Most powerful "Ball Lightning" Explosiom

[Kitsune]

I was reading that a few scientists believe that the Tunguska Event was caused by Ball Lighting. This does not seem to be the majority opinion and almost fringe belief.

What is the most powerful "Ball Lightning" explosion seen as possible?
What is the largest "Ball Lightning" possible?

[starslayer]

And what "scientists" were these? We have no idea if ball lightning even exists, as there is only very scant evidence, most of it anecdotal and thus inadmissible. Anyways, to say that a lightning phenomenon could initiate a several megaton (IIRC) explosion is utterly ridiculous on its face; Even the largest cloud-to-ground discharges are many orders of magnitude smaller.

[Kitsune]

I did not think ball lightning was a very logical explanation but just curious what is the most powerful supposed explosive force.

[Hawkwings]

First, tell us what ball lightning is. Then we might be able to get somewhere.

[Kitsune]

Consider my question a dead end then.....
I guess I thought ball lightning was better defined and there was a reasonable theory which fit the reports......

[Turin]

FWIW, as it turns out Scientific American just has an article (subscription only) wherein sonar studies of one of the small lakes in the Tunguska region were performed. A group of Italian scientists believe that the lake is actually an impact crater, and they think they may have discovered a fragment of the body that hit in the bottom of that lake.

Their sonar map of the lake shows that it's shaped in a way that one would expect if a meteor fragment radiated away from the epicenter of the blast and impacted (the blast having occurred well above the ground). And right at the deepest part of the crater/lake they've discovered an unusually dense chunk of rock that they believe is that fragment. They intend on going back next summer to go get it from the bottom of the lake and study it.

[Kitsune]

I understand the argument for a stony asteroid is pretty strong and there is an outside chance of it being a comet......Nothing else fits really.

If Wiki is accurate, I was amazing that we seem to have had a multi-kiloton "explosion" in June 2002

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Me ... nean_Event

[Sikon]

A regular lighting strike tends to be a fraction of a ton of TNT equivalent at most. If anything, ball lightning tends to be less powerful.

In contrast, the Tunguska event was on the order of 10 to 15 megatons.

That's a difference of millions of times.

There's no mechanism by which clouds could store and concentrate not gigajoules but petajoules (millions of gigajoules) of static electricity like that ... too great charge buildup and the voltage becomes enough that it discharges rather than building up further, among other reasons.

There's no way the Tunguska event was ball lightning, basically as impossible as lightning blowing up a planet.

A lot of objects in the solar system are made of rock and/or ice which could cause an explosion like the Tunguska event upon entering the atmosphere. Structurally weak compared to the enormous forces of running into air at great enough velocity, such can get blown apart in the stratosphere rather than surviving to leave a regular crater on the ground.

[Sikon]

I understand the argument for a stony asteroid is pretty strong and there is an outside chance of it being a comet......Nothing else fits really.

Precisely. The event has attracted a lot of interest in weird explanations (aliens, mini black holes, etc.), but, really, it's just a matter of a NEO impact without such surviving the passage through the atmosphere.

[Rye]

Tunguska seems to be pretty obviously a meteor impact. I should note however, I do believe in ball lightning since it blew up my TV when I was really young. It hit the aerial, fucked up the TV and then floated between my house and next door's before popping.

[Napoleon the Clown]

I was reading that a few scientists believe that the Tunguska Event was caused by Ball Lighting. This does not seem to be the majority opinion and almost fringe belief.

What is the most powerful "Ball Lightning" explosion seen as possible?
What is the largest "Ball Lightning" possible?

It's pure bullshit speculation, and the "most powerful" ball lightning would be enough to kill a person but nowhere near enough to release 10-15 megatons of explosive energy. Just stop and think like this: A transformer like you see on power poles explodes. Is it going to be dangerous to someone a few blocks away, much less hundreds of meters?


It's actually rarer for an object from space to reach the ground intact. Unless I'm mistaken, it's pretty common for objects to explode like the object over Tunguska did. Just stop and think about it: And object hits the atmosphere at velocities in the neigborhood of 20 km/s. Keep in mind that the SR-71's cruise speed of Mach 3 about 1/50th as fast. The stresses are enormous.

[NoXion]

I recently read a book called Shadowlands: Quest for Mirror Matter in the Universe, part of which argued that the Tunguska Event was caused by a fragment of mirror matter. It seemed a fairly plausible argument to me, although recent discoveries and investigations may have invalidated it.

[Turin]

I recently read a book called Shadowlands: Quest for Mirror Matter in the Universe, part of which argued that Tunguska Event was caused by a fragment of mirror matter[/url]. It seemed a fairly plausible argument to me, although recent discoveries and investigations may have invalidated it.

Something completely hypothetical and having no evidence for it is more plausible than a simple and common thing we have plenty of evidence for? What the hell kind of "plausible" is that?

[NoXion]

I recently read a book called Shadowlands: Quest for Mirror Matter in the Universe, part of which argued that Tunguska Event was caused by a fragment of mirror matter[/url]. It seemed a fairly plausible argument to me, although recent discoveries and investigations may have invalidated it.

Something completely hypothetical and having no evidence for it is more plausible than a simple and common thing we have plenty of evidence for? What the hell kind of "plausible" is that?

I did raise the distinct possiblity that the mirror matter hypothesis for the Tunguska event may have been falsified.

That which is plausible may not necessarily reflect reality. The author did say that further investigation would serve to confirm or falsify his hypothesis.