Ball Lightning and UFOs.

BALL LIGHTNING does not look like "lightning." Instead, it usually appears as a mysterious glowing sphere which drifts horizontally through the air. It is typically the size of a grapefruit, but sometimes appears as small as a pea, or as large as a bus. It sometime hovers at a few feet or tens of feet altitude, but can also bounce along the ground. It usually lasts only a few seconds, but sometimes persists much longer.

Link

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bc4c28c94abd.jpg[/atsimg]



Does Ball lightning account for some UFO sightings?

The phenomenon itself appears to be a pretty controversial one within mainstream science but it refers to luminous, (mostly) spherical objects which vary in size and 'move up, down, sideways or in unpredictable trajectories' - some ball lightning accounts also describe it moving through solid masses of wood or metal without effect and other witnesses report a strange smell like ozone or burning sulphur.

There are some pretty remarkable interviews in the Arthur C. Clarke documentary below with people who claim to have experienced ball lightning and some of their observations do share certain characteristics with UFO testimony:




Interviews at 7:25




Followed on here:





Description:

Visual sightings are often accompanied by sound, odor, and other natural and unnatural phenomenon. Most are accompanied by a loud humming. Sometimes ball lightnings are reported to emit a hissing sound. Many observers report a distinctive odor accompanying ball lightning. The odor is usually described as sharp and repugnant, resembling ozone, burning sulphur, or nitric oxide.

Many eyewitness accounts describe its movement as having the characteristics of an intelligence guiding it. It often enters structures through windows or doors, though it seems to have no difficulty passing through solid walls. It travels down hallways and up and down stairs and other lines of logical access and egress within structures. It pauses at objects and living things as though observing them. It has been described as similar to remote reconnaissance drones portrayed in science fiction movies.

A diameter of 6-18 inches is the most common size, although reports range from ½ inch up to 50 feet in width. They are luminous and spherical in shape and come in a rainbow of colors, often changing color many times during a single event. They do not seem to do a great deal of harm, although in their exits, they sometimes explode which can cause damage. They have even been sighted in aircraft flying in clear skies and on marine vessels without a cloud in sight.

Reports

Articles:

A Social History of Ball Lightning. Martin Shough

Unfriendly Fire - Ball Lightning and UFOs

Spectre in the sky - The evidence for ball lightning

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

I've seen ball lightning when I was kid. It was redorange, about the size of a basket ball and it bounced along the power lines. My mum and her brother new what it was. We watched it for about 10 mins

I to have seen ball lightning.
My ex husband, my oldest son and I, was driving home from his sister's house.
I happened to look outside my husband's window and seen lights. The light was yellow, and it was moving. I told my ex husband to look out his window there are yellow balls of lighting or something. He looked out his window and he didn't see nothing.

[edit on 21-4-2010 by tinkerbell79]

The ball lightning may actually be something more than meets the eye. We had the experience of seeing an angle grinder white type Jesus light ufo orb that was like a basketball of light with like masses of molten metal pouring off it as if it was being ground with an angle grinder, it drifted towards us and morphed into just a perfect calm Jesus light ufo orb or a colour that was of an indescribable beauty. Thing is we also saw loads of ufo orbs surrounding us from above next and a mothership appeared that buzzed us four times and rained on us a cotton wool like substance after it departed, so whatever that ball lightning like thing (the angle grinder white type Jesus light) was, the thing was part of the ufo event.

Thanks for sharing your accounts -it certainly sounds a bit freaky and could well account for some UFO sightings.

There's a bit of a crazy ball lightning incident here from on board an aircraft in 1963 where a professor and an air stewardess witnessed a 'perfectly symmetrical glowing white blue sphere' emerge from the pilot's cabin and travel down the aisle of the aircraft before disappearing out through the toilet compartment!


There's also another interesting clip below which mentions ball lightning onboard a Russian passenger jet from January, 1984 (see 3:15).






Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

reply to post by ufoorbhunter


I'd assume you still have the cotton wool like substance? Have you ever submitted it for analysis?

thanks for the ball lightning followup Karl 12 -- I know I gave it as the explanation for a couple UFO sighting links you wanted me to check out.

Apparently ball lighting follows other electromagnetic signatures -- which explains it appearing inside commerical jets....

So the idea of it following military jets is not to be dismissed. From what I can tell it seems the most likely explanation for many UFO sightings.

I got in trouble for ball lightning back about '87.

The Army looks askance on ball lightning visiting you when you're supposed to be all covert and sneaky. More so when it decides to pick someone out (me) and play around. Add in "we're sneakily guarding the guys guarding the nukes" sauce, and it's a couple of days of questions.

I should have run my ass off as ordered. Excuse me, made a tactical retreat, or advanced rapidly away from the ball lightning.

It was very pretty, though, and it acted as if it were alive in a way.

reply to post by Bedlam


Bedlam are you suggesting that the "ufos" visiting Nukes could be ball lightning?

I mean that's what you experienced so at least SOME of the are! Yes that's what I've been saying as well on Robert Hastings thread. Thanks for the confirmation.

reply to post by drew hempel


It was a bit more involved than that.

In a nutshell, we were in Germany at the time. Actually, my home base was in Germany about 200 km away, so it was sort of a short hop.

There was a Pershing missile battery not far from Neu Ulm, and the Greens had killed a missile maggot to get his ID. They also had put up a bunch of posters in the area offering a lot of money to kill an officer or one of the guard detail to get some more IDs, so they could get on the base and cause a nuclear accident or launch an unarmed missile.

That was taken fairly seriously, we were in the chute for the next wacky thing, and we got the detail to do some close watch. That night, they were in the woods near the missile emplacement watching the guards, and we were in the woods watching them.

Anyway, to cut out all the boring detail, what was later determined to be ball lightning came wafting through the trees, did a circle, picked me out of the half dozen guys in that area (the other half dozen were a few hundred yards off) and homed in on me from across a clearing that we were scattered around the verge of in the trees.

It made several course corrections to avoid stuff in the way, but it was very obviously heading for me. I got told to run for it, instead I stood up and stepped into the clearing. It floated about two feet off the ground, circling until it was dead in front of me and about an arm's length away, then floated up to eye level and stopped dead. We looked at each other for about half a minute, then it contracted to a point and vanished.

I got reamed for not running, applauded for not running, questioned on whether it was Russian spy ball lightning, reamed for standing up in the open, praised for standing up and being ready to carry out said running away order, and basically it turned out that there wasn't any by the book response for being personally singled out by an electromagnetic phenomenon and the whole thing was dropped.

But we weren't THAT near the weapons, it was several hundred yards away, so I'm not sure it applies to your supposition.

edit: it probably didn't help matters any that when I saw the damn thing drop out of the trees into the clearing that I said "It'll head right for me, you watch", meaning that it would be my luck that something spooky and bizarre would pick me for a target. Later that was a big deal, how did you know it was going to head for you, and it was sort of hard to explain away. Thus do little comments cause unforeseen reactions, I guess.



[edit on 21-4-2010 by Bedlam]

reply to post by Bedlam


That's a great report although I worked as a University of Wisconsin Greens organizer for a few years. Nonviolence is in the platform of the Green party -- so while I appreciate you claiming the Greens "killed" someone to get i.d. and put up posters warning of death or money, etc. I find it highly doubtful.

Still everyone needs a boogeyman -- if it's Mother Nature for you by all means -- she's worthy of fear be it personified as a Green Party activist or a nuclear weapon.

Apparently ball lightning didn't scare you though. haha.

reply to post by drew hempel


I'm not sure the European greens are quite the same as the US version. At any rate, they did kill someone and were out to get others. They found the guy in a ditch, stripped.

edit: trying to see if anyone kept one of the posters, it's been a long time. Would be an interesting thing to scan and post.

[edit on 21-4-2010 by Bedlam]

reply to post by Bedlam


Yeah I googled for European Greens killing a soldier -- nothing! haha. But I did come across soldiers firing at Greens. Hmm -- that's not too surprising. Firing at unarmed peace activists? Ah the manly men!

Originally posted by drew hempel
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Yeah I googled for European Greens killing a soldier -- nothing! haha. But I did come across soldiers firing at Greens. Hmm -- that's not too surprising. Firing at unarmed peace activists? Ah the manly men!

Yeah, the uber peaceful Greens, like Petra Kelly and Bastian, eh? ha ha. Nothing like some murder amongst peaceful fellow activists. haha.

As far as that goes, though, I did see one of our guys cycle the action of an M60 on a protestor's head once. Left a really nice waffle pattern.

The only greens that were fired at were crossing into clearly marked US territory. Think of it as evolution in action.

edit: talked to a couple of the other guys, they say it was 1986. The greens had some ladies lure a green-badge off base, killed him, took his ID and dumped him off in front of Nelson Kaserne. Trying to see if anyone can come up with the guy's name.

[edit on 21-4-2010 by Bedlam]

reply to post by GhostR1der
The cotton wool like substance was very fine and seemed to disintegrate upon hitting the ground. To be honest anyway collecting such a thing was the last thing going through the brain at the time, just stunned that we'd seen so many active ufo orbs of many types and a mothership too, we were sort of losing reality and a touch scared really, we did end up running away from the main perfect circle of same coloured pairs above us when the mothership had buzzed us on the fourth fly over because we really thought we were about to be abducted!

Also at the time in 2006 we never knew that the fine strands were seen sometimes after a ship had departed to another dimension and that a similar thing was written about in the bible called manna. We just thought it was odd

reply to post by Bedlam


The Petra Kelly killing was a "crime of passion" -- not that it condones it. I'm not saying Greens are the answer but they're officially nonviolent. To use weapons against nonviolent protesters is UBER-WEAK. It's a step above wife-beating but not much.

en.wikiversity.org...

[edit on 22-4-2010 by drew hempel]

I have never seen ball lightning, nor do I know how common it really is considering how controversial its existence is and how few real studies have been carried out.

While I do believe ball lightning could explain a lot of UFO sightings readily, I would really need the data on how it formed (observed data, not theoretical) and how frequently it formed to really make any conclusions. I can also say without a doubt the one UFO I saw long ago was not ball lightning, as it was basically a hunk of polished metal hovering in broad daylight .

Check out this expose on lightning types from Wired magazine.

www.wired.com...

About ball lightning, Wired says it occurs near thunderstorms, though no one knows why.

If that's true, and you think you saw ball lightning and there was no thunderstorm nearby, then what you saw wasn't ball lightning.

Originally posted by sos37
If that's true, and you think you saw ball lightning and there was no thunderstorm nearby, then what you saw wasn't ball lightning.

not necessarily. the "no one knows why" is the key here.

your assumption is identical to the following:


i have only ever seen or heard of chicken eggs hatching in coops.
someone told me he saw a chicken egg hatch in a bush.
therefore, he did not see a chicken egg.


we don't know what causes ball lightning, short of some theories. we don't even have experimental confirmation to their existence. all we have is the knowledge they are most frequently reported around thunderstorms.

reply to post by JScytale


I don't understand what chicken eggs have to do with ball lightning?!!?

J/K! haha.

Seriously though how to chickens get the calcium to make their eggs? According to Kervan's book "biological transmutions" Chickens eat mica particles in the dust and mica goes through an ionic alchemy to turn into calcium....

Just like plasma balls are created as an interactive phenomenon with high voltage technology or nuclear weapon installations, etc.

Yep.