Lightning Scientists On The Ball?

The phenomenon of ball lightning has vexed scientists for centuries. What is it? How does it happen? Is it even real? South American researchers may have gotten the ball rolling (forgive me) on our understanding of this rare occurrence.

Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil has cooked up a simple recipe for making similar eerie orbs of light in the lab, even getting them to bounce around for several seconds. Watch a movie of the bouncing balls here.

Thousands of people have reported seeing ball lightning, a luminous sphere that sometimes appears during thunderstorms. It is typically the size of a grapefruit and lasts for a few seconds or minutes, sometimes hovering, even bouncing along the ground. [Source: New Scientist]

[tags]ball lightning, luminous sphere, foo fighter, mini black hole, John Abrahamson, James Dinniss, Antonio Pavao, Gerson Paiva[/tags]