For centuries people have sworn they've seen glowing spheres drift through thunderstorms — into houses, down airplane aisles, hissing before they vanish or explode. Science spent decades insisting they were hallucinations. Then someone finally caught one on camera.
A grounded explainer on what ball lightning looks like, how long it lasts, and why it's so maddeningly hard to reproduce or explain.
The definitive survey: centuries of eyewitness reports, the competing theories, and why it's distinct from St. Elmo's fire and will-o'-the-wisp.
National Geographic on the phenomenon's long, strange record — including sightings inside submarines and cockpits — and why it's occasionally lethal.
A Canadian couple films a glowing blue ball hovering after a nearby strike — one of the rare pieces of amateur footage scientists take seriously.
In 2012 Chinese researchers accidentally recorded the first scientific spectrum of ball lightning in the wild — a landmark that proved it's real, not folklore.
The physics of what might sustain a floating, glowing sphere for seconds — from vaporized-silicon theories to self-contained plasma.
The story of that breakthrough 2012 recording and what its glowing spectrum told scientists about where these orbs actually come from.