at a family reunion in Nashville. Even though none of my family actually lives in Nashville.
last time I was this early keemstar had fans and a successful channel.
I have heard anecdotal stories that I think are reliable of lightning strikes on a fence line causing ball lighting to travel down the fence. I've seen some strange things, but not that.
lightning has always fascinated me 😄
Can you do a video on why UA-cam channels develop memes and inside jokes within the comment section over time? Eg Litojonny and the meme that has followed.
+Patrick O'Sullivan the anus question always cracks me up lol
I've observed the same phenomenon on two different channels: Techquickie and "Windows Registry as Fast as Possible", and Seeker Daily (formerly TestTube News) and "What are Israel's Violations of International Law?". So, why is there hair violating international law as fast as possible around my Windows registry's anus?
Interestingly, these two questions (including butt hair) were answered within a one-month timespan, so maybe there are others that I've not seen. (I've listed two more; anyone know of others?)
That's how I feed my eel crayfish that has been boiled for safety.
great to see a cuber here
no.
I generally view thunderstorms while standing next to my camera. (if the storm if far enough away and or the train won't kill me. alternatively I'm in my car, behind the same camera. And if I'm feeling particularly lazy, or the storm is hapaning when it's bright out, I'll just stay at home and posibally view it from a window...
As often,amazing!Keep up the good work Scishow!Filipino boy here.Nerd invasion here is very vey new.
If anyone else here is an offensive athiest,consider that I'm also a Roman Catholic.I will report you for flame wars.
Lightning happens a lot this rainy season(6 months a year).
THIS IS SHOCKING
I thought that the storm cloud looked like baby Yoda! lol 🤣
does the lighting pas through the air equally or it prefers certain molecules in it's path?
Can you do one on cerebral aneurysms? I had one rupture at 19 and would love to learn more.
ok but it's lightning here right now and then this is in my subscriptions
Okay "transfer of positive charge from the cloud to the ground" . The only thing moving is electrons. Electrons are negatively charged.
Convincingly this video where uploaded when a heavy lightning storm occurred where I live... As well as the southern part of my country.
During thunderstorms I like to pretend I'm a superhero by running around while wearing nothing but a trench coat. I call myself the Lightning-Flash.
If we can figure out how ball lightning works, one day we'll be able to make ball lightning on command. Imagine how cool that would be?
We can already kind of do that in laboratories. It's just that the natural phenomenon is rare and not entirely understood and we are not sure if it's similar to what can be produced in a lab. Effectively it's just a ball of plasma, which can be created in a multitude of ways, even in your home microwave.
Uploaded during extremely lightning-heavy storms in northwestern Germany. Illuminati confirmed.
nice video lighting physics is multiphysics problem very hard
I just had a thunder storm pass over a few minutes ago. Cool
0:36 YODA?