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Ball Lightning: Weather’s Strangest Mystery
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Glowing balls of energy appear out of nowhere only to vanish a few seconds later. Ball lightning is strange, rare, and unexplained. In this episode, we explore the mystery, prod at the boundary between folklore and science and ask how, when evidence is scarce, we can figure out what is true.
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References
Argyle, E. (1971). Ball lightning as an optical illusion. Nature, 230(5290), 179–180. https://doi.org/10.1038/230179a0
Cen, J., Yuan, P., & Xue, S. (2014). Observation of the Optical and Spectral Characteristics of Ball Lightning. Physical Review Letters, 112(3). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.112.035001
Cooray, G., & Cooray, V. (2008). Could some ball lightning observations be optical hallucinations caused by epileptic seizures? The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 2(1), 101–105. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874282300802010101
Jennison, R. C. (1969). Ball lightning. Nature, 224(5222), 895–895. https://doi.org/10.1038/224895a0
Neil deGrasse Tyson Videos. (2018, March 6). Neil Tyson Answers “Do You Believe In UFOs?” & Sets The Record Straight!! YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZDjel3dyv0
Parks, J. (2024, September 19). Is ball lightning real? The science behind nature’s strangest light show. Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/is-ball-lightning-real-the-science-behind-natures-strangest-light-show
PowerfulJRE. (2021, May 26). Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Skepticism Over UFO’s. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u0VDFppCI4
Sagan, C. (2008). Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark. Paw Prints. (Original work published 1995)
Stephan, K. D., Sonnenfeld, R., & Keul, A. G. (2022). First comparisons of ball-lightning report website data with lightning-location-network data. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 240, 105953. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2022.105953
Weeks, L. (2015, May 28). The windshield-pitting mystery of 1954. Npr.org. https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/05/28/410085713/the-windshield-pitting-mystery-of-1954
Wikipedia Contributors. (2025a, April 29). Sprite (lightning). Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)#History
Wikipedia Contributors. (2025b, May 3). Ball lightning. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning#Historical_accounts
Image Credit: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
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