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First spectrum of ball lightning
Philip Ball, 2014. Physics 7, 5 (American Physical Society).
The APS news account of the Cen et al. observation: July 2012, late evening, on the Qinghai Plateau, by Ping Yuan's group from Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, about 900 m from a cloud-to-ground strike; spectral range 400–1000 nm; a glow about 5 m across in the recording (the ball itself smaller); about a second or so; drifted about 10 m horizontally and rose about 3 m; white to reddish; lines of silicon, iron and calcium, aluminium unconfirmed. Quotes Martin Uman that it is "probably of ball lightning, or one type of ball lightning".
What it's used for here
Details of the 2012 observation and an independent researcher's view.
Our copy
Research copy, for editors and curators. The work is the publisher's, so readers are sent to it. We keep this copy so the citation can be checked if the page changes or goes.
physics.aps.org · fetched 29 Oct 2026
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Cite it
Ball, P. (2014). First spectrum of ball lightning. Physics 7, 5 (American Physical Society). https://doi.org/10.1103/Physics.7.5
@article{ball2014first,
author = {Ball, Philip},
title = {First spectrum of ball lightning},
journal = {Physics 7, 5 (American Physical Society)},
year = {2014},
doi = {10.1103/Physics.7.5},
url = {https://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5}
}TY - JOUR TI - First spectrum of ball lightning AU - Ball, Philip PY - 2014 JO - Physics 7, 5 (American Physical Society) DO - 10.1103/Physics.7.5 UR - https://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5 ER -
Ball, Philip. “First spectrum of ball lightning.” Physics 7, 5 (American Physical Society) (2014). https://doi.org/10.1103/Physics.7.5.