The internet is filled with things. Here is one of them.
First Spectrum of Ball Lightning2024 Jan 12
This article is just shy of ten years old, but it's still new to me. Ball lightning was caught on a fancy physicist's spectrograph! They were recording regular lightning strikes and caught the incredibly-rare ball lightning purely by luck. This doesn't preclude that there's other types of ball lightning out there from different sources, but this ball lightning in particular was made, turns out, from dirt. Why dirt? I'll let the physicists explain:
One popular theory is that ball lightning is caused when lightning striking the ground vaporizes some of the silicate minerals in soil. Carbon in the soil strips the silicates of oxygen through chemical reactions, creating a gas of energetic silicon atoms. These then recombine to form nanoparticles or filaments which, while still floating in air, react with oxygen, releasing heat and emitting the glow.
This article is just shy of ten years old, but it's still new to me. Ball lightning was caught on a fancy physicist's spectrograph! They were recording regular lightning strikes and caught the incredibly-rare ball lightning purely by luck. This doesn't preclude that there's other types of ball lightning out there from different sources, but this ball lightning in particular was made, turns out, from dirt. Why dirt? I'll let the physicists explain: