h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The lightbulb in my room blew and a bead of blueish light flew across the room. I assumed the bulb had shattered but when I examined it I found it was intact. Could the bead of light have been ball lightning?

Since nobody knows what ball lightning is, your guess is as good as anybody else's.

No, it was magical Light pixie escaping from the imprisonment of the bulb.

Ball lightning tends not to pass through things as i have heard, hence why you are supposed to open all the doors and windows in your house so it can escape.

I'm sure I'd read reports of ball lightning actually coming through windows. Maybe I was wrong? Any budding meteorologists care to chip in?

For any kind of lightning to form including ball lightning a vast potential differnce must be created and the flow of many many amps is need. If this kind of electrical energy had been flowing through the wires in your houses then every electrical appliance you own would have exploded. The blue light you saw is proably an optical effect casued by the presence of bright light and then suddenly no light falling on your eye(residual stimulation of the retina), it was definitely not ball lightning.

Wuff!

Don't be so dogmatic! It is possible for very high voltages (say 50,000 volts) to be formed over short distances when a light bulb fails. Nobody knows what ball lightning is. It is an unexplained phenomenon. Therefore, we don't know exactly what conditions are needed to create it.

I think you are right, though. From the descriptionm it is more likely to be an effect in the observer's eye than something which actually flew across the room.

No, it was the Light Pixie, I've been to the highlands where they catch them and pack them into bulbs. It's true I tell you!

I've seen ball lightning twice, and it didn't look anything like a bead of bluish light. It looked like the sun, and sort of drifted, very slowly. It was difficult to estimate the size exactly, but I would say it was somewhere between a football and a large beach ball.

Seamus

Where did you see it Seamus and what were the weather conditions. Can you estimate how slowly it was travelling, cause I understood it to be a rapid occurence!

Seamus's description is very like the ones I've read. The ball lightning tends to move very slowly, taking 10 or 20 seconds to cross a room.

Would it be fatal to touch it? I wonder how something with as much raw power as lightning can be contained in a ball and be slow moving. Traditional forked lightning as you know is fast and dangerous.

It was a long time ago. The first time I saw it, it was weaving in and out of the scaffold poles, erected in front of the houses on the other side of the street, about forty or fifty meters away. It moved very slowly, the way a balloon does if you nudge it gently. It may have come out of one of the windows, but they had no glass in at this time anyway. I watched it for twenty to thirty seconds until it exploded with a very loud bang, I'm pretty sure this happened when it came into direct contact with one of the scaffold poles.

The second time, years later, it was hovering beside a fence. I only caught a glimpse, maybe two seconds, before it exploded, so couldn't estimate speed accurately. In fact if I hadn't seen it before I don't think I would have recognised it for what it was, but my impression was it was moving just as slowly as the first.

Seamus

Oops, forgot weather conditions. As I say it was a long time ago, but as far as I recall it was humid and overcast on both occasions.

Seamus

It's certainly a strange phenomena, anyone know if it's been caught on video yet?

Yes

Ball lightning has been known to pass through objects, I think it has even passed through people. Though some have had bad burns from that. Maybe they are light pixies out for revenge.

Aliens, definatly aliens.
If I were you I'd pop along to be checked over, as the aliens may have implanted htemselves in your brain, and be plotting to take over the world, and turn all humans into slaves to their sexual desires

Well if the aliens look like Allyson Hannigan then I'm willing to be a slave.

They shift shape, you can't trust them. I found one a few days ago, which ahd turned itself into a beer mat. Dirty things, rummaging through my sock drawer,and stealing all the toilet rolls, they can't be trusted, and they are watching me, always watching, and stealing my toilet rolls, making the milk turn sour, and making the flames turn green.
They are on every street corner, trying to control our minds and we can't trust them. I think there is one watching me now, or is that just the secret police? I don't think I should have got out of bed today

Shape shifters?!?